The red haired neighbor girl from Monsieur Ibrahim: 8/10 has grown up, living in the village Angoulème. Seventeen, as the actress Lola Neymark. Pregnant, a mother to be. She takes medical leave from the part time supermarket, claiming cancer for her supermarket colleagues. Claire lives, apart from her family, in a small studio apartment indulging her passion - designing intricate embroideries. She harvests secretly cabbage from the field of her parents' farm, exchanging for rabbit skins, needed for her embroideries. She hears that her friend Lucine's brother Guillaume had with his friend Ichkan Mélikian a motorcycle accident. For Ichkan help came too late, Guillaume blaming himself for that death. And Claire starts as assistant for the bereaved mother, an embroiderer, Madame Mélikian, Armenian. A bereaved, mourning mother and a teenager mother to be with the vague thought for adoption. Visiting the gynecologist Claire looks into the camera while the gynecologist tells her what is seen on the screen. She receives a sealed envelop with the gender answer: lost, found and hidden. The sequence with Claire's mother and her daughter, Claire giving her a visual chance to discover her pregnancy gives the impression that the mother doesn't see – while Madame Mélikian saw it. The centerpiece are the former and future mother and their passion and profession embroidery. And death, the mourning mothers attempted suicide, starting the process of their growing togetherness. Recognising the other, seeing each other twice – with respect. A film by a woman, with women for women about two women, confronted by unwanted death and unwanted birth. At a meal with the Lescuyer Madame Mélikian says: "We work well together. Now we can do whatever we want. We are strong." Brievly we see Claires father, Lucil's father; where the Armenian husband? The butcher from the local supermarket, the child to be father: "It wasn't me?" Claire's clear response: their relationship is of no importance for her, finished. Not alone can the bereaved woman and the pregnant teenager look at their situation. The obsession and profession is the stand-in- father The passion and profession for embroidery: not only an income for rent and food. Also a room for temporary peace and comfort for the stand-in-mother of the past and the stand-in-daughter as to-be-mother. Images, looks, glances, unspoken intentions. Silence. The silent emptiness: the future mother and the former mother, bond over their invisible children, silently working, creating beauty. Right up to the fragile end: a girl. It is the turn towards life after the attempted suicide and the decision for the adoption the conviction that life is worthwhile. A girl. If it was a boy – should have been adopted? A girl can be pregnant. For this the woman is needed, "une fille" – a girl.
Review of Brodeuses
