From the Land of the Moon (2016)

In 1950s France, Gabrielle is a passionate, free-spirited woman who is in a loveless marriage and falls for another man when she is sent away to the Alps to treat her kidney stones. Gabrielle yearns to free herself and run away with André.

Director:

Nicole Garcia

Writers:

Milena Agus (based on the novel by), Natalie Carter (collaboration)

Stars:

Marion Cotillard, Alex Brendemühl, Louis Garrel

16 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Marion Cotillard	...	Gabrielle
Alex Brendemühl	...	José (as Àlex Brendemühl)
Louis Garrel	...	Le lieutenant André Sauvage
Brigitte Roüan	...	Adèle
Victoire Du Bois	...	Jeannine
Aloïse Sauvage	...	Agostine
Daniel Para	...	Martin
Jihwan Kim	...	Blaise - l'ordonnance
Victor Quilichini	...	Marc Rabascal
Ange Black-Bereyziat	...	Marc Rabascal
Sören Rochefort	...	Georget
Camilo Acosta Mendoza	...	Camilo
Francisco Alfonsin	...	Paco
Julio Bollullo Carasco	...	Julio
Folco Jullien	...	Un garçon à la fête

Storyline

Gabrielle comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José, an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, she vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage, a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and he seems to share her desire. Will anyone dare rob her of her right to follow her dreams?

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Plot Keywords:

told in flashback | title directed by female | female protagonist | post world war two | based on novel | 

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Taglines:

Sometimes Love is the Only Thing That's Real

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some strong sexuality and graphic nudity

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

France Belgium Canada

Language:

French Spanish German

Release Date:

28 July 2017 (USA)

Also Known As:

From the Land of the Moon

Filming Locations:

Lyon, France

Box Office

Budget:

€10,300,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$4,473, 30 July 2017, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$37,757, 20 August 2017

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Productions du Trésor, StudioCanal, France 3 Cinéma

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby (Dolby 5.1)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film received a 7-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the 69th Cannes Film Festival.

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Goofs

When Gabrielle is in front of her mirror before being asked to go the doctor in the clinic, you can see a modern light switch as well as well as a grounded power outlet on the right.

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Connections

Referenced in Evening Urgant: Dolph Lundgren (2016)

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Soundtracks

Méfiez-vous, fillettes
Lyrics by Marcel Mouloudji
Music by Marcel Mouloudji and Rolf Marbot
Performed by Marcel Mouloudji

User Reviews

An Analysis of a Case of Provence Hysteria

Gabrielle, a stunning embodiment of 1950s Provence hysteria in full HD, yearns, craves and longs. Her oozing desire is disruptive to those around her and excruciatingly painful for her to bear, pushing her into silently abundant jouissance beyond words, which passes through her body in cramps of both pain and pleasure.

Bearing such free-floating desire in turn makes Gabrielle barren - her wandering womb (the ancient Greek explanation for hysteria) refuses to stay attached to one place and nurture a fetus, conceived in what Gabrielle perceives a loveless marriage with Jose.

Diagnosed with kidney stones as the scientific explanation for her ailments, Gabrielle is subsequently sent off to a mountain resort, one with uncanny ability to dive into the hemispheres of the unconscious mind, strangely resembling Mann's Magic Mountain, thus allowing Gabrielle to spill her desire over reality itself, over time and memory as she meets a charming young man, physically and emotionally absent enough for her to project her longing onto him, for him to play a phantasmatic figure in her own monodrama of Wuthering Heights. She can finally live her jouissance fully and completely by bringing her unconscious phantasies to life as the object of these phantasies, on the other hand, slips into death. The love scene portraying the perfect union comes to stand for a breathtaking example of how the mechanisms of trauma, repression and narcissistic loss (melancholia) work. The trauma of loss (not of the man Gabrielle thought she had loved, but of her own narcissistic self in and with his death) becomes repressed and another scene happens in Gabrielle's mind instead, which secures linearity of Gabrielle's historic self. She can only come to decipher this event years later via the narrative of the silent Jose, whose silences had been nurturing silent gaps in Gabrielle's memory until she was finally ready to bear them. Until she was finally ready for a dialogue. Until she was finally ready to hear Jose speak his story.

This film is a remarkable narrative of a ruthless abundance of feminine desire that longs for a language to speak itself, and take ownership of the ambivalent continuity of self, which is all but linear. Cotillard is exquisite in this role, and so is the cinematographic gaze following movements of her wandering/wuthering womb.