25/07/2023 - Well supported by Benoît Poelvoorde, Daphné Patakia dazzles as a young lawyer with bipolar disorder in Marie Garel-Weiss’ second feature film, a tender and touching, offbeat comedy

"I’m struggling a bit with my new medication; I’m obsessive, but that’s a positive at work, right?" In films, the subject of mental illness is mostly tackled from a sombre and dramatic angle, and movies which dare to see it as fertile ground for comedy or romance, as David O. Russell did with Happiness Therapy, for example, are few and far between. But it’s this audacious approach which is adopted by Marie Garel-Weiss in A Wonderful Girl, which is due for release in French cinemas on 26 July via Pyramide. It’s a singular film which oozes sensitivity, set against an indisputably realistic backdrop beneath a veneer of genres, and which confirms the talent of this filmmaker whose first feature film also proved a head-turner (The Party’s Over [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marie Garel-Weiss
film profile], which scooped the Audience Award and Best Actress trophy in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 2017, and Best Film in Lecce 2018).

Kicking off the story in a psychiatric hospital where Mimi (the brilliant Daphné Patakia, whose strange expressiveness brings to mind comedy actors from silent film) is chatting with another patient (who had a nightmare that he was stabbing his mother), the film makes no mystery of its subject-matter: it’s the misadventures of an out-of-the-ordinary young woman which are homed in on here. There’s no shortage of ups and downs following in the wake of this go-getting yet fragile character, who has passed the bar but has never worked as a lawyer. Trying to force her way into a cabinet led by Agnès Jaoui, Mimi finds herself entrusted with a delicate mission: retrieving a case file from the home address of Paul (Benoît Poelvoorde, who’s always impeccable in this kind of role), a highly problematic partner whom we’ll later learn has been threatened with disbarment from the Order of Lawyers for stealing clients. And when the mega-idealistic and highly anxious Mimi ("I’m trapped inside of myself because I’m afraid of life") - who has also stopped taking her medication - meets disenchanted and depressive Paul (who’s always wearing a dressing gown or jogging bottoms), sparks fly: the makeshift duo embark on an assignment which is far more complicated than it first appears: defending a crook (rising star Raphaël Quenard) who’s accused of murder and who’s in prison in Brittany, the region where Mimi comes from…

Advancing at a stop-start pace and riding on the theme of mixed messages, A Wonderful Girl somehow manages to be funny without ever using comedy to the detriment of the film’s incredibly moving and fragile protagonist, who’s on a determined and urgent quest for truth and justice. Interweaving investigative and romantic comedy genres tinged with life’s small cruelties, Marie Garel-Weiss walks a tightrope between realism and a small phantasmagorical theatre boasting wonderfully diverse contexts. The movie strikes an original balance, offering its two lead actors brilliant roles and lending a slightly extravagant tone to a film which really makes us think about what madness, excess, so-called appropriate behaviour and latent feelings really are.

A Wonderful Girl is produced by Elzevir Films in co-production with France 3 Cinéma and Belgian firms Panache Productions, La Compagnie Cinématographique, RTBF, Voo, Be Tv and Proximus. The movie is sold by Pyramide International.

(Translated from French)