07/11/2012 - After its debut in Cannes, Alice Winocour's first feature is out in France, backed by rave reviews. Also good reviews for L'Air de rien

Another good choice for production company Dharamsala. After revealing Gérald Hustache-Mathieu (April in Love [+see also:
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film profile] and Nobody Else But You [+see also:
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film profile]) and Lyes Salem (Mascarades [+see also:
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film profile]), the company headed by Isabelle Madeleine has now launched a new talent into the world of feature films: Alice Winocour. After its debut last May at the Critics' Week in Cannes, Augustine [+see also:
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film profile] (photo - read more), the director's feature debut, has today been released in 110 cinemas by ARP Sélection amid rave reviews. Featuring brilliant performances by Vincent Lindon, Soko, and Chiara Mastroianni, the film is set in 1873 at the asylum of La Salpêtrière where Dr. Charcot is conducting research on female hysteria.

"In this City of Women, thousands of patients where submitted to the authority of a few doctors," explains Alice Winocour. "Near-naked women abandoned to the gaze of men in three-piece suits... It wasn't really a place for healing but a venue for experiments, a mysterious, fiendish, closed, violent world. Charcot's patients where women from very low social classes who were subjected to frightful living conditions. Hysteria is a response to this violence, a form of rebellion. The story of this film is that of a complete switch in the power relationship between Charcot and Augustine, the doctor and his patient, an older man and a very young girl, a great bourgeois and a girl from the people. Charcot discovers that he has a body and loses control. Augustine discovers that she has a brain and gains power over him."

There have also been very good reviews for another feature: Grégory Magne and Stéphane Viard's L'Air de rien [+see also:
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film profile] (distribution: Rezo Films on 77 copies). This comedy starring Grégory Montel and Michel Delpech recounts the misadventures of a bailiff who organises an improbable tour to help a former star singer to pay back her debts. The film was produced by Les Films Velvet, a young company noticed for backing Rebecca Zlotowki (Dear Prudence [+see also:
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film profile] and soon Grand Central [+see also:
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interview: Rebecca Zlotowski
film profile]).

Another title also stands out among the new releases this Wednesday: Géraldine Nakache and Hervé Mimran's Nous York [+see also:
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film profile] (read more - Pathé Films in 405 cinemas), a film that will attempt to re-enact the surprise success of All That Glitters [+see also:
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Also out are Villegas [+see also:
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film profile], an Argentinian-Dutch-French co-production by Gonzalo Tobal (unveiled at a special screening during the Cannes Film Festival - read the interview with producer Thierry Lenouvel - distribution: Epicentre Films), Luxembourg filmmaker Jean-Claude Schlim's House of Boys [+see also:
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film profile] (review - Outplay in two cinemas), Jérôme Lescure's A.L.F. [+see also:
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film profile] (Les Films à Fleur de peau), and Sharqiya [+see also:
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film profile], an Israeli-German-French co-production by Ami Livne (2012 Berlinale Panorama - ASC Distribution), as well as two documentaries: Régis Sauder's Être là (Shellac) and Marie Voignier's L'Hypothèse du Mokélé M'Bembé (L'Age d'Or).

(Translated from French)