21/03/2023 - Rebecca Marder lights up Sylvain Desclous’ tense thriller set in the antechamber of the highest political echelons, caught between the desire to change the world and the harshness of reality

"My father thinks you’re a social climber, that you’ve used me and my family." In France, as in a lot of countries, the closer you come to the most influential spheres of power, the more impenetrable the boundaries between social classes often turn out to be and, despite the best will in the world, we’re faced with invisible, closed doors when we don’t belong to the lucky few. This exclusion, reinforced by the extreme selectiveness of higher education institutions and the supremacy of "les grandes écoles", is personified by the ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration, which recently underwent a rebranding to become, as of last year, the Institut National du Service Public) where the finest senior civil servants in France are educated. Such is the backdrop of Sylvain Desclous’ second fiction feature film Grand Expectations, which will be released in French cinemas on 22 March courtesy of The Jokers and which opens with a young student couple in summery Corsica who are preparing for their entrance exam to ENA and waiting for the results of their written papers to find out whether they’ll be admitted onto the main oral exam known as the "Grand Oral".

While living in the luxurious villa rented by the Lyon-born parents of Antoine (an impressive Benjamin Lavernhe in a tricky role), Madeleine (Rebecca Marder) attracts the attention of another family member: former MP Gabrielle (Emmanuelle Bercot). It has to be said, the young woman does have everything it takes to appeal to the former, who’s still a Socialist Member of Parliament: she comes from a difficult neighbourhood in urban Lyon, she’s the first scholarship student to have graduated top of her class from Sciences-Po Lille, and she’s passionate about Social and Solidarity Economy, preaching a very concrete kind of idealism in favour of workers’ cooperatives buying out struggling factories and the widespread regulation of salaries, grading them on a scale of 1 to 20. The future couldn’t be more promising for beautiful Madeleine, who soon receives an offer of a job from Gabrielle as a parliamentary assistant. But a terrible tragedy takes place, and Madeleine and Antoine subsequently find themselves guarding an onerous secret. A sword of Damocles hangs over the entire film, unearthing increasingly dangerous and gaping flaws…

"Don’t preach at me"… Blending the detective movie genre with a tale of political ambition and violence, and a story about love and cowardice, complicated relationships with fathers, secrets and lies, low blows, and survival when vital interests are at play, Sylvain Desclous explores the multiform, friction-filled zone between the old world and the new. The film’s pace, Julien Hirsch’s photography and Florencia Di Concilio’s music lend great form to a story which tries to encompass many themes and which, first and foremost, provides rising star Rebecca Marder (recently well-received in The Crime Is Mine [+see also:
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Grand Expectations is produced by Sésame Films in co-production with Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma and with sales falling to Loco Films.

(Translated from French)