Acclaimed for her feature film debut, Beyond the Steppes (presented in competition in Locarno), which told the story of a woman deported to the confines of Siberia in the middle of the Second World War, and praised once again for Kokoro [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], which followed a sister heading off to find her brother who’d fled to Japan, this time Belgian filmmaker Vanja d’Alcantara is returning with a film about a return rather than a story about a departure. Cap Farewell, screened in a world premiere within the Namur International Francophone Film Festival, follows the emancipatory trajectory of a young woman looking for her place in her family’s genealogy, caught between her mother and her daughter.

Toni (Noée Abita), who’s only just turned twenty, is being released from prison, to which we soon understand she’d be sentenced more as a result of loyalty than guilt. When she reunites with her little girl, Anna (Aelis Miottart), who’s been raised by her grandmother Betty (Pascale Buissières), she begins to question her role and place in her family and in wider society. She gets a job in the restaurant owned by her Uncle Frank (Olivier Gourmet), whose integrity leaves much to be desired, but she struggles to reconnect with either her daughter or her mother, with the latter feeling alienated by this return to the fold which results in her granddaughter being taken away from her. And then there’s the question of love, which, like prison, hounds Toni endlessly. When her great love and partner in crime Max (Matteo Simoni) comes back onto the scene, she loses sight of the path she’d mapped out. Torn between her aspirations as a daughter, mother and a woman, she treads a tightrope with the continual risk of her life taking a nosedive once again.

Can a person escape their past? Can we rebuild amidst the ashes? And most importantly, how do we start over after prison, when being deprived of freedom also means being deprived of the tools to grow? Incarcerated when she was barely a teenager, Toni emerges from prison with the same anger, passion and probably the same thoughtlessness. Trapped in destructive patterns, she risks repeating the same mistakes. Vanja d’Alcantara borrows the ingredients of film noir, including crooks and dirty tricks, to float the idea of a tragic fate, which is ultimately countered by the bonds she forges between three generations of women who stand up to one another in order to better support each other.

Noée Abita’s Toni is still anchored in an adolescent attitude, driven by a rebellious energy which needs to be channelled so that she can find her way, and she conveys the immaturity of a character whose motivations often make us uncomfortable. The depiction of the criminal environment she’s navigating doesn’t escape stereotypes, and nor does the film’s love story, but the two mothers’ tumultuous relationship, counterbalanced by the child’s outlook, nevertheless results in a pluralistic view of motherhood.

Cap Farewell was produced by Iota Production (Belgium) in co-production with the ACPAV (Canada) and Volya Films (Netherlands).