Violette

The enigmatic Violette Leduc was never admitted to French literature's inner sanctum, and her struggle to get her voice heard is limned with intelligence and insight in this stylish biopic. As in Séraphine (2008), director Martin Provost empathises with his outsider heroine without losing sight of her flaws. Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos) is first seen operating as a black marketeer in the wartime provinces, giving as good as she gets in the fractious relationships she has with her mother, Berthe (Catherine Hiegel), and gay Jewish writer Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py). But everything changes when Leduc moves to Paris and is encouraged to write by Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain), who willingly acts as her mentor while resisting the bisexual Leduc's amorous advances. Provost's film unfolds over a series of chapters that covers the period 1942-64, and he ably conveys the agonies of the creative process and the romance of books. But it's Devos's outstanding performance that ensures this compels as both cultural history and human drama.