A fiction. An 11 year old runaway, the oldest daughter of three. An absent mother, an abusive father, a grandmother too pure to imagine what is going on. A field trip, the girl disappears... she has found refuge in a truck; an initiatory journey, a chance meeting, new encounters; a wonderful and tragic road movie with a Scottish truck driver "when love just happens".
She has amassed around 30 producer credits, but this road drama marks the feature debut of fashion designer Agnès Troublé (aka Agnès B). Her star, Lou-Lélia Demerliac, works hard to convey doughty vulnerability as Céline, an 11-year-old confiding in her Barbie doll about the abuse she suffers from her layabout father (Jacques Bonnaffé) while her mother (Sylvie Testud) is out waitressing. As with many debutantes, Troublé finds it difficult to resist stylistic flourishes that hinder rather than enhance the action and even has avant-garde auteur Jonas Mekas do a guest spot in a bonfire sequence. She piles on jump cuts, freeze frames, colour switches and self-reflexive in-jokes, but these can't hide the fact that the skittishly structured storyline concocted by Troublé and Jean-Pol Fargeau becomes increasingly contrived, and they end up trivialising a serious issue. As for the trusting relationship that young Céline forms with a Scottish trucker (Douglas Gordon) grieving for his lost family after she runs away from a school seaside trip, this feels both dramatically and psychologically fraudulent.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Céline | Lou-Lélia Demerliac |
| Céline's mother | Sylvie Testud |
| Céline's father | Jacques Bonnaffé |
| The truck driver | Douglas Gordon |
| Céline's sister | Noémie Ducourau |
| Grandmother | Marie-Christine Barrault |
| Céline's brother | Emile Gautier |
| Waitress | Julie Meunier |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Agnès Troublé |
