Non ma fille, tu n’iras pas danser (Making Plans for Lena). 2009. France. Directed by Christophe Honoré. Screenplay by Honoré, Geneviève Brisac. With Chiara Mastroianni, Marina Foïs, Jean-Marc Barr. In French; English subtitles. 105 min.
A spiky Chiara Mastroianni deftly captures the restless anxieties and self-absorption of a divorced mother of two as she moves between the bourgeois comforts of the Breton countryside and the discomforts of her family and her own reckless self doubt in Paris. Critics unanimously admired Mastroianni’s unapologetically frank performance as the kind of messy, vulnerable woman that used to be the stock in trade of a Jill Clayburgh, Ellen Burstyn, or Gena Rowlands, but here it’s given a distinctly French sensibility.