An Engaging Hour in Life of ‘Single Girl’

The simplest films can be the most daring, the most impressive, the most satisfying. So it is with “A Single Girl.”

Directed by Benoit Jacquot and starring the radiant Virginie Ledoyen, this French effort focuses, largely in real time, on a critical moment for a young Parisian woman. Intimate and engaging, “A Single Girl’s” immediacy, sense of life observed and belief in the power of cinema make it a delicate throwback to the now distant pleasures of the French New Wave.

This is not apparent all at once, however, as “Single Girl” opens, like many another French film, in an unprepossessing cafe where testy young Remi (Benoit Magimel) is awaiting the arrival of his girlfriend.

Once Valerie (Ledoyen) appears, she is also in a dicey mood, for this couple has reached the edgy stage of their relationship where every word is taken the wrong way. It’s also Valerie’s first day of work at a new job and she’s chosen this moment to tell Remi that she’s pregnant and wants to keep the baby no matter what.

Even in these early stages, it’s possible to see hints of what director Jacquot is up to. His decision to have cinematographer Caroline Champetier shoot largely in intimate close-ups gives the film a sense of tight connection to these lives that verges on emotional eavesdropping.

It’s also immediately noticeable that actress Ledoyen has one of those priceless faces, like Garbo in “Queen Christina” or Falconetti in “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” that the camera is infatuated with even when it’s doing nothing at all.

Suddenly Valerie tells Remi she’s got to go to work, she’ll come back and continue the conversation in an hour. The camera follows her as she heads into the street, enters the posh luxury hotel where she works as a room service waiter, follows her to her locker and, why be coy, follows her for every second of that hour until she returns to Remi at the cafe.

What happens to Valerie in that hour is, paradoxically, nothing and everything. She learns her routine, talks to her mother on the phone, meets her bosses and co-workers both amiable and obstructionist (including “Augustin’s” droll Jean-Chretien Sibertin-Blanc), delivers breakfasts to a variety of guests, all the time worrying about Remi and her future. These largely mundane events might not even be shot in a conventional movie, let alone make the final cut.

*

But by showing everything, “A Single Girl” invests these happenings with an unexpected impact, creating unlooked-for connections between Valerie and the viewer. It’s impossible to watch someone this intensely without getting terribly involved in what they do, without sensing hidden vulnerabilities and worrying that things turn out well. Such is the power of the film medium. The sense that a single life, no matter how ordinary, can contain multitudes has rarely found better expression than it does here.

If “A Single Girl” were a documentary, little of this emotional transference would take place. It only happens because of how artfully veteran director Jacquot and his co-screenwriter Jerome Beaujour have set up, paced and edited the small moments of Valerie’s hour, from attempted seductions to angry confrontations, to the point where scenes of her simply walking down hotel corridors become intensely involving.

Also essential is the work of actress Ledoyen, most recently seen in this country in Claude Chabrol’s “La Ceremonie.” By turns saucy, edgy, vulnerable, petulant, cheerful, resentful, resilient and forlorn, she is on screen for almost all of this film’s 90 minutes but we never tire of paying attention to what she’s up to.

Yet, as closely as we follow her during this crucial period, Valerie remains finally unknowable to us, even perhaps to herself. “A Single Girl’s” final shot, of this woman fading from view as she blends into a crowd, tells us that what we’ve seen is just a life, not a hero’s tale, but involving and important nonetheless.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: a brief sexual scene.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘A Single Girl’

Virginie Ledoyen: Valerie

Benoit Magimel: Remi

Vera Briole: Sabine

Virginie Emane: Fatiah

Michel Bompoil: Jean-Marc

Aladin Reibel: Mr. Sarre

Jean-Chretien Sibertin-Blanc Patrice

A Cinea-La Sept Cinema co-production, with the participation of Centre National de la Cinematographic and Canal +, released by Strand Releasing. Director Benoit Jacquot. Producer Phillipe Carcassone. Executive producer Brigitte Faure. Screenplay Benoit Jacquot, Jerome Beaujour. Cinematographer Caroline Champetier. Editor Pascale Chavance. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

* Playing at selected theaters.