Rebecca Zlotowski’s fourth feature has been honored at Cannes Film Festival. Her 2019 Directors’ Fortnight selection, “An Easy Girl,” won the sidebar’s prize for best French-language film, Variety reports. The pic sees 16-year-old Naima (Mina Farid) spending the summer with her worldly older cousin, Sofia (Zahia Dehar).
France’s Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD), the org that presents the award, lauded “An Easy Girl’s” nuanced characterization and rejection of clichés. Sofia is a very sexual character, but her sexuality doesn’t solely define her. And it doesn’t take away the real, close bond she shares with Naima.
“Zahia Dehar’s character takes the story towards that of a modern moral fable, young woman embodying with her character the ‘unsustainable lightness of women,’” explained screenwriter and SACD member Dominique Sazmpiero. She also took note of Sofia’s “strange innocence”: “[It] allows her to escape the humiliations of male dominance, leaving us a sense of infinite tenderness.”
Hailing from Les Films Velvet and Wild Bunch, “An Easy Girl” was written by Zlotowski and Teddy Lussi-Modeste (“The Price of Success”). The film is one of only four women-directed pics selected for Directors’ Fortnight this year.
Zlotowski previously helmed films “Dear Prudence,” “Grand Central,” and “Planetarium.” “Grand Central” received the François Chalais Award at Cannes in 2013. Miniseries “Les Sauvages” are among the director’s upcoming projects.
“An Easy Girl” will be released theatrically in France August 28. No word on a U.S. premiere yet.
