A Single Girl

The girl from the title, just starting a new job in a four-star hotel in Paris, is followed for 90 minutes in a moving Bresson-esque film. Moving.

La désenchantée may have represented a personal breakthrough, but this is the movie where Jacquot truly found his artistic freedom, and made 19-year-old Virginie Ledoyen an international star in the process. The film follows – literally – a young chambermaid in a 4-star Parisian hotel in real time on her first morning of work, also the day she’s chosen to tell her possessive boyfriend (Benoît Magimel) that she’s pregnant. As in La désenchantée, Jacquot finds ingenious ways to represent a whole range of possible life choices for his adolescent heroine. However, whereas the earlier film works hard to capture the disequilibrium and emotional retreat of a girl going through the most harrowing period of her life, La fille seule is thrillingly mobile. Caroline Champetier’s camera attaches itself to Ledoyen as her character carries trays up from the kitchen and down the hotel’s corridors. A unique feat of cinematic engineering, as well as a lovely instance of trust between director and actress. Few movies have been sharper on the dread, boredom and pumping adrenalin that can come with the pressures of a nine-to-five job. Jacquot: ‘La fille seule is exactly the film I wanted to do at age 14 or 15. Exactly. From the first shot.’ –IFFR