Orphan

Exarchopoulos is pouty and tempestuous as ever, Haenel complex and intriguing, while Gemma Arterton skips across multiple storylines with typical panache. Occasionally gripping but painfully epic, only the lead actresses’ stellar performances save a few sequences from the film’s overtly ornate structure.

Even if the screenplay leaves this Paul Haggis-worthy web of cosmic connections unclear until the last act, there were myriad opportunities nonetheless to point at the screen and whisper to the person next to me, "I think that’s the orphan.

Nowithstanding its leads’ strong presences, the sense of a too loose structure and some repetitive moments in which Karine is variously roughed up or abused leave the viewer uncertain whether the film is offering a lucid and consistent take on its heroine’s emotional damage and its causes, or whether it rather glibly ends up making us feel complicit in the exploitation she undergoes.