Memory Lane (2010)

The events of an ordinary summer in the Paris suburbs, but given a melancholy, dream-like eeriness in this superb ensemble piece by new director Mikhaël Hers.
Mikhaël Hers has been one of France's most hotly-tipped new directors ever since his medium-length ensemble pieces Primrose Hill and Montparnasse - films largely about young people walking and talking, but with a magical contemplative atmosphere all their own. Stretching out to full length, Memory Lane confirms Hers's utterly distinctive signature. Very loosely resembling a slacker take on the Eric Rohmer tradition, Hers's film follows the events - or spaces between events - of one summer in Paris and its outskirts, experienced by a group of young people and remembered melancholically at a couple of months' distance. Two sisters worry about their father's illness; a young man quietly unravels; other characters fall in love, or rehearse their indie band in a school courtyard. Little happens, except the quiet moments of togetherness that are Hers' speciality, and yet Memory Lane somehow creates a uniquely haunting sense of things being somehow out of time while profoundly in the present. An appealing cast - including one-time Rohmer player Marie Rivière - enhance the minor-key distinctiveness of this superb debut feature.