This Life of Mine

Most films don’t start with a joke about fonts – but then Sophie Fillières is not most filmmakers. Firstly, and sadly, as she is no longer with us. Fillières died aged just 58 last July, shortly after shooting her seventh and final film, This Life of Mine that spring. Editing duties were completed by François Quiqueré, with supervision from her two children.

That font joke, featuring lead character Barberie “Barbie’ Bichette” (Agnés Jaoui ) musing over each font’s moods and meanings as a means of procrastination while trying to write, is typical of both Fillières and Barbie’s flighty wit.

Barberie is a frustrated poet – one unsatisfied in her advertising copywriting job to the point of self-sabotage. Faced with the back end of middle age and its lumps and bumps, an unseen ex-husband, kids who no longer think they need her and her own lost potential, comedy meets tragedy.

There are elements of Jacques Tati or Mr Bean in the staging of her movements in the opening act. Encounters with family, friends, oddball strangers, co-workers and even an unfriendly psychiatrist invariably descend into farce. An attempt to wolf down a McDonald’s in the park ends up with her inadvertently hearing her daughter (Angelina Woreth) badmouth her to a pal, or her son (Édouard Sulpice) catching her talking to herself in the shower.

There’s a sadness to this that is universal alongside the comedy: the feelings of uselessness that come as you age having not achieved your dreams, of the loneliness of lost companionship, or of a parent who feels no longer needed.

Beneath this though, hinted at – and then put in stereo following an encounter with a completely forgotten old friend (Laurent Capelluto) – are more serious mental health problems. These are explored in a sadder second act where the humour takes on more pathos, as Barberie finds herself struggling to make sense of her life in a residential hospital.

The film, though, manages to successfully walk the tightrope of finding humour in a serious subject by reminding us that the breaking woman at its heart was once a functioning one with hopes and dreams she still feels the pull of.

Although Ma Vie Ma Gueule takes a slightly mawkish tone in its final act – perhaps due to the unusual editing process – Fillières film is both funny and incredibly poignant, especially as Barberie is in many ways an avatar of the frustrations of an artist now taken sadly too soon.

Mark Worgan

This Life of Mine does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Cannes Film Festival 2024 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Cannes Film Festival website here.