It starts almost like a light western, on a shot of the young Rosemay getting off a horse in the middle of the countryside. This bucolic sweetness, however, will not last long. Rosemay (Galatéa Bellugi) is 16 years old, she lives with a host family with a couple of farmers, Valérie (Romane Bohringer) and Samy (Samir Guesmi), and joins her parents for the holidays. So here she is to find her mother, Marga (Émilie Dequenne) and her father, Albino Rodrigue.
Except that when he arrives, the dad is absent. Astonished, Rosemay questions Marga and her brother Manuel (Matthieu Lucci). But while the latter is evasive, too busy with confusion, Marga tells him an amazing story to justify the temporary disappearance of Albino.
Funny character that this mother, who is hard and cold with Rosemay, regularly locks her in their house to go about her mysterious business and seems only interested in herself. As the days go by, Marga, more and more obnoxious with her daughter, multiplies the shady versions on the absence of the father in the face of the questions of the teenager. Annoyed, Rosemay will undertake a solitary investigation, before confronting her mother with her lies...
A film that oscillates between sweetness and drama
Signed Christine Dory, who had not directed a feature film since the formidable "The Inseparables" in 2008, "The Daughter of Albino Rodrigue" is inspired by a news item that occurred more than twenty years ago. The filmmaker has made it an amazing film, which oscillates between sweetness and drama before turning to the tragic. If the main character is that of this sulky and stubborn teenager who absolutely wants to find her father, the story highlights an incredible figure of transgressive mother, liar, monstrous at times as she is focused on her good pleasure, neglecting her children and showing herself capable of the worst for her unique and selfish satisfaction.
To drag us into this crazy story, the director relied heavily on the quality of her actors' acting and promoted counter-employment. Romane Bohringer and Samir Guesmi are a nice and very benevolent couple of foster parents, she of a remarkable kindness and impartiality, he little talkative but always able to find the right words when he addresses Rosemay. Which benefits from a very successful composition on the part of Galatéa Bellugi, always on the poster of "Chien de la casse", and here amazing roughness and tenacity. A superb performance, knowing that she is almost ten years older than the supposed age of her character (the production of the film was very delayed because of the pandemic).
In front of her, Émilie Dequenne stunned. The Belgian actress of "Rosetta" is unaccustomed to the roles of "villains", and what she breathes into the ambiguous, elusive and horribly egocentric character of Marga commands admiration. Unrolling a game deliberately offbeat in front of her partners, she manages to make the figure of this mother repulsive, terrifying, but at the same time almost comical, even seductive in her way of putting her freedom above all else. His confrontations with Rosemay (Galatéa) make all the salt of this film as original as it is removed...
Editor's note:
4/5
"La fille d'Albino Rodrigue", French drama by Christine Dory, with Émilie Dequenne, Galatea Bellugi, Romane Bohringer, Samir Guesmi... (1h30).