Orpheline
Orphan
Year
2016
Director
Arnaud Des Pallières
Synopsis
Four moments in the lives of four female characters.
A little girl from the countryside, playing a game of hide and seek that turns to tragedy.
A teenager, caught in an endless succession of runaways, men and mishaps, because anything is better than her desolate family home.
A young woman who moves to Paris and has a brush with disaster.
The grown-up at last, an accomplished woman, who thought she was safe from her own past.
Gradually, these characters come together to form a single heroine.
A little girl from the countryside, playing a game of hide and seek that turns to tragedy.
A teenager, caught in an endless succession of runaways, men and mishaps, because anything is better than her desolate family home.
A young woman who moves to Paris and has a brush with disaster.
The grown-up at last, an accomplished woman, who thought she was safe from her own past.
Gradually, these characters come together to form a single heroine.
Honours/Awards
- Bayard D’or Du Meilleur Film À Namur
- Bayard D’or De La Meilleure Comédienne Pour L’ensemble Du Casting Féminin
- Prix De La Meilleure Actrice Au Festival International Du Film Francophone De Namur
Adèle’s role
Renée
Excerpts from reviews
“Sufficient, the story vibrates with a surly intensity to which Adèle Haenel, in particular, brings an unusual power.”
“But the real stars are Adèle Haenel, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Solène Rigot. They prove that despite their youthful age, no role is too high for them.”
“The heroine is portrayed by four different actresses (the quietly graceful Adèle Haenel, the hot-headed Adèle Exarchopoulos, the dazzling Solène Rigot and the six-year-old Véga Cuzytek), reflecting both the different personalities that coexist inside us all and the gradual changes that one woman experiences on her journey through life.
Comments
The name of Adèle’s character, Renée, means ‘reborn’, which is rather apt (and not accidental!)
When seeking reviews of this film most spent their word count on the fact that four actresses portray the main character, and almost no reviews comment on the performances of those actresses.
Three of the four actresses who portray the main character are of a similar age, despite portraying the character from 13 years to 30 years. Adèle Exarchopoulos is about 4 years younger than Adèle Haenel and Solène Rigot is about 3 years younger than Adèle Haenel.
Interview with Arnaud Pallières, Director & Co-Screen writer
“The two Adèle, Exarchopoulos and Haenel?
I did with her something I probably never would have done with another actress, even an experienced one. I asked her for her opinion. I had a high idea of her intelligence, of her maturity as an actress and as a woman. Her answer was wiser than my question. She replied that she did not know. That she didn't want to choose. That she would wait for me to know. That she would defer to my decision. Little by little, because of what I knew of her, of her public speaking and position, of her commitment, I had the intuition that it would better be Renée than Sandra. A cerebral being, deeply ethical, fully committed to the social role of her profession; a teacher. The filming of Orpheline was hard, I found in Adèle an ally and a friend of the steadfast film. Adèle is a real fighter.”
Orpheline Dossier de Presse (translated)
Interview with Director & Cast at FIFF Namur (a Francophone film festival)
Adèle Haenel & Adèle Exarchopoulos discuss Orpheline
Orphan: interview Adèle Haenel, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Solène Rigot
When Adèle (Haenel) meets Adèle (Exarchopoulos)
- https://www.marieclaire.fr/quand-adele-haenel-rencontre-adele-exarchopoulos,848842.asp
- I use Chrome as my browser and it automatically translates text into your desired language.
Rewatch Comments
This is a film that benefits from re-watching. The director Arnaud Des Pallières chose to cast four very different looking girls/women in the main role, a la Todd Haynes in I'm Not There. Even if you know that this is the case, because when the new (earlier) incarnation of the main character appears in a different actress AND she has a different name, it is not that clear that we are following tracing back into the history of our heroine, rather than meeting a new character. Or maybe that's just me?
It all comes together once we understand that we are looking back on a woman's life and how she got to where she now is. Adèle has a reasonable amount of screen time in this film (but after La Fille Inconnue yesterday when we had 100% Adèle screen time), it seems not enough...
Adèle portrays her character so well (as always...yes, I'm a fangirl). She makes you respect the woman that her character has become from such difficult circumstances—even if that rebirth was based on stolen money & the death of an innocent young woman. She portrays her character as she finds great strength as Renée takes control of her life on two occasions—when she admits that she is Karine and when she turns herself in.
Scenes that particularly move me include the ultrasound scene where Renée is so depressed and sad that she doesn't even want to look at the screen to see how her child is developing. It is just heartbreaking—and so different to the ultrasound scene in Les Ogres when Mona was so excited about her child. And we get another of Adèle's tears that break your heart.
Adèle's style of acting that shows you so well what her character is experiencing, while at the same time holding things in and controlling her emotions is such a powerful a way of manipulating us as a viewer. Later in our film festival (tomorrow in Die Blumen von Gestern and later in En Liberté!) we will see Adèle relaxing that restraint and playing totally over the top comedy roles. As she established her career she took on a wider range of roles and nails each one of them.
In this film Adèle is looking like an adult woman (her character is 27 years old, the same age as she was at the time) and not like a teenager (Naissance des Pieuvres and Déchainées) or a very young woman (Apollonide, Après le Sud, Suzanne). She was gorgeous as a younger woman, but continues to grow in beauty as she matures.
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