Strayed review

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Although set against the backdrop of the fall of France in 1940 and intelligently incorporating period footage, André Téchiné's Strayed is very much an intimate drama exploring how human relationships are redefined under exceptional circumstances.

Emmanuelle Béart plays Odile, a widowed teacher fleeing from Paris to the south with her two young children. After encountering an itinerant teen, Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), the quartet take refuge at an abandoned house, where in the days that follow Odile's parental authority steadily weakens.

Aided by Agnès Godard's lush cinematography, the fairytale-like quality of the idyllic rural interlude and a screenplay which takes several unexpected paths, Strayed is an impressively assured film, with Béart outstanding as the strict mother cut adrift from her familiar bearings.

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