"A Radiant Girl," written and directed by actor Sandrine Kiberlain, is a potent tale of Jews in Occupied France seen almost entirely from the perspective of a teenage girl, Irène (Rebecca Marder).
Studying to be an actress, Irène is almost insufferable with her theatrics — she fakes fainting to distract her brother Igor (Anthony Bajon) and pesters her father André (André Marcon) and her grandmother Marceline (Françoise Widhoff) to help her rehearse as she is hoping to get accepted into a conservatory. Irène also has a suitor, Gilbert (Jean Chevalier), whom she is not sure she likes, especially after she meets Jacques (Cyril Metzger) a dreamy assistant to a doctor she sees for her real-life fainting spells. Irène and Jacques do start seeing each other, and one stylish sequence has them kissing during a series of blackouts.
