She’s a familiar character. Skittish, self-absorbed, seductive and terminally unreliable, Anaïs (Anaïs Demoustier) is the latest incarnation of the chaotic femme, the slightly more world-weary European spin on the “manic pixie dreamgirl” trope that is a fixture in the American indie movie circuit.
Loosely inspired by the gamine free spirits of the French New Wave, the chaotic femme tends to be in her late 20s or early 30s and at an impasse in all aspects of her life, with a tendency to sabotage the elements that threaten to succeed. She spends an inordinate amount of time running: the chaotic femme is always late, has great legs and favours short skirts, all the better to flit through various photogenic European city backdrops. Like her predecessors – Julie in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World and Paula in Léonor Serraille’s Jeune Femme, Anaïs ought to be insufferable. She’s feckless, enragingly disorganised and has the attention span of a three-year-old in the throes of a sugar rush. She’s part glitterball, part wrecking ball. In real life you would avoid her like a norovirus omelette. But filtered through the forgiving lens of first-time writer and director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s peppy comic love triangle, she becomes a fascinating, intoxicating presence.
