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LOVEFILM Leaving Screening , 28 June 2010
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Leaving
on DVD
(2009)
Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi Lopez, Yvan Attal
Director: Catherine Corsini
Certificate: 
Watch now: Included in all packages with LOVEFiLM Instant
Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar nod this year belies the fact that the feature film industry remains a largely male preserve. Auteurs such as Andrea Arnold, Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat have brought new perspectives to European cinema in recent years but what is unusual about Catherine Corsini’s 'Leaving' is that it is a film that is not only written and directed by women but also shot by an entirely female camera department and produced and distributed by a company founded mostly by women. Here then truly is the female gaze.
Kristin Scott Thomas plays a married woman emerging from years as a full-time mother/home-maker and increasingly frustrated by the lack of options open to her in society. Suzanne’s need for autonomy is what drives the story and while some audiences might find one or two of her choices difficult to understand, Scott Thomas gives a riveting performance as a fiercely intelligent woman cornered by a patriarchal world. Fans of Scott Thomas’ recent roles in 'I’ve Loved You So Long' and 'Nowhere Boy' might well be surprised by her altogether more irreverent performance in 'Leaving' but it is one of no less dignity or grace.
French film-makers have been merging drama and thriller elements to great effect over the past decade and Corsini’s opening sequence recalls 2005’s brilliant 'Lemming' (another film that revolves around a performance by a heavyweight British actor). Also worthy of mention is Patrice Chereau’s 'Intimacy' which, like 'Leaving', is a narrative propelled by the choices of a married woman who has children. Chereau’s film was notable in its’ stretching of the boundaries of physicality in mainstream British cinema and the performances in 'Leaving' are similar in their intensity. Audiences in France have made cerebral dramas with a dark twist a popular sub-genre and it’s tempting to portray 'Leaving' as a feminist thriller; hinging as it does on a gender inequality that persists despite societies’ best efforts redress it. Corsini doesn’t quite get us as close to her central characters as Andrea Arnold does in 'Fish Tank' and 'Red Road', but 'Leaving' is nevertheless a gripping piece of cinema that will appeal to anyone looking for an antidote to current portrayals of women in the thriller genre as either objects of desire to be fought over or victims whose injuries underline just how bad the baddies are and just how heroic and/or bad the (anti-)hero is.
Underling the feminist credentials of 'Leaving' is not to ignore the fact that it is also a film that should chime with the world's current economic downturn. In an interview about the film 'Heartbreaker', Romain Duris repeated the age-old mantra that audiences want escapism when times are hard. This may very well be true but somehow stories with substance have never felt so necessary.
 
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