Cohen Media Group Takes a Ride with Emmanuelle Bercot’s “On My Way”

Cohen Media Group are making a ballsy acquisition move at this year’s Berlin Film Festival – picking up Emmanuelle Bercot’s comp film Elle S’en Va (On My Way) hours before it world premiere screening. A deal that was surely facilitated by the fact that the international sales agent Elle Driver worked with Cohen in the recent past (Farewell, My Queen was picked up last year) this dramedy stars Catherine Deneuve.

Gist: This is Bercot’s fourth feature film, co-written with Jerome Tonnere, Bettie (Deneuve) is in her early sixties. Having run out of cigarettes, she climbs into her car and drives off, leaving her mother, customers and the employees of her Breton restaurant to fend for themselves. But her search drags on. The shops are all shut and Bettie has no desire to return to her old life. She has just learned that her long-standing lover has gone off with a younger woman. And living with her difficult mother is no picnic. Bettie decides to take a break and drives on. She shares a cigarette with an old man and listens to his tragic love story. After a rollicking party she wakes up next morning in a hotel bed, with someone beside her. She gets to know her grandson and winds up with him at a picturesque hotel by the sea, in the midst of a reunion of French beauty queens from the year 1969.

Worth Noting: Like several other French actresses-turned-filmmakers, Bercot got her start in filmmaking working for the likes of Claude Miller, Claude Lelouch and Bertrand Tavernier before directing shorts, features and television.

Do We Care?: Not sure how this Alexandre Payne type of mid-life crisis will play out, but Bercot’s Backstage (Strand Releasing) was a fine portrait on obsession.