Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #58. Julie Bertuccelli’s Claire Darling

Claire Darling

Documentary filmmaker Julie Bertuccelli, who worked with a stunning array of world auteurs as an assistant director, moved into narrative filmmaking with 2003’s lauded Since Otar Left, which won a Cesar for Best First Film and the Critics’ Week Grand Prize out of Cannes. Her follow-up, 2010’s The Tree headlined by Charlotte Gainsbourg, closed the Cannes Film Festival and wasn’t well-received. Although she continues to release documentaries, she ends an eight year absence from narrative film with third feature, Claire Darling (aka Le Dernier vide-grenier de Claire Darling), which excitingly unites real-life mother and daughter actors Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni (which isn’t the first time they’ve appeared together on-screen). Bertuccelli filmed her latest in the home of her grandmother, a project described as a light fantasy about a woman (Deneuve) who after hearing voices is convinced she’s about to die, and so stages a garage sale of all her Earthly belongings, which leads her to a series of memories connected through the objects. Sophie Fillieres co-wrote the adaptation of the novel Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale by Lynda Rutledge.

Release Date/Prediction: Lensing began around the time the project was announced in May, 2017. Deneuve’s presence should ensure a festival slot, perhaps at Berlin, where Martin Provost’s The Midwife competed in 2017 (which also belonged to Memento Films).