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

Date:

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.

Eric Lavallée
Eric Lavalléehttps://www.ericlavallee.com
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist, and critic at IONCINEMA.com, established in 2000. A regular at Sundance, Cannes, and Venice, Eric holds a BFA in film studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013, he served on the narrative competition jury at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson’s "This Teacher" (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). He is a Golden Globes Voter, member of the ICS (International Cinephile Society) and AQCC (Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma).

Share post:

NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Popular

More like this
Related

Exclusive Clip: Comfort with Comfort Food in Constance Tsang’s “Blue Sun Palace”

Winner of the French Touch Prize in the Critics'...

April | Review

A Vindicated Woman: Kulumbegashvili Constructs Potent, Profound Study in...

2025 Cannes Film Festival: In Alice Rohrwacher We Trust – La Chimera Director is Caméra d’or Jury of One

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher might be the most caffeinated...