Annual Top Films Lists

Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2020: #40. Pour le meilleur et pour le pire – Stéphane Brizé

Published on January 2, 2020

Pour le meilleur et pour le pire

Stéphane Brizé reunites with Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Lindon for his ninth feature Pour le meilleur et pour le pire (For Better and For Worse), produced by Nord-Ouest. Anthony Bajon (who won Best Actor at the 2018 Berlin Film Festival for Cedric Kahn’s The Prayer) co-stars. This will be the fifth time Brizé has worked with Lindon, following Mademoiselle Chambon in 2009 (which was also headlined by Kiberlain), 2012’s A Few Hours of Spring, 2015’s The Measure of a Man (which won Lindon a Cesar as well as Best Actor in Cannes) and 2018’s At War. Brizé’s 1999 debut Le Bleu des villes played Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, and he competed with 2015’s The Measure of a Man and 2018’s A War. He won a Cesar for Best Adapted Screenplay with Mademoiselle Chambon, competed in San Sebastian in 2005 with Not Here to Be Loved and competed in Venice with 2016’s A Woman’s Life, winning the FIPRESCI award (which scored Cesar nods for costume design and Judith Chemla as Best Actress).

Gist: The latest from Brizé (scripted by Oliver Gorce of The Measure of a Man and A War) will focus on Philippe Lemesle, a late fifties senior executive in an American industrial group consumed by work. Oh, and his wife is leaving him.

Release Date/Prediction: Shooting in January 2020, Brizé could likely compete the second time for a Golden Lion in Venice.

Nicholas Bell

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.