Top 20 Alternative Picks for Cannes 2012: Alice Winocour’s Augustine

Augustine – Alice Winocour

Buzz: Selected as a Special Screening status for this year’s Critics’ Week, it was no secret to us that Alice Winocour was going to premiere her directorial debut at a festival that has strongly supported her as a screenwriter. Scribe for 2009’s Ordinary People, we dug her outline for 2008’s Home, which was a flawed directing outing for Ursula Meier. With a strong trio of players in Vincent Lindon, Soko and Chiara Mastroianni, we certainly think that this might announce the arrival of a new French helmer worth keeping tabs on.

Gist: Paris, winter 1885. At the Pitié -Salpêtriere Hospital, Professor Charcot is studying a mysterious illness : hysteria. Augustine, 19 years old, becomes his favorite guinea pig, the star of his demonstrations of hypnosis. The object of his studies will soon become the object of his desire…