Andre Techine's films exist in a rarefied atmosphere between idyllic nostalgia and haunting memory. Ma Saison Preferee is a beautifully realized, deeply unsettling film about loss of connection and emotional isolation. The order of the seasons, prefaced by the four acts, provides the thematic evolution for Ma Saison Preferee . Winter is punctuated with the seeming end to her marriage and departure. The advent of spring ressurrects Antoine's aberrant childhood dependency on the vulnerable Emilie.
Summer brings about a tenuous family reconciliation.
Through all the seasons, a pale yellow haze suffuses the film's exterior shots, creating an atmosphere that is unnatural and suffocating. For Emilie, there is nothing redemptive in the changing of the seasons, only an eternal pattern of sacrifice, alienation, and silence. All rights reserved.