Emporte-moi
Tags: autobiographical

Plot synopsis:
Hanna is living on a farm with her grandparents and mentally handicapped uncle when she gets her first period. The onset of puberty (and her grandmother's relatively non-supportive explanation of it) trigger her decision to return to her parents in Montreal.
Returning to the city, Hanna resumes her relationships with her depressive mother, her erratic father and her brother, who is understandably usually absent from home. Hanna's mother, a fashion designer, has put aside all of her artistic dreams in favour of devoting all her time to supporting Hanna's father, an unpublished writer she believes to be a genius. Hanna's father, distant and erratic, gets a job working for a newspaper, but soon quits, and spends all day playing chess in a café while his wife thinks he is at work.
Hanna is fascinated with Anna Karina's character in the Jean-Luc Godard film "Vivre sa vie" and spends much of her time watching the film and practicing mimicking her cool detachment. She also begins to be aware of her sexuality, developing a crush on a female teacher, and kissing another girl, Laura, at a school dance.
Hanna's mother attempts suicide, and while she is recovering, Hanna is sent to get a loaf of bread by her father. The baker gropes her; then gives her money.
Hanna attempts to set Laura up with Paul; however, it is clear that the inclusion of the boy is a pretense meant to somehow undercut the implications of her attraction to Laura. This culminates in a game of Spin the bottle between the three.
Hanna decides to experiment with being a prostitute, like her idol Anna Karina, but at the last moment changes her mind. However, her john refuses to let her back out, and forces himself on her.
As the school year ends, Hannah's mother returns to her family, and Hannah finds a new way to express herself and cope with the world using a film camera lent to her by her teacher.

Review: A great film about family and adolescence....
Hanna (Karine Vanasse) is a Canadian teenager in the early sixties.And she shapes her own identity.
Her parents escape from their responsibilities: her father prefers playing chess to working; and her mother is a depressive woman (several suicide attempts).
That's why she decides of leading her own life.
But Reality is stronger than she expected: Life bites hard...Emporte-moi is partly an autobiographical movie.
Léa Pool presents an interesting analysis of the familial relationship and adolescence.
Well, this melancholy movie is very touching.
Even the scene of the abandoned dog moved.
Anyway, the acting is quite perfect and right.
Karine Vanasse is magic, Miki Manojlovic surprising in comparison with his performance in "Underground".We can just regret the underemployment of Pascales Bussières, which is paradoxical given the closed relationship between Hanna and her mother.Well...I have to say that anyone get out of the cinema before the closing credits:a surprise is awaiting you.
An Excellent French-Canadian Drama.
This is a sometimes touching, sometimes disturbing, and sometimes funny look at a girl's transition from childhood to womanhood.
Hanna's (the main character) life story closely mirrors the development of Quebecois society, and the film's 1963 setting furthers that idea.
Hanna is caught between her father's Jewish background and her mother's traditional, Catholic upbringing.
She spends her summers in rural Quebec while living in the rapidly changing city of Montreal.
Also, she is influenced by Jean-Luc Godard's now-classic Vivre sa vie, and Hanna attempts to emulate the behaviours of that film's prostitute protagonist.
This is a film very concerned with the beauty of self-expression while also acknowledging the challenges such pursuits present to us all (seen especially in the father's tormented dream of being a poet).
Though the film deals with some very traumatic subject matters, it also leaves us with a glimmer of hope that is beautiful in its ambiguity.Lea Pool's direction wavers between high degrees of realism and stunning experimental styles, and she weaves them together seamlessly to reflect Hanna's state of mind.
Lovers of classical cinema will certainly enjoy this film.
Some of the camera work--such as the film's opening few minutes, and Hanna's flight through the streets of Montreal--are nothing short of spectacular.Finally, the acting of the film's central three characters (Hanna, her father, and her mother) is exceptional.
Hanna's exchanges with her exhausted mother are genuine and heartfelt, while the fits of rage directed toward her father are equally so.
Both parents play their roles with enough pathos to be convincing, but they stay well away from overacting or exceeding what the script requires of them.Young people may struggle to identify with the themes of the film, but a slightly older audience will certainly be left with much to reflect upon..
Merveilleux...
as we say in French!.
This movie is just great!It explores with subtlety the very complicated emotional relations between a young girl, her catholic depressive mother, her jewish father, her brother, her new "girl" friend.
Entangled in her newborn exploding sexuality and her rebellious thoughts, she tries to deal with the great issues of life in 1963.The acting is so precise and touching, and the direction, efficient and delicate, it's a must see movie.
Family madness..
Set in 1963, Montreal, and fourteen year old Hanna, (Karine Vanasse), journeys through a bad patch in life.
Her mum is mentally ill, her father is a dead end poet and her brother a little rebel but going through the same turmoil as she is.
When reality fails you, you turn to the movies.
In this instant, Hanna discovers Jean-Luc Godard's VIVRE SA VIE, a little gem about the exploits of a Parisian hooker, (Anna Karina).
Taking on that film's persona to heighten her life, she falls into sexual misadventures.
This all under the caring direction of Lea Pool, who throws in a few classic tunes of that era to brighten the mood..
Great.
Great.
Excellent coming-of-age story.
It feels really lived in.
I'm not sure if it's autobiographical, but it sure feels like it.
Karine Vanasse plays 13 year-old Hanna, a girl from Montreal with kind of a rough family life.
Her parents are unmarried and poor, and along with her older brother they all live in a cramped apartment.
Hanna falls in love with Godard's Vivre sa vie, and inspired by it, she is led down a dangerous path.
As you might expect with the genre, there are moments of joy along with the pain.
Novelist Nancy Huston plays Hanna's teacher, who reminds her of Anna Karina - she looks so much like Karina I spent the whole movie thinking it was her.
The only big problem of the film is that Vanasse is not convincing as a 13 year-old - the actress is a couple of years older than that, and looks it.
She is very good, though, as an actress..
Fabulous, Karine Vanasse is the new queen!.
"Emporte-moi" is the latest Léa Pool movie.
I was invited to the premiere in Montreal at the Loews theater.
I was stunned!
It's one of the best movies I've ever seen.
Newcomer Karine Vanasse (who I had the chance to meet) does to this movie what Tori Amos does for her albums.
What I mean is that she brings the movie to life and supports it all magnifically on her back.
This is the new talent out of Quebec for the year 2000.
Also, you can not put aside the brilliant performances by Pascale Buissière and the rest of the cast.
To conclude, go see it right away or if you ever get your hands on a copy when it goes to video, don't waste your chance of seeing this genius movie..
Beautifully done coming-of-age story..
Caught between childhood and the adult world, in a time similarly challenged by change, Karine Vanasse is enchanting as a girl coming of age in 1960s Quebec.
Parents, teachers, sex, philosophy, obsession with a film character, running away -- we've seen it all before, but this is a loving remembrance, shot in warm colours, with a thoughtful script and excellent performances, richly evoking the emotion, confusion and excitement of adolescence..
Wonderful acting in a wistful film.
Young Karine Vanasse is astounding.
Her stillness, poise & expressiveness - combined with youthful yearning and curiosity - completely draw you in.Pascale Bussières, as always, doesn't disappoint..
I loved it, it made my 16th Jerusalem Film Festival..
I first saw the movie in the Jerusalem Film Festival 1999.
It took me by surprise.
Until this movie I didn't see many movies in Jerusalem that I got out of the movie and wanted to meet all the actors, and wanted to know everything about them.
What can I tell you, the movie was AMAZING.
I have never seen another like it.
The actors are great, the photogarphy is beautifull, everything is so well-done and well-planned, that there are no bad words.
It made my festival.
I'm sure it'll make your day..
An historian is missing on the crew.
Lea Pool is a brillant director, but sometimes, her films are a little bit boring.
But this one is absolutely her best work.
A good story, a wonderful sense of image, and the actors are all very well directed.
I think this is an effort for Pool to go mainstreem.
But, for me, as an historian, this movie have big problems...
The story is set in 1963 (the song Mockingbird, heard in the movie, tells me that.) The way Leo Pool describes Quebec society and the culture of the French Canadians of the time had nothing to do with 1963.
It's all look like 1973-76.
It had no historical respect of the facts of 1963.
For example, Lea Pool shows us the Jean-Luc Godard movie Vivre sa vie, and the young Karine Vanasse identifies herself to Anna Karina in that movie.
In the early sixties, most of the nouvelle vague French cinema (like this Godard film) were not released in Quebec.
By that time, censorship was very strong and I'm sure that the prostitute character of miss Karina in that Godard film was banned from the Board of Censorship.
The Godard movie is from 1962.
By that time, French movies always takes three, and sometimes four years to get to Quebec's movie theatres.
For me, it's impossible that this movie was shown in Quebec in 1963.
Let's also say that in 1963, the legal age to go to a movie house was 16.
But Karine Vanasse is 13 in that movie!
Also, the way the father of Karine Vanasse wear his hairs is< absolutely 1973-75!
The facts that most of the young girls wore trousers is also strange!
So is the girl kissing Karine, her brother kissing her, in a so natural way is simply impossible.
Lea Pool was born in Switzerland.
She cames to Quebec en 1978.
Critics says that Emporte-moi was about her life as a young teenager.
It could be better if the film was set in Europe.
In Europe, the Godard film was shown, the cultural aspects of the people were more liberal than in Quebec, who was still a very Catholic and conservative society, by that time.
These little facts annoyed me.
When you make a movie set in the past, it's very important to respect the period.
Leo Pool didn't.
I don't mean that Emporte-moi is a bad movie.
It's fanastic and young Karine is superb, so is the great Pascale Bussières (our best actress in Quebec and Canada.) But if an historian was part of the crew to tells miss Pool what's illogic, it could be a lot better..
Great Godard clips..
The heroine's search for a personal identity takes the form of striking between oppposites - girl/boy, mother/father, film/reality, country/city, Judaism/Catholicism, conformity/individuality.
This is a rites-of-passage as Portrait Of The Filmmaker as a Young Woman, with Hanna taking inspiration (and dangerously, destiny) from Anna, Karina that is, in 'Vivre Sa Vie', while storing up, Wordsworth-like, artistic inspiration from Godard.
Pool's conventional filmmaking puts Godard's masterwork in relief, and makes it seem even more miraculous..
A typical French "portrait" of a family..
As most French movies, according to me, also in this movie there is no clear story line, nothing that is more important, nothing that the movie "is about".
I'd almost say, no beginning, no end, no moral.
A typical French movie: A portrait.
A portrait of a family in this case, with a 13 year old girl as main character (although she looks 16 most of the time).
What is nice about a movie like this is that you become more a part of it, it is much more like real life and therefore a lot more interesting in some way.
Nevertheless, when things are TOO normal you get bored.
And this movie has only two or three really interesting aspects: The relationships within the family (sister, brother, father, mother) and the first romance of Hanna.
Can't remember the third actually.
The reason I gave this movie a 7 and not a 6 is because I really enjoyed those two aspects and because the acting of Karine Vanasse is very professional, impressive.