Baden Baden

This film screens as part of Pix Rendez-Vous. The section is a collaboration between Oslo Pix and Institut Français, and includes nine French titles at this year’s programme. It is a continuation of the festival Rendez-Vous with French film, which for many years has presented the remarkable quality of contemporary French cinema to a Norwegian audience.

26 year old Ana is a restless and adventurous soul. Having tried her luck in the film industry (and failed), and without much to fall back on, she «borrows» the production company's Porsche and heads home to Strasbourg. There she spends the summer refurnishing her grandma's bathroom and tries out relationships to different men, including her good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend Boris. Baden Baden is the kind of film that pretends to be about nothing, but don't be fooled by its appearance. It brilliantly conveys the feeling of total freedom and utter frustration shared by many young and unemployed adults in contemporary Europe, and its depiction of Ana's attempts to balance pleasure and responsibility has a strong feminist undercurrent. Baden Baden is a witty and striking film about trying to set your life straight and live it at the same time. CF

Rachel Lang (b. 1984) is from Strasbourg, France, where she studied philosophy at the university and theater at the academy for dramatic arts. She later studied film in Louvain Le Neuve in Belgium. Baden Baden concludes a trilogy of films about young Ana, following the short films For You I Will Fight (2010) and White Turnips Make It Hard To Sleep (2011).