‘An Easy Girl’ Wins Cannes Directors’ Fortnight French-Language Movie Prize

By John Hopewell

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – CANNES  —  One of France’s most highly-regarded young women filmmakers, Rebecca Zlotowski, has won the Directors’ Fortnight prize for best French-language movie for “An Easy Girl,” a sensual coming of age tale set on France’s Cote d’Azur.

From reviews published to date, “An Easy Girl” marks a return to form for Zlotowski after the disappointment of her third feature, 2016’s “Planetarium” starring Natalie Portman and Lily Rose Depp.

Written with frequent collaborator Teddy Lussi-Modeste, director of “The Price of Success, “An Easy Girl” turns on Naima, who’s 16 and has just finished high-school, who is taken under her wing by her cousin, Sofia. 22, highly sexualized, and played by actress, model and lingerie designer Zahia Dehar. Sofia takes her off for the summer, onto the boat of a wealthy collector, Andres. 

It’s in the cliché busting portrait of Sofia in particular that the film comes into is own, portraying a woman who’s stunning, highly sexualized, but intelligent and tender towards Naima –  a fact recognized by screenwriter Dominique Sampiero, in explaining why “An Easy Girl” was awarded best French-language film prize  by France’s France’s Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD).

“Zahia Dehar’s character takes the story towards that of a modern moral fable,  young woman embodying with her character the ‘unsustainable lightness of women,,” said Sazmpiero, a member of  SACD’s film commission.

Sofia’s “strange innocence” “allows her to escape the humiliations of male dominance, leaving us a sense of infinite tenderness,” she added.

Produced by Frédéric Jouve at Les Films Velvet, “An Easy Girl” is sold by Wild Bunch.