La Ruche

For as long as they can remember, teenage sisters Marion (Sophie Breyer), Claire (Mara Tarquin) and Louise (Bonnie Duvauchelle) have lived to the rhythm of their mother Alice’s (Ludivine Sagnier) moods: pleasantly disturbed and enterprising, then depressed and toxic. Especially the eldest, Marion, does everything to keep the family together. She would rather spread her wings and go to Brazil to dance. But how can she leave her sisters in the destructive spiral into which their mother sinks further and further every day? ‘La ruche’ (the beehive) is the feature film debut of Belgian director Christophe Hermans, who collaborated with photographer Lara Gasparotto, a cinematographer known for her intimate approach to the female body and adolescence. Together with the actors, they bring the loving and explosive relationship between mother and daughters (the youngest of which is the real daughter of Ludivine Sagnier) to life. ‘Hermans offers up a sensitive and heady first feature… It’s a larger-than-life family that the filmmaker has decided to depict, played with incredible veracity and sincerity by four natural actresses who touch upon a certain truth.’—Aurore Engelen, Cineuropa