A young television reporter covering the final moments of the French presidential election leaves her young daughters with a babysitter has her careful plans turned upside-down by her unstable ex-partner in Justine Triet’s insightful comedy about a nation and family in flux
An impeccable mix of the personal and the political, Justine Triet’s first film unfolds on the hectic day of May 6, 2012, when Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande ultimately defeated the right-wing incumbent Nicolas
Sarkozy. Covering the elections is news correspondent Laetitia (Laetitia Dosch), first seen trying to allay her two young daughters in their chaotic, toy-strewn apartment. Before reporting to work, the harried TV reporter instructs the babysitter not to let Vincent (Vincent Macaigne), her unstable ex-partner and the children’s father, into their home under any circumstances. Obstinate Vincent, however, will not be dissuaded from seeing his kids; soon he is angrily confronting Laetitia at her base on the mobbed Rue de Solférino, the Left Bank street that’s home to French Socialist Party headquarters. Infused with real-life urgency—
several scenes take place among actual election-day crowds—Age of Panic brilliantly captures a nation in flux, France’s larger
upheavals mirrored in the bitter squabbles and tentative resolutions forged by its central former couple. (France, 2013,
94 min., DCP | Dir. Justine Triet)
YOUNG FRENCH CINEMA is a program of UniFrance films, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French films with no US distribution to art house cinemas, film societies, the Alliance Française network, and American universities.