Marion Cotillard's birthday gets red-carded by football. 24 minutes of quiet devastation.
While Pierrot, surrounded by his friends, is glued to the TV watching a soccer match, Stella, his shy girlfriend, must give up celebrating her birthday. She had planned everything but had forgotten that it was a sacred evening - the second round of the playoffs.
Acting
Cotillard's face does entire monologues without speaking.
Direction
Müller traps us in the kitchen while life happens elsewhere.
Writing
Every line Pierrot speaks indicts him further.
Director
Valérie Müller
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Müller uses the televised match as sonic wallpaper, weaponizing off-screen space to show how women's interior lives get drowned out by men's spectacle.
Made during France's 1998 World Cup victory era, the film interrogates the national religion of football and who gets excluded from its communion.
FR
