At age 30, Alice, a ship’s engineer, goes to sea for a month. She leaves her lover Félix behind to go back to her first love: the Fidelio, the old cargo ship she started her career on. She also meets Gaël again, her old instructor and her first love. Isolated on a ship at the end of its life, in the midst of a crew upset by the brutal death of a colleague, Alice listens to her heart and her desires, weighing risks and dangers…

Picture gallery

At the root of Lucie Borleteau’s debut is the desire to film the wonderful world of ships, the silent and impressive giants of the sea, carcasses of rusting metal, which offer a spectacular setting. While the cargo ship was the setting of a highly suspenseful thriller in Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips, here it hosts a human drama enhanced by the isolation of this disconnected microcosm of the world. The story’s love triangle, always a great dramatic driver, is handled with great sensitivity, mainly because the director gives her main female character the intelligence she needs to handle a male crew – and society itself. A good approach, illustrated by the magnetic performance of Ariane Labed. Costarring the excellent Anders Danielsen Lie and the slightly artificial Melvil Poupaud.