In a building where the elevator doesn’t work, in a monotonous city, the inhabitants experience three unexpected encounters. Stuck in a wheelchair after an absurd accident, Sternkowtiz meets a disenchanted nurse. An abandoned boy named Charly meets Jeanne Mayer, a fallen actress in search of new dreams. The optimistic Madame Hamida opens her door to John McKenzie, an American astronaut who has fallen from the sky.

Picture gallery

Writer/artist Samuel Benchétrit adapts part of his more or less autobiographical novel series “Chroniques de l’asphalte”, starring the intelligentsia that is Isabelle Huppert, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Gustave Kerven, as well as his son Jules Benchétrit in his first role. It would be easy to consider Asphalte as quintessential, skin-crawling, navel-gazing French auteur cinema. Except that the 5th movie by the director of Janis et John and J’ai toujours rêvé d’être un gangster is a small miracle, striking in both its solemnity and its extreme sensitivity. Thanks to his feeling for both dialogue and silence, as well as an excellent cast, Benchétrit breathes life into three stories of ordinary hopelessness, which oscillate between absurd humor and the poetry of a city tainted by melancholy. Asphalte’s simplicity, inventiveness and compelling mastery make it a small jewel in its genre.