“The Favor” by Henry Bruno

“The Favor” gracefully involves from the first minutes. The key to his charm (visual and narrative) is certainly the refinement and simplicity with which Henry Bruno weaves, this is the right term, a complex human drama. In the life of two workers like many others, a profound impetus of despair insinuates itself, which leads the two protagonists to confront each other closely, away from the shells of formality. With an exceptional plot-twist and great psychological significance, Henry Bruno’s film takes us through the folds of everyday life, in which people live often in great pain and hopes. Following Maryline Mahieu’s astonishing and agile script, the film becomes an intimate portrait of two strangers the moment their lives collide.

Bruno’s cinematographic style lives up to the feelings that run through the film, and with a mature and discreet gaze he grants the screen to the faces of the two protagonists. Henry Bruno and Anne-Sophie Trebel’s acting drags the story and makes it sink into the exciting realism of expressions, silences and gestures. With great intuition, the director puts the staging at the service of the two actors, making the film a profound human portrait, courageous and sincere. The path of the two characters balances between the flat normality represented in the first part of the film and the second, surreal, warm and upsetting. The emotional and psychological tension of a woman towards motherhood becomes actually an act of birth, when she breaks into an arid routine and allows two humans to reveal themselves and take their own spaces. A film with a unique delicacy.