Debut feature director Alice Winocour directs the unrelenting, powerful and rather dark Augustine, a historical portrait of a severely epileptic teenage girl who ends up as the primary patient study of a cold and distant neurologist in 19th century France.
As the stricken young woman, singer-actress Soko singlehandedly makes this film more than worth watching, turning Augustine into so much more than just a victim of a very debilitating disease, one that was little understood at the time. She gives us the complete portrait of a girl on the verge of womanhood, a lonely, frustrated but also willful and resilient young adult who prays to be cured and does not give up hope.
Playing opposite her is the staunch and stoic Vincent Lindon as Dr. Charcot, who does lay it on the thick at times: walking down the rainy street, in full grimace mode, the film does slip into some cliché sad-French-film territory. Even when dealing with his patients, he never loses his bitter scowl, preferring to talk about Augustine as if she weren’t even in the room. One such conversation reveals that Augustine (who is 19 years old) has yet to begin menstruating, and the poor girl is left to actively wonder what menstruation actually is (reminiscent of Carrie, where another stricken girl with a lurking power is patently unprepared by those around her for that particular transition into adulthood).
As objectionable as Lindon’s character is, presumably the film is based in truth and therefore sheds a cold light on the bedside manner of doctors and hospitals of the time, which was fairly awful. Yet as difficult and considerable as Augustine’s hurdles are, the triumph of this film lies in the fact that not once does our heroine ever lose even an ounce of her humanity.
Augustine opens in limited release on May 17.
—Dan Heching