Blanche's Courage, a film directed by Valérie Donzelli, in theaters from May 2nd with Movies Inspired, could be the manifesto of everything a woman needs to know to avoid toxic loves with the wrong and potentially violent men. And even more so how slow and apparently painless, silent and innocent is the net that these same men tighten around the woman to strangle her before she herself notices it.
This is precisely the story of Blanche Renard (Virginie Efira), a high school teacher, who after meeting Greg Lamoureux (Melvil Poupaud, recently seen in Woody Allen's Coup de Chance), is convinced that she has finally found the man of her life . She marries him, she has two children with him and everything seems to be apparently fine. After some time, however, Greg begins to show the possessive, dangerous and manic side of him, the nature of someone who has to control everything. First of all, he distances her from her family, from her comfort zone, under the pretext of a job transfer which in reality doesn't exist at all. The philosophy is: "We don't need anyone, we're fine alone." In fact the two will move away from Blanche's family and this for the sole purpose of isolating the woman. And so Blanche slowly finds herself involved in a toxic and morbid relationship, but she too is ashamed of revealing the true nature of her new partner for fear of not being believed.
The film, presented at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Première section and awarded the 2024 César for best non-original screenplay by Valérie Donzelli and Audrey Diwan, is based on the novel Love and the Forests (2014) by Eric Reinhardt, published in Italy by Salani, winner in 2014 of the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens and the Prix du Roman France Télévisions. "Reading Éric's book I found it interesting both how he described this toxic male character and his mechanisms of manipulation and the character of Blanche, an idealistic woman who allows herself to be trapped because she believes so much in this love story that she thinks that things will In fact, she blames herself by continuing to hope. The scene that convinced me to make the film - says the director - was the one in which Greg makes his mea culpa and pretends to be the victim see how far he can turn the tables to trap her even more." For Valérie Donzelli - French actress, screenwriter and director known for films such as La reine des pommes (2009), War is declared (2011) and Les grandes waves (2013) - Blanche's courage is however a 'mental' film: " It is in fact all seen from Blanche's side and from the crumbling of her mind. It starts by losing every point of reference. When you are under someone's thumb, you no longer know what to think, you no longer know how to speak, you know nothing to Blanche are her books and her work. And obviously her children, even if conditioned by a manipulative father."