Gervaise

Stark and brutal Zola adaptation, cantered on Schell’s heartbreaking performance worthy of Fellini, though there’s some dizzying work from both Périer and Mestral as her doppelgänger partners who slowly chip away at her soul; Delair’s playing of the long game is also a kind of awesome portrait of venality. Extraordinarily well-designed to the point that you could be fooled to thinking it had been shot on location; Clement provides the dank and earthy atmosphere for this lurid and sad story to play out against.