One of two Marion Cotillard-led feature at Cannes this year, Nicole Garcia‘s From the Land of the Moon is a period weepy, set after World War II, which follows the actress bound by a loveless and begins an affair. Also starring Louis Garrel and Álex Brendemühl, Sundance Selects picked it up for a likely 2017 release, but first it will arrive in France and the first international trailer has now landed.
We said in our review, “We haven’t even reached the midway point of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, but it’s probably safe to assume that Nicole Garcia’s From the Land of the Moon will be the least-ambitious film this year’s competition has to offer. Based on Sicilian author Melena Agus’ 2006 novella of the same name, it is a weepy Sunday matinee melodrama of the most run-of-the-mill variety, full of pretty people in pretty clothes feeling Big Emotions. A Tchaikovsky leitmotif reminds us of the protagonist’s wary heart. There are at least four shots of Marion Cotillard curled in a ball on the floor crying. You can probably see where this is going.”
Check out the trailer below, which unfortunately doesn’t have subtitles yet, and be warned, it’s NSFW due to some nudity.
Based on the international best-selling novel and starring Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard, From the Land of the Moon is the story of a free-spirited woman fighting for passionate dreams of true love against all odds. Gabrielle (Cotillard) comes from a small village in the South of France at a a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José (Àlex Brendemühl), an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José’s devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post World War II society until the day she is sent away to a hospital in the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage (Louis Garrel), a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Will anyone dare rob her of her right to follow her dreams?
From the Land of the Moon will likely open in 2017 from Sundance Selects and in France on October 19.