LA FILLE DE L’AIR (Directed by Maroun Bagdadi. Starring Beatrice Dalle, Hippolyte Girardot, Thierry Fortineau)

That La Fille De L’Air is a true story is both the source of its strength and its ultimate weakness. Beatrice Dalle, in her meatiest role since Betty Blue, plays Nadine Vajour, a woman who spectacularly helped her husband escape from jail in France in 1986. Dalle, often acclaimed as a new Brigitte Bardot, is shown in an early scene reading a magazine about the old one. The sly reference is intentional. Contrast and compare: this is Dalle at her most dowdy, cast as a real person (albeit one with lips that could be used as a sofa) in a story that makes no concessions to glamour.

This gritty, downbeat tale of crime and punishment is shot in a restless, ciné-verité style, with low-key performances and minimal dramatics, lending it a genuinely convincing air. It is an outrageous story, and an exciting one, with a thrilling climax, yet its grim realism forsakes audience sympathy, remaining entirely unmoving. Unlike the heroes of In The Name Of The Father, Dalle’s husband Michel, a habitual, violent armed robber grippingly portrayed by Thierry Fortineau, clearly belongs in jail (in an early sequence a policeman is shot during a robbery, which would be a capital offence in most countries). Never are we shown the source or the depth of love that compels Dalle to risk her own freedom and jeopardise her relationship with her children in order to spring him from a well-deserved prison sentence.

Which is what he is serving right now. As a punchline, the film informs us that Michel was recaptured in a hold-up just four months after regaining his liberty, and now languishes in jail with no possibility of parole before 2017. Despite the film’s many virtues, the knowledge of this unappealing character’s real life fate sinks the entire film with an overwhelming sense of pointlessness.