The Woman Who Sings

When their mother dies, she leaves twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désmourmeaux-Poulin) and Simon Marwan (Maxim Gaudette) two letters and an unusual task. They are to deliver one letter to their father, whom they thought dead. The second is intended for their brother, whose existence they only learn at the reading of the will. In order to accomplish this task, Jeanne and Simon must embark on a journey into their mother Nawal's past. Jeanne in particular hopes to gain an explanation for the rigid silence in which Nawal spent the last years of her life and travels to the Middle East without hesitation. A difficult and sometimes very dangerous search for clues begins, at the end of which is a revelation that shakes Jeanne and Simon's lives to their foundations, but at the same time could bring the peace they have longed for.

With The Woman Who Sings, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, award-winning Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has staged a cleverly constructed and enormously moving drama whose final ten minutes are arguably some of the most intense to be seen in cinema in recent memory. The path to resolution is constructed like a tragic puzzle in its intricate storytelling. Little by little, an overall picture comes together that seems so unbelievable that you want to believe you made a mistake when putting the individual pieces together. But since no doubts remain at the end, the viewer needs a few minutes at the end to recover from the crude punch in the pit of the stomach.

Much more detail shall not be given at this point, so as not to weaken the impact of the story and the production. It may be mentioned, however, that Denis Villeneuve has delivered great work purely in terms of craftsmanship. By, for example, not underscoring the sequences set in the Middle East with (supposedly) country-specific sounds like so many of his fellow directors, but often with soft pop songs, he creates an atmosphere all of his own, which is also reflected in the use of graphics and the very intense imagery.

Villeneuve cleverly knows how to create great emotion without making the viewer feel manipulated. Although some moments seem rather sober and almost cold, the viewer is never kept at a distance, but is drawn into the action almost unnoticed. This makes the emotional impact of some scenes, but especially the finale, seem all the more violent. The Woman Who Sings is hard stuff, not feel-good cinema and certainly not a casual entertainment film. But Villeneuve has succeeded in making great emotional cinema, which proves in an exciting, moving and in a certain sense unforgettable way what power films can have. Impressive arthouse cinema, which is absolutely recommendable in any case

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp