FRAMELINE 50: La belle année

When Angelica Ruffier and her brother return to their childhood home after the death of their estranged father, they find the house overflowing with clutter and detritus. As they start to clear it out and settle his affairs, Angelica rediscovers the diaries she kept as a teenager and, in them, her one-sided and all-consuming infatuation with her history teacher, Mademoiselle B.

Re-examining her young love through the lens of her father’s death, Ruffier explores the extent to which the narratives she concocted about Mademoiselle B. were a reflection of her own need for escape from her abusive home life and her unexpressed queerness. Surrounded by the seemingly-endless array of her father’s belongings — all of which combine to create a spectral reminder of herself when she was small, as well as her re-animated memory — the past becomes present once more, and Ruffier starts to long to find Mademoiselle B.

A sensuous meditation on desire, young love, and the fantasies we project upon those who help us see a path forward, La belle année stunningly blurs the lines of documentary and narrative, and will leave you in tears for those who helped you reimagine how you could be.