REVIEWED - A COMMON THREAD (BORDEUSES): This perfectly lovely French yarn does all the things you expect middle-brow art films to do. Featuring dark, painterly interiors and richly voluptuous shots of the countryside, A Common Thread tells the story of the relationship between a young pregnant girl named Claire and an older seamstress whose son has just died in a motor accident.
Working together on an intricately decorated piece of fabric, the two women gain a kind of understanding. One makes a decision about the impending birth. The other comes to terms with her loss.
There are no noisy catastrophes and few surprising plot reversals. Intelligent viewers will not be over-impressed by the unsubtle imagery - the pounding obviousness of the English title alone seems designed to cause groaning - but debut director Éléonore Faucher invests her images with such lazy beauty that the film proves hard to resist.
A Common Thread would be considerably less palatable without its two nuanced lead performances. Ariane Ascaride, who plays the bereaved needleworker, may be familiar to readers from the grindingly depressing films of her husband, Robert Guédiguian. Here she is permitted to weave a little exoticism and mystery into her portrayal of a quietly wise craftswoman.
Lola Naymark is more impressive again as Claire. The young woman is not particularly likeable. Queried about her weight gain, she tells friends that she has been suffering from cancer. She initially seems to care little what might become of the baby. But Naymark, whose busy red hair dominates the film's gorgeous pallette, has an intelligence to her gaze that asks us to imagine excuses for her.
