Synopsis
Macadam Stories (Asphalte, 2015) is a French comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Samuel Benchetrit. Three separate vignettes unfold inside and around a run-down apartment block in provincial France, each a small study in unexpected human connection.
An American actor stranded in France after a motorcycle accident (Michael Pitt) starts learning the language from daytime TV and slowly befriends an elderly neighbour. A cosmonaut (Gustave Kervern) comes back to Earth after months in orbit and finds the silence of his flat almost unbearable. A night-shift nurse (Isabelle Huppert) cracks open her door to a stranger for the first time in years. The three stories never collide — they just rhyme quietly with each other.
Benchetrit keeps sentiment at arm's length throughout: no swelling scores, no tearful reunions. Huppert is softer here than in almost anything else she has done. Pitt's atrocious French accent is entirely the point. It is a film that earns its warmth without asking for it, and rewards patience. Stream Macadam Stories (2015) online on iFILM.
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