Élisa

Élisa (1995) is Jean Becker's French drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Marie was three when her mother Élisa took her own life. A childhood in an orphanage, a youth on the streets of Paris, petty theft to get by — and one purpose grown out of a child's vow: track down the father who abandoned them and make him pay.

Working from her mother's diaries, Marie (Vanessa Paradis) traces a man named Quentin, a solitary lighthouse keeper on the Atlantic coast (Gérard Depardieu). She turns up under a false name, ready to hate. But the closer she gets to this silent, weary man, the more the simple story of blame she came to avenge falls apart.

Becker builds the film on a contrast — Paradis sharp and prickly against Depardieu's heavy, guilt-soaked stillness. The soundtrack is woven around Serge Gainsbourg's songs, which plays almost like a confession for Paradis. It's one for viewers who love French family-wound dramas that resist loud resolutions. Stream Élisa (1995) online on iFILM.