Staying Vertical

Staying Vertical (Rester vertical, 2016) — watch online on iFILM, a French drama by Alain Guiraudie, shown in competition at Cannes 2016. Starring Damien Bonnard, India Hair, and Raphaël Thiéry.

Screenwriter Léo drives south through France looking for material. He meets Marie, a shepherd who answers to no one's expectations. They have a child. Marie leaves. Léo is now alone with an infant, no script in progress, and an assortment of people entering his life whose categories don't match anything he's been trained to write.

Guiraudie's earlier film "Stranger by the Lake" built him a reputation for pushing at boundaries; this one does it more quietly, through accumulating strangeness rather than a single incident. It refuses to resolve — which is either the point or the frustration, depending on your patience for that. Watch Staying Vertical (2016) on iFILM.