Elle est des nôtres

She‘s One of Us could be seen as a feminist take on the Houellebecq scenario of the isolated outsider for whom implosion is the only possible option. Played by Sasha Andres, Christine Blanc (her surname literally means „blank“) is a temporary secretary moving from office to office in a provincial town surrounded by mountains. The solitary Christine yearns to belong; she‘s desperate to have her work valued, to become part of the team, any team. The film makes its point about alienation through modernist tropes: windows and other partitions divide office interiors into Mondrian-like grids. Starkly composed frontal shots detach Christine from the background of the world. Christophe Pollock‘s camera glides with Zen-like detachment through antiseptic suburbs, past neon shop signs, through a mall. To his and Alnoy‘s credit, this routine iconography is always lucid and surprisig - images of banality, never banal images. (Jonathan Romney)