In this idiosyncratic romantic comedy that swept the awards for the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Arnaud and his brother are taking over the family carpentry business from their father who has recently died. Fooling around with his friends at a local army recruitment event, Arnaud is literally knocked off his feet when he ends up wrestling with, and nearly losing to, an intense young woman. The blunt, unnerving Madeleine spends most of her time enacting her own survivalist training in preparation for a possible impending apocalypse, and Arnaud somehow finds himself drawn to enlist in the same boot-camp style military training course she is planning to attend. With understated style and sly charm, first time feature director Thomas Cailley turns the romantic comedy on its ear with this story of two people embarking on an eccentric relationship that only the strong will survive.
