Diane In The Loop

Bluesky

The words offbeat drama and sexual violence are not likely companions and yet the approach that Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni take to their latest collaboration is unexpectedly playful considering the weight of the subject – the passing down of trauma through the generations. That makes Diane In The Loop a surprisingly accessible film as the quirky approach allows a more discursive consideration of the topic without making light of it.

Diane (Ninon Borsei) is a forthright soul, not shy of telling men what she does and doesn’t like, a borderline hostile attitude that means she’s become something of a lone wolf. That’s perhaps why, the filmmaking pair adopt the tropes of a Western to help them tell their story as she, after discovering her mother (Sandrine Blancke) was raped some years before she was born, decides to go on a mission for vengeance.

The fact that Diane was unaware of the rape, at least on a conscious level, becomes a bone of contention with her mother, who has decided it is time to exit her own loop concerning this, with plans to pick up the studies she jettisoned many years before. But when Diane heads to the town where the rapist lives she finds a raft of surprises, not least that she is attracted to a man she meets there (Lucas Meister).

Sirot and Balboni take time to build the intricacy of relationships, showing how the complex reaction of Diane to her mother’s revelation is as much tied up with the fact she kept it from her daughter as the violence itself. Things are allowed to become tangled, as the history between Diane’s mother and her, now divorced father (Peter Van Den Begin) and mum’s long absent best friend (Naidra Ayadi) also comes into play. Rounding out the sensation that all children, on some level, carry a sort of primal knowledge of what their forebears would think and how they would react to any given situation is Diane’s grandmother Mimoun (Jo Deseure), who Diane often converses with even though she is dead. The way the memory of the rape is handled is also deftly done, using aural cues rather than visuals to bring home the horror of it.

It’s a tricky manoeuvre to craft a film that retains a sense of humour even as it deals with the thorny issue of healing in the wake of such a life-changing event, but Sirot and Balboni are as fearless as lone gunmen in their approach and adept at hitting what they aim at.

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