MINA TANNENBAUM Movie Review

Mina (Romane Bohringer) and Ethel (Elsa Zylberstein) meet at the age of seven, and together they experience childhood and teenage traumas, including the desperate pangs of first love. As adults, Mina is consumed by her passionate commitment to her painting, while Ethel, a journalist, remains passionate only about her incorrigible flirtatiousness, as well as her friendship and lifelong rivalry with Mina. Martine Dugawson's Mina Tannenbaum is conceived as an epic portrait of the changes that friends create in each other over a quarter-century, but while the movie certainly feels long, it rarely wields the resonance or narrative power required of a genuine epic. It contains wonderful sequences, but they never flow into the sweeping story that you hope for. The performances by Bohringer and Zylberstein are, considering the fractured storytelling, captivating.

NEXT STOP … Old Acquaintance, Rich and Famous, Antonio's Line

1993 128m/C FR Romane Bohringer, Elsa Zylberstein, Nils Tavernier, Florence Thomassin, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Stephane Slima. D: Martine Dugowson; W: Martine Dugowson; C: Dominique Chapuis; M: Peter Chase. VHS NYF