Le Refuge (15)

Geoffrey Macnab
Friday 13 August 2010 00:00 BST
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Think of drug addiction in movies and the titles likely to spring to mind include Christiane F and Trainspotting.

What you don't expect from a film that begins with a man dying of a heroin overdose and his pregnant girlfriend miraculously surviving – is a leisurely, bucolic drama set in the French countryside. This, though, is what the prolific François Ozon provides. Mousse (Isabelle Carré) refuses to heed her dead lover's mother and abort the baby. Instead, she spends her pregnancy in a villa on the coast where her house guest is Louis's gay brother, Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy). She is attracted to him and is strangely jealous when he has a fling with another man. The film is as much a celebration of pregnancy as it is a drama about addiction and bereavement. Carré, who was herself pregnant during the shoot, excels as the defiant, rebellious but acutely sensitive mother-to-be.

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