The definitive confirmation of Léa Drucker as the best actress of French cinema

"I am not a victim of my own decisions," snaps Gabrielle (Léa Drucker) at one point in A Woman's Life, a surgeon in her fifties, dedicated to her work, married and childless, who watches as life changes around her: her mother has Alzheimer's, her accomplice at the hospital decides to spend more time with his family, she finds herself attracted to a younger writer... A Woman's Life could have fallen into the umpteenth portrait of a middle-aged woman who is condemned with a certain bitterness or regret for prioritizing her professional career over motherhood. The director and co-screenwriter Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, on the other hand, builds a solid and complex female character as rarely seen in cinema, an attractive woman without being very likable, who embraces the freedom to choose and does not regret the consequences; capable of loving in many ways without falling into sentimentality, and with that dedication to work that seems to be allowed only to men. With a structure of eleven chapters, A Woman's Life is also a film destined to expand the fan base of Léa Drucker, the great dark horse of French cinema, one of those actresses capable of elevating the material they work with. Despite the good work of Bourgeois-Tacquet, it is inevitable to think that, in the skin of another actress, the character of Gabrielle would be much less interesting and convincing.