GRAND EXPECTATIONS

Madeleine (Rebecca Marder) is an ambitious student who travels to Corsica with her boyfriend (Benjamin Lavernhe) to prepare for exams. When an altercation with a stranger on a deserted road escalates into a fatal incident, the couple cover it up and try to move on. Months later, Madeleine takes up a position as a parliamentary assistant to a left-wing MP working on housing reform, but the guilt continues to haunt her, threatening to end her career at any moment.

This densely scripted blend of psychological and political thriller soon moves away from the crime to focus on the conflict between the idealistic world Madeleine works in and the dark secret that continues to resurface, before some ethical and moral twists bring the two together in an extremely satisfying conclusion. Marder is superb as a talented woman who finds herself caught up in a situation where she must rely on all her political cunning to save her own skin, whilst still striving for the greater good that she vehemently believes in.