Angel Face

The entire cast does their best with borderline hackneyed material, and the proceedings are nicely shot by ace DP Guillaume Schiffman.

Cotillard, looking like one of the most glamorous white-trash fantasy figures in the history of the movies, has a hypnotic quality that will make you follow her character whatever she says or does.

Despite youngster Aksoy-Etaix’s commendable performance, not only will you not believe, you also won’t care.

The debut feature from writer-director Vanessa Filho is a trite story about a walking disaster and the daughter caught her in path, the tedious melodrama only finding a heartbeat when it abandons the lead character and searches for change.

Filho’s film is never less than heartfelt and strident, like a tale torn from life, or an episode of Jeremy Kyle played as stentorian opera. And this, I suspect, may be part of the problem. Crucially, Angel Face lacks shading, pacing and nuance.

Filho obviously wants to convey the naive outlook an impressionable young girl would have on her own situation, but there’s far too much manipulation involved to take her selection of scenes seriously.