Virtual Cinema: “All is Forgiven (Tout est Pardonné)”

Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is recognized as one of the brightest talents in contemporary French film for the way she has renewed the tradition of the intimate cinema of ideas and emotions epitomized by auteurs such as Eric Rohmer. While her later films such as Things to Come were widely praised in the United States, her first feature All is Forgiven is only receiving its US release now, thirteen years after its rapturous reception at the Cannes Film Festival. Hansen-Løve was only 26 when she made the film, but it is a surprisingly mature work in which one recognizes her themes—a young woman’s development, precarious family dynamics, the passage of time—and the texture of her images, shaped by a sensitivity to natural light and a keen sense of the frame.