Une nouvelle vie (1993)

Ludovic, a lawyer by profession, has two daughters born to different mothers, but he has raised only one of them (Lise) and considers her his only daughter. The other (Tina) lives with her mother (Nadine), with whom Ludovic lived only briefly. Since then, Nadine has had other men in her life, one of whom gave her two more children, both still very young. In the film’s opening scene, which shows Tina and Nadine together, it becomes clear that Nadine is in an unstable psychological state, apparently bipolar. Her daughter even seems afraid that she might kill herself. Although Tina comes from a relatively well-to-do background, at least on her biological father’s side, she currently works as a warehouse handler. She has a boyfriend, Fred, and they hope to live together once their respective careers have improved. Relations between Tina and her mother deteriorate. Tina leaves the family apartment and tries to get closer to her father, Ludovic, who has shown her nothing but indifference until now, but whose address she knows. When she goes there, Tina meets her half-sister, Lise, who seems to live alone in the sumptuous apartment. Initially reluctant, Lise agrees to put her up temporarily until Tina can find some alternative to staying in a hotel. A very short time later, Tina accidentally witnesses what seems to her to be a sexual, sadomasochistic encounter between Lise and Constantin—a still-attractive man in his forties, an old friend of Ludovic’s and one of the partners at his law firm—without either of them realizing she is there. Tina’s mother starts a fire in her apartment and dies. Was it suicide? Tina enters the burned-out apartment and retrieves a red-stone necklace from her mother’s jewelry box, which she wears for the rest of the film. Back at the apartment where Lise is putting her up, and overwhelmed, Tina attempts suicide with barbiturates. But Constantin happens to arrive just as she is losing consciousness, so she is hospitalized in time. Increasingly distraught, Tina tries even harder to get closer to her father. He avoids her and asks his friend and partner Constantin to make it clear to his biological daughter that the most she can expect from him is a certain amount of money each month. Constantin is disgusted by Ludovic’s behavior. He is clearly moved by Tina’s misfortunes. At Tina’s initiative, they abruptly have a sexual encounter (she performs oral sex on him), then begin an ongoing affair, even though Constantin is married. Without Tina fully realizing it, since she has so little confidence in herself, Constantin falls in love with her (she is, after all, twenty years younger than he is). Tina then tells her boyfriend Fred that things are over between them. He is furious, but she won’t be swayed. Constantin tells Tina that her half-sister Lise has gone to Noirmoutier to live in her father’s “holiday home,” which is currently empty. Tina and Constantin decide to get an apartment together, suggesting that Constantin has decided to leave his wife, Laurence. Presumably intending to tell Laurence that he is leaving her, Constantin goes home without telling Tina. We then see Laurence and Tina meet in a café. Laurence tells Tina that she will only be a brief fling in Constantin’s life; he is used to this, his affairs last only a few weeks, and he always comes back to her afterward. Although Tina is fairly sure that Constantin loves her—he has given her evidence of it—Laurence’s words nevertheless shake her. Having tried to defend her marriage by denigrating Tina and Constantin’s affair as much as possible, Laurence gets up to leave. Then she breaks down and collapses. One of Tina’s friends, Kléber, helps her up and accompanies her home. Taking advantage of her despair at that moment, he has a brief, protected sexual encounter with her; a few moments later, she tells him to “get lost,” and he does. Constantin and Tina meet again a little later in their new apartment and spend the night together. In the middle of the night or early in the morning, Constantin receives a work-related phone call. While he launches into a long legal discussion with the person on the other end, Tina gets dressed and, unbeknownst to him, takes some money from his jacket before leaving the apartment. Lise is reading on the terrace of the house in Noirmoutier. She looks up and smiles: her half-sister Tina is standing in front of her. Tina tells Lise that she’ll leave without arguing if Lise throws her out, but Lise smiles and says, “Stay. I was thinking of you.” It is agreed that Tina, exhausted after the journey from Paris to Noirmoutier and the search for the “holiday home,” will sleep there. Lise is also putting up a student friend who is about to leave for an overseas aid assignment. Lise, who dislikes being touched by men, as she tells Tina when Tina reveals that she witnessed the masochistic scene between Lise and Constantin, is hosting him at the same time. The next day, Lise talks to Tina about Constantin and tells her that what Laurence said about Constantin’s sexual behavior is, for the most part, a put-down. In fact, until he met Tina, he had led a fairly conventional and quiet love life—apart from a masochistic fantasy of being tied up. The next day, when the student friend leaves Noirmoutier by car, it becomes clear that he is going to drive Tina back to Paris, where she is supposed to meet Constantin: she has called him, and he is waiting impatiently. Lise, however, would like Tina to stay in the Noirmoutier house so they can make up for lost time; the half-sisters barely know each other. (There is a sense that Tina has to choose between Constantin and Lise.) The car pulls away with the “student friend” and Tina inside. Lise is left alone, but a few moments later, as she goes about the empty house, she senses a presence, turns around, and sees that Tina has not, after all, left. The two young women look at each other with grave smiles.