The Prisoner of Bordeaux

‘Alma (Isabelle Huppert) lives alone in a middle-class townhouse, furnished with expensive paintings and a domestic worker. Mina (Hafsia Herzi) has Arab roots and toils in a suburban dry cleaner’s to support herself and her two children. The two women have nothing in common – except for the fact that their husbands are imprisoned in the same prison and they organise their lives around their absence. After their first meeting, Alma energetically takes Mina under her wing: she takes her into her large house, which is closer to the prison, finds her a new job and successfully enrols the children in the local school. The social divide between the women makes this arrangement latently unstable; the film deliberately leaves it open as to whether this is a genuine friendship or a mutually beneficial pact – and both women prove that they are capable of lying.” (Birgit Kohler, Arsenal Berlin)