“A middling social drama that has its heart in the right place”

They say it is often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, but no one actually realises how difficult it can be to earn your redemption when you have been labelled as a social outcast to the point where every movement and action is scrutinised down to its smallest detail. Whether or not you believe rehabilitation is successful doesn’t change the fact that there is still a social stigma attached to former convicts, regardless of their crime. This is what we soon come to learn is the foundation for 7:40 ce matin-là (also known as Milo), the tenth film by Nicole Garcia. It tells the story of a woman who currently goes by the assumed name Alice, as she attempts to reintegrate herself back into a society that she formerly used as the target for a series of planned attacks when she was part of a militant group of students protesting injustices in her youth, which caused her to be convicted on charges of domestic terrorism. Now two decades older, and far less driven by radical ideologies, she makes her way to a small town in rural France, where she has one goal – to meet Milo, the son she had just before going to prison. He was adopted by a family who has raised him to know very little about his biological mother who now yearns to have a relationship with him all these years later. A run-of-the-mill social issues drama that never truly amounts to anything particularly special, the film makes some interesting points, but ultimately can’t avoid resorting to the usual clichéd approach we’d expect from such a story.

As a general rule, audiences tend to appreciate underdog stories, even when they centre around someone whose position in life is a result of poor decisions on their part. Ultimately, we just enjoy seeing someone working hard to achieve a goal, and their efforts to not buckle to whatever resistance stands in their way can be very appealing. This is where Garcia draws most of the focus in 7:40 ce matin-là, which revolves around someone whose only goal is to get a second chance from the one person who matters in her life, the son she has never met and who she wishes could be a part of her life now that she is ready to be a functioning member of society. Obviously this is not always possible, as this film openly demonstrates by putting Alice in a precarious position, forcing her to navigate the awkward space between imprisonment and freedom. She struggles to make sense of a world that has fundamentally changed in the fifteen years she spent behind bars, while also having the label of a former convict lingering over her head, a fact that she tries to keep concealed from those who don’t need to know her past. It is fertile ground for a very compelling exploration of someone trying to start over (which is in itself a fascinating subject, and one that has been done many times before with good results), which makes some of the narrative and directorial decisions (which undercut and diminish all the potential the film had) all the more irregular and frustrating.

There are certainly many shortcomings present throughout 7:40 ce matin-là, but one aspect that can confidently be considered innocent is the performance delivered by Marion Cotillard, who is almost too good to be squandering her time and talents with such a trivial film. She evidently finds value in Garcia’s direction, who she reunites with after they collaborated on From the Land of the Moon, a similarly overwrought film that featured Cotillard doing work far better than the film surrounding her deserved. Like everything she’s done over the years, this performance comes from a place of honesty, where Cotillard is frequently trying to find meaning in a difficult and complex character – and one even has to wonder whether some of the more nuanced aspects of Alice come from the actor herself, since there’s a lot in common with some of her previous roles that have been constructed around similarly difficult subjects. It’s truthful, meaningful acting that feels so much more engaging than it should’ve been given the often dense screenplay that doesn’t always seem to be interested in pursuing anything more than a surface-level understanding of someone in Alice’s position. The rest of the cast is solid, if not quite on the level of Cotillard, who carries 7:40 ce matin-là almost entirely by herself. Théodore Pellerin continues to prove his versatility as an actor, and while he may not always be as convincing in the part of a working-class mechanic yearning for a better life, he does enough to give the character the appropriate amount of personality and nuance. At times we may struggle to see the connection between Cotillard and Pellerin as far as the mother-son dynamic goes, but they act through these challenges and manage to deliver quite strong work that is much more compelling than the film they inhabit.

Despite Cotillard’s best efforts, the film crumbles almost immediately as a result of Garcia’s inability to both approach certain themes with the sensitivity they deserve, as well as her over-reliance on the same conventions that make 7:40 ce matin-là very little more than a bundle of heavy-handed tropes at the best of times. It starts at the conceptual level, since it seems like the entire premise was built around the idea of a former convict trying to reconnect with her adult son, and it seems to struggle to do anything more than can be summarised in this same one-sentence synopsis, which is where we begin to notice the core problem here: there is simply nothing else that this film can say beyond this subject, despite evidently trying to be an intense and moving social realist drama. The film operates on very peculiar logic, characters weave in and out of the story without any rhyme or reason (some appear to have much more important roles than we expected, others disappear entirely until they’re needed for additional exposition), and the film struggles to make any particularly meaningful point about the topic at hand, which results in a very poorly conceived drama that lacks the necessary consistency to make these ideas believable. It is also filled to the brim with clichés – scenes such as Cotillard’s character curled into a ball with pictures of her son scattered neatly around her, or the predictable bus station farewell where words are spoken but very little is actually said, make it seem like Garcia was directing by simply ticking off a list of conventions usually associated with the genre and subject, which leads to 7:40 ce matin-là becoming a bit of a misfire in both emotional content and execution of its central ideas.

7:40 ce matin-là is not a film that completely lacks merit, but it also leaves a lot to be desired. There are good components, such as the two central performances being quite strong (although Pellerin disappearing for long stretches, despite his name being used as the alternative title of the film, was quite a strange narrative decision), and the effort to touch on a subject that may be simple, but it certainly is resonant in its own way. However, none of this really does much to remedy the more obvious problems with this film, since while Garcia certainly means well and evidently does see the importance in the story being told, we just can’t get past the more heavy-handed approach she takes to the subject matter. There is more focus on trying to make sure she says absolutely everything, with very little thought put into the risk of it becoming overstuffed with more commentary than a film of this size could possibly handle. It’s a middling social drama that has its heart in the right place, but this is simply not enough to excuse the lack of cohesion, which proves to be the main hindrance to this film actually effectively communicating its core ideas. Eventually it just becomes a predictable and obvious attempt at social commentary where nothing new is actually expressed or implied. This is ultimately what prevents 7:40 ce matin-là from ever achieving anything particularly interesting or compelling, and leads to it being far more bothersome than it could’ve been with a bit more attention to detail and the good sense to understand that sometimes simplicity is more important than trying to make a specifically bold social or cultural statement.