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Two decades ago, it seemed every other role Isabelle Huppert played was a prostitute. She plays one again in Olivier Dahan’s La vie promise, and it may be her best, if only because her character resists so valiantly that inevitable heart of gold. Sylvia seems to have taken up the trade in order to finance her self-destruction. You wonder how she’s survived this long, and her repressed memories gives her plenty of material for blurry, fragmented flashbacks. Meanwhile, her life is one damn thing after another, and when her teenage daughter, Laurence (the aptly named Maud Forget), returns from a foster home and stabs her mother’s pimp, Sylvia suspects it might be time for a lifestyle change. Through a series of unlikely coincidences the two join up with Joshua (Pascal Greggory, looking like a fusion of Nick Nolte and Lee Marvin), who is also on the lam (France apparently is swarming with fugitives inspired by Breathless), and Sylvia begins her journey of reconciliation with her past. One of her recurrent flashbacks is to the flowers in her grandmother’s garden, and she repeats in voiceover the old lady’s wisdom about "la vie promise," a phrase that’s translated as "ghost river," meaning the childhood essence that we may forget but that never disappears. If you look hard enough through the sentiment, guided by Huppert’s performance, you’ll catch a glimpse. In French with English subtitles. (89 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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