Vanda

Set in southern France, this taut psychological thriller from Brunet (Summer of Reckoning) focuses on Vanda, a would-be artist working as a cleaner in a psychiatric hospital and devoted mother to a six-year-old boy, Noé. When Vanda runs into Simon, an ex-lover who’s returned home from Paris after a seven-year absence to bury his mother, Vanda reluctantly agrees to a second meeting, at which she reveals Noé is his son. The rudderless, financially comfortable Simon alternates between resenting where he grew up and nostalgia for the place he sought to escape and the mother who tried her best to provide for him, familiar instabilities he recognizes in Vanda. Fueled by the arrogant belief he can offer Noé a better life, Simon forcefully inserts himself into their lives, threatening Vanda’s codependent relationship with Noé. Brunet escalates the slow boiling day-to-day class-conscious anxieties and existential dread plaguing a stressed single mom working an unstable job while ferociously trying to protect her child from the many threats in an indifferent world. This heart-wrenching slice of social realism will resonate with many. (Apr.)