High Society

This low-key drama from 2014 about a young working-class woman’s journey of self-discovery which takes her from crafter to artist is streaming on Amazon Prime.  Sensitively written and directed by Julie Lopes Curval who scored a minor art house hit in 2002 with Seaside for which she won the Camera D’Or at Cannes, High Society never hits a false note (with the notable exception of its misleading title).  Alice, played by Ana Girardot (Back to Burgundy) lives in Bayeux in Normandy with her unemployed mother and her stepfather who has a stall at the local market.  She’s been knitting since childhood, has completed a vocational diploma in fashion and aspires to attending the prestigious École Duperré in Paris – which is a longshot for someone from her background.  We know she’s got potential though as the sweaters she knits from repurposed yarn which she hand- dyes in her bathtub are quite beautiful.  They catch the eye of Agnès, a wealthy summer resident who helps Alice with her application essay, advising her to leave out lines like ‘My life could have no other outcome’ and instead explain her craft and mention her artistic influences – including the renowned Bayeux Tapestry, a Romanesque masterpiece depicting events leading to the Norman conquest of England.  Thus begins Alice’s introduction to the world of bourgeois sophisticates.  She embarks on a consuming love affair with Agnès’ son Antoine while studying embroidery and gets an education in art, love and the ways in which the wealthy maintain their privilege.  High Society covers some of the same ground as Blue is the Warmest Color which preceded it by a year.  Both films offer insightful examinations of social class with High Society taking cues from French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s idea that the wealthy use taste to signal and maintain their position in the social hierarchy.  It’s fascinating to watch Alice’s growth as an artist.  Some of the film’s best scenes are of her professors critiquing her work and her struggles to understand and incorporate their comments.  When she takes an early assignment on the subject of “airiness” literally by knitting a bird, the prof tells her to “work on the wool while thinking of transparency, the intangible….Your bird can’t take flight.  Try cutting its wings to see” to which Alice later responds, “If I cut the wings, what’s left of the bird?”  Well – she’s about to find out what’s left of herself after her wings are clipped.  A better title than High Society would have been La Vie d’Alice: Chapitres 1 & 2!