Le Monde a l'envers

The film In 1745, in a small Breton village, Anne, an eight-year old girl, witnesses the public execution of a cock accused of laying an egg. Sixteen years later, the day of her marriage to the shepherd Yann Kerebel, he leaves her standing at the altar. Furious, Anne tears off her wedding-dress, puts on Yann's clothes and cuts her hair short. She flees the village, disguised as a young man. On the coast, Anne gets a job, under her former fiancé's name, as a cabin-boy on the ship "La Mélusine". On board, she makes friends with Nasser, a young Arab sailor. Meanwhile, Yann has been discovered down a well, injured but still alive. Learning of his fiancée's flight, he leaves in search of her, following her tracks across France. Anne, with her chest tightly bound, accustoms herself as best she can to the confines and macho atmosphere of La Mélusine. But the ship's doctor discovers her true identity and denounces her to the captain. The young woman escapes in a dinghy with Nasser, who still hasn't realised anything: they come ashore at Marseille. Over the course of these events, Anne is obliged to reveal herself to a young prostitute, Magali. The intense relationship that develops between them is discovered and fiercely condemnedÉ "In the perspective of an entertaining and emotional film, the director comments, it was the moments and the situations in extremis which interested us. Anne Bruneau is a brave and headstrong woman. Her secret is that she is decidedly "other", both more withdrawn and more impulsive than most people. Her secret is also about love, which she experiences in different ways, before finding what she wants, and resolving her troubled sexual identity" Extraordinary dream sequences by the animation filmmaker Gianluigi Toccafondo enrich the portrait of this unusual woman, conferring another, more subjective, dimension to this adventure film.