La prisonnière de Bordeaux

Alma (Isabelle Huppert) lives alone in a bourgeois town villa decked out with expensive paintings and a housekeeper. Mina (Hafsia Herzi) has Arab roots and toils away in a suburban laundry in order to provide for herself and her two children. The two women have nothing in common – apart from their husbands being in the same prison and the fact that they organize their lives around their absences. After their first encounter, Alma energetically pursues Mina’s company: she has her move into the house, which is closer to the prison, finds her a new job and successfully registers her children at the local school. The social gulf between the two women makes this arrangement inherently unstable; whether they’re conducting a true friendship or a pact of mutual convenience is left deliberately opaque by the film – both certainly prove that they are equally capable of lying. (bik)