Set Me Free, a new film with emotionally complex characters, captures the angst many teens feel as they struggle to sort through confusing and conflicting feelings, figure out who they are, and create an authentic identity.
Hanna (Karine Vanasse), an adolescent, is confused about her sexual identity and about the different kinds of love she feels. When she has a "crush" on a friend or a teacher, does that mean she is attracted to them or that she is grateful for their attention? When she feels close to her brother, does that mean that she is attracted to him? How can she tell the difference between different kinds of love?
Growing up in an impoverished interfaith family in Canada in 1963, with a Jewish father and Catholic mother, Hanna is pulled between loyalties to her Catholic and Jewish relatives and unsure of her own religious beliefs. When her father telephones her at her grandparents' home and asks what they are serving her for dinner, she lies. She doesn't want him to know that they have given her ham. When her teacher asks each child in the class to state his or her religion, Hanna says she doesn't know what she is, that her father is Jewish and her mother Catholic.
Hanna identifies with her mother (Pacale Bussieres)--who supports the family by working as a seamstress--but worries about her mental and psychological health. During the day Hanna brings her mother stolen candy bars--stolen because the family has no money for food--to give her energy and nourishment. In the evenings, Hanna tries to protect her fragile mother from her father's demands that she spend hours typing his unpublished poems and novels. At one point, she implores her mother to run away with her in order to save her from exhaustion, but her mother says she couldn't live without her husband.
Is Hanna's father blind to the fact that her mother is overworked and exhausted? Does he care at all about his family's welfare? Usually unemployed, he seems to prefer to spend his time playing chess rather than working at jobs that bore him, thus leaving the entire burden of supporting the family to his wife.
In Set Me Free, we have a new kind of Jewish male, an irresponsible, self-absorbed figure who appears to feel for his family, but who does little to show it or to support them, either emotionally or materially. Although at one point we learn that the father had lived through the Holocaust, and that his first wife had been killed in a concentration camp, this news does little to offset the repugnance a viewer feels at his irresponsibility and selfishness. This male figure differs greatly from the successful and ambitious Jewish men that comprise the image of the American Jewish male today. He is more reminiscent of the cruel father, who was also a Holocaust survivor, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl in the Oscar-winning film Shine. Although I found Shine compelling, the utterly unforgiving portrayal of the father disturbed me, as did the extremely negative depiction of Hanna's Jewish father in Set Me Free.
When Hanna's mother does have the psychological and physical breakdown that Hanna tried so hard to prevent, the girl is almost totally alone emotionally. In a heartrending scene when she visits her catatonic mother in the hospital and implores her to respond, we see how desperate Hanna is for comfort and how incapable her mother is of giving any. Unfortunately, her father is also incapable of giving her the support she craves.
Hanna turns to her brother (Alexandre Merineau), who is somewhat supportive, and to a friend, Laura (Charlotte Christeler), as well as to her teacher (Nancy Huston). As her teacher gently tells her, Hanna is confusing different kinds of love and is mistakenly looking for sexual love from the people she cares for. For a time, Hanna and Laura are attracted to each other, but then Laura develops a relationship with Hanna's brother, leaving Hanna even more emotionally bereft. She runs away from home and lives on the street as a prostitute, following the example of Nana, a character played by Anna Karina in the Godard film Vivre Sa Vie, which Hanna had seen and been affected by. But Hanna then retreats from that life and returns home, where her father (Miki Manojiovic) attempts to be a little more giving than usual.
At the end, we see that Hanna's mother has been released from the hospital and appears to be well again, somewhat capable of giving her daughter the love she so desperately needs.
Director and screenwriter Lea Pool, known for her emotionally powerful and beautifully rendered films, has elicited sensitive, believable and nuanced performances from each of the actors. Karine Vanasse, Pascale Bussierem Miki Manojlovic, Nancy Huston; Charlotte Christeler and Alexandre Merineau. Set Me Free, the sixth film directed by the award-winning Pool, has won several awards: A Special Prize from the Ecumenical Jury at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival and the Silver Gryphon at the 1999 Giffoni Film Festival in Italy.
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