The best Jean-Jérôme Esposito’s comedy movies

A provocative, seemingly absurd patchwork movie which sends a worthwhile message about hope against all odds, love, children and human understanding. Schoolgirl Victorine has an insane mother and an alcoholic father who can never find his way home in their maze of slum apartment blocks. Aggressive, sexually threatening boys of all ages are everywhere, and while the teacher eventually relents to a gang of adolescent rapists, Victorine gives herself to a rowdy gang of older layabouts, eventually winning the heart of burglar Paul.

From the director of Marius et Jeannette, this story of two working-class families is a fable with an optimist streak. A young black man, Francois, is wrongly accused of rape by a racist policeman. The story is told in voiceover by his childhood friend, neighbor, and the mother of his future child, Clementine, who is white. The city is Marseilles as in the previous film, symbolic with its churches, prisons and ruins. Except in this film, director Robert Guediguian also ventures outside, taking the story to Sarajevo; two different cities, one devastated by war, the other by a bad economy and unemployment. A la Place du coeur won a Special Jury Prize at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival and was also shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the 1998 Montreal Film Festival.