Always one of the tonics to pull you through the post-festive blues at the start of a new year, MyFrenchFilmFestival has produced one of the best programmes in its nine-year history. Taking pictures from across the generic range, while also introducing audiences to a new generation of Francophone film-makers, the slate of 11 features and 15 free shorts has been available online for the same price as the previous edition (€1.99 per feature or €7.99 for the Festival Pack), which represents excellent value for money at a time when streaming and download prices appear to be unreasonably steep. 

We covered Jean Libon and Yves Hinant's documentary, So Help Me God, in the In Cinemas column on 13 December. But here are a few thoughts on the other features that have been on view:-

ANGEL FACE.
Two features in the 2019 line-up centre on young daughters coping with the unpredictable antics of their single mothers. Despite the presence of the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard, however, Vanessa Filho's feature bow is vastly inferior to Noémie Lvovsky's Tomorrow and Thereafter. First seen staggering home after another night on the tiles, Marlène (Marion Cotillard) clambers into bed beside eight year-old daughter Elli (Ayline Aksoy-Etaix) in search of solace. However, having behaved atrociously on her wedding day to Jean (Stéphane Rideau), Marlène disappears with a new man and Elli is left to fend for herself somewhere on the French Riviera after befriending Julio (Alban Lenoir), a former cliff diver who has issues with the father who lives in Elli's building. 

While Aksoy-Etaix proves quite a find, Cotillard gives an erratic performance (even by the standards of her character), as Filho spends the entire picture judging her maternal failings without making the slightest effort to explore the reasons for her alcoholism and her need to destroy every good thing about her life. Cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman makes solid use of the environs and a fairground sequence is unsettlingly evocative. The scenes in which Aksoy-Etaix tries to convince social services that Cotillard is coping are also touching (albeit overly familiar from numerous recent social realist tracts on pre-teen daughters holding homes together). But Filho has nothing new to add to the discussion and struggles to rein in Cotillard and keep a lid on the soap operatics. 

BLACK TIDE.
Since making an impressive start with The Dreamlife of Angels (1998), Érick Zonca has meandered slightly with Le Petit voleur (1999) and his English-language debut, Julia (2008). However, he throws down a gauntlet with this bruising noir policier, which pitches dishevelled alcoholic detective François Visconti (Vincent Cassel) into a darkly twisting case, after Solange Arnault (Sandrine Kiberlain) reports the disappearance of her teenage son, Dany. She cares for her Down Syndrome daughter, Marie (Lauréna Thellier), while husband Raphaël (Jérôme Pouly) is away at sea. But, when he returns, he starts receiving letters from his son that have been written by Yann Bellaile (Romain Duris), Dany's onetime tutor who lives in the same building with his trusting wife, Lola (Élodie Bouchez).

In adapting Dror Mishani's novel, The Missing File, Zonca and co-writer Lou de Fanget Signolet push their luck with the surfeit of twists in the last reel. Moreover, they ask us to accept that a cop as out of control as Visconti (whose estranged teenage son is involved with a banelieue drug gang) would be retained on a case in which he not only oversteps the mark with Solange, but also allows his contempt for the smug Bellaile (who sees himself as a great writer in waiting) to cloud his judgement. But, with Vincent Cassel channelling his inner Hank Quinlan (or Nicolas Cage), this makes for grimly compelling viewing. Kiberlain and Duris are equally arresting, while Italian cinematographer Paolo Carnera casts Pigalle and the forest-abutted tenement block in menacingly murky shadows that that never quite obscure the fact that this is also a little unhinged and detached from real life. 

DIANE HAS THE RIGHT SHAPE.
A decade after producing his first short, Fabien Gorgeart makes a decent feature debut with this distinctive dramedy, which centres on Diane (Clotilde Hesme), a thirtysomething misfit who has decided to turn her back on the bright lights of Paris and renovate the country cottage she has inherited from her grandparents while acting as a surrogate mother to gay best friend Thomas (Thomas Suire), and his highly strung partner, Jacques (Gregory Montel). She strikes up a friendship with electrician Fabrizio (Fabrizio Rongione), who teaches her some martial arts moves and pops her shoulder back into place when it keeps dislocating. However, in falling for Diane, Fabrizio struggles to cope with her unconventional take on life and finds himself drifting away from her as he due date approaches. 

Affectingly played and nicely designed and photographed by Cyril Gomez-Mathieu and Thomas Bataille, Gorgeart's story shifts emotional tone with disarming effect, as Clotilde Hesme goes from mockngly flirting with a stranger in a nightclub in the opening sequence to enjoying the physical nature of her fling with Fabrizio Rongione and realising that the pain she feels on hurting her shoulder will be nothing compared to the experience of giving birth and handing over the child who has been part of her for nine months. The bond between Hesme and the potential parents isn't particularly well established, but Gorgeart capably captures the summer idyll and the fact that Hesme fails to realise the depth of the impact she is having on the deceptively sensitive Rongione. 

FAKE TATTOOS.
Having made a clutch of shorts, as well as the 2014 documentary, La Génération Porn, Quebecois Pascal Plante graduates to features with this engagingly off-centre first love story that brings pink-haired Mag (Rose-Marie Perreault) into the orbit of aspiring tattoo artist Théo (Anthony Therrien) after they meet on his 18th birthday in a café after a thrash metal concert in Montreal. They tumble into bed and become unexpectedly inseparable, even though they appear to have little in common. She lives with her accepting mother (Nicole-Sylvie Lagarde) and adoring younger sister (Léona Rousseau), but he has a tougher time with a nagging mother (Brigitte Poupart) and the knowledge that he is soon going to live with his sister (Lysandre Nadeau) in La Pocatière, as a result of a drunken escapade with his best friend, Kev (Rémi Goulet), that left him in a wheelchair. 

The drift into Théo's backstory proves slightly enervating, as the film's undoubted strength lies in the chemistry between Anthony Therrien and Rose-Marie Perreault, as they try to work out whether they can be a couple while devoting so much time and energy to being individuals. With his shock of hair and facial fuzz, Therrien makes a genial outsider, who is enchanted by Perreault's zest and her unexpected vulnerability when she sings him a song on her guitar. Vincent Allard's nimble camerawork conveys the excitement and hesitancy of being young and in love, while Plante's dialogue is as amusingly sincere as his obvious affection for his protagonists, whose long-distance sign-off is quite delightful. 

GASPARD AT THE WEDDING.
In following up Cold Showers (2005) and Happy Few (2010), Antony Cordier concocts a quirky blend of domestic comedy and melancholic melodrama in a prodigal son saga that opens with 25 year-old Gaspard (Felix Moati) meeting Laura (Laetitia Dosch) when she randomly joins a group of activists chaining themselves to the railway line. Agreeing to pose as Gaspard's girlfriend at the wedding between his father, Max (Johan Heldenberg), and his longtime partner, Peggy (Marina Foïs), Laura quickly discovers that her new acquaintance's brother, Virgil (Guillaume Gouix), is fighting a losing battle in trying to keep the family zoo going, while Gaspard harbours some highly complex feelings for his younger sister, Coline (Christa Théret), who struts around the grounds in a bear skin. 

Opting not to join the debate about the morality of zoos, Cordier and co-scenarists Julie Peyr and Nathalie Naje focus instead on people in captivity, as Gaspard returns home after a prolonged exile in Brussels. Clearly Gouix resents having been forced to support his unpredictable father at the expense of his own dreams, while Théret has remained in a state of arrested emotional development. Yet, despite the incestuous subtext, this is an affirmationally offbeat picture that makes atmospheric use of its unusual setting and amusingly confronts the footloose (and typically excellent) Laetitia Dosch with the realisation that she may not be as wildly eccentric as she seems. 

GUY.
Echoes of Xavier Giannoli's Gérard Depardieu vehicle, The Singer (2006), can be heard throughout Alex Lutz's sophomore directorial outing (after Le Talent de les amis, 2015), which has earned him César nominations for Best Film, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay. Best known as a chameleonic character creator, Lutz excels as Guy Jamet, a septuagenarian pop star whose tour to promote an album of cover versions is being filmed by Gauthier (Tom Dingler), who has just learned from his mother (Brigitte Roüan) that Jamet is his father following a one-night stand in Tours. While he still enjoys his moments in the spotlight, however, Jamet is content to ride his horses at the country retreat he shares with current paramour, Sophie (Pascale Arbillot), a much younger and cosily ditzy TV actress.

Whether glad-handing on the chat show circuit, posing for selfies with his adoring fans or letting slip attitudes that expose him as a yesterday man, Jamet is so convincingly played by the 39 year-old Lutz that it's easy to forget he's a fictional construct. The pastiche chansons composed by Vincent Blanchard and Romain Greffe are splendid, as are Jamet's kitschy duets with Kris-Eva (Marina Hands) and Anne-Marie (Élodie Bouchez), the latter of whom was the love of his life (played in later life by Dani) and the mother of the estranged son, whom he meets for a touching bistro reunion that helps bring Gauthier's feelings for this newfound father into sharper focus. Cannily scripted by Lutz, Thibault Segouin and Anaïs Deban, and laced with knowing nostalgia, this celebrity satire may not take the mockumentary into unchartered territory. But it provides Lutz with a marvellous showcase and he takes full advantage.

KEEP AN EYE OUT.
Although best known in his native France for his musical incarnation as Mr Oizo, Quentin Dupieux has also written and directed several features under his own name, although UK audiences haven't had much chance to see Nonfilm (2002), Steak (2007), Rubber (2010), Wrong (2012), Wrong Cops (2013) and Reality (2014). They will be keen to catch up after this kooky policier, however, which centes on the ordeal faced by Fugain (Grégoire Ludig) after he voluntarily comes to a police station to testify about finding a stranger in a pool of blood outside his apartment building and witnesses the freak set square demise of one-eyed cop Philippe (Marc Fraize) during a break in his unconventional interrogation by Commissaire Buron (Benoît Poelvoorde).

Largely confined to a single set, this would make an amusing stage play, as Furgain hides the corpse in a locker and hopes that it's not detected by either Buron, cleaner Champonin (Philippe Duquesne) or Fugain's anxious wife, Fiona (Anaïs Demoustier). However. Dupieux (who also acts as his own cinematographer and editor) makes crafty use of an extended series of flashbacks to question Fugain's innocence. The byplay between Ludig and Poelvoorde is brisk and bizarre, while cameos from fellow directors Michel Hazanavicius and Alain Chabat add to the left-field fun, along with the astute references to Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and Claude Miller's Garde à Vue (1981). 

LET THE GIRLS PLAY.
In 1968, Pierre Geoffroy, a sports journalist on Union de Reims, decided to defy the French footballing authorites (which had disbanded the women's league in the 1930s) by putting together a female team to play in an exhibition match. The stunt resulted in an upsurge of interest that saw the game flourish and, later this year, France will host the Women's World Cup. Co-scripting with Jean-Christophe Bouzy and Claude Le Pape, Julien Hallard puts a fictional spin on the story in a feature debut that owes more than the odd debt to Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham (2002), as womanising hack Paul Coutard (Max Boublil) hatches the idea to form a woman's football team during the annual charity fair organised by his newspaper, Le Champenois.

Initially, he is reluctant to accept the assistance of underling Emmanuelle Bruno (Vanessa Guide). But, when he discovers that she is the daughter of Giacomo Bruno (Luca Zingaretti), a stalwart of the great Stade Reims team that played Real Madrid in the 1956 and 1959 European Cup Finals, Coutard has a change of heart and vows to force FA chairman Michel Leroux (Renaud Rutten) into sanctioning women's football. Subplots involving Coutard and Emmanuelle's on-off romance, the boorish husband of Raymonde Deuquet (Carole Franck) and the over-protective farmer brothers of Annie Leroy (Zoé Héran) keep things ticking over between the team's matches and the stand-offs with the chauvinist suits. It couldn't be any more predictable. But this is also entertaining, inspirational and extremely timely. 

TOMORROW AND THEREAFTER.
During the course of her 30-year directing career, Noémie Lvovsky has produced such fine films as Life Doesn't Scare Me (1999), Feelings (2003) and Camille Unwinds (2012). But nothing has seemed quite as personal as this affecting drama that has been dedicated to a beloved mother whom Lvovsky has described as often being `a little somewhere else'. She takes the part of a loving, but easily distracted woman who buys wedding dresses on impulse and frets in meetings with the school counsellor (India Hair) about minor grammatical slips. Such quirks only further endear her to her nine year-old daughter, Mathilde (Luce Rodriguez), who takes such things in her stride, despite the occasional resort to Skype for paternal reassurance (Mathieu Amalric). Mathilde has her own foibles, as she buries the school anatomy skeleton in the woods and has conversations with her pet owlet (Micha Lescot). But after her mother gets it into her head that they have to move out of their cosy Paris apartment, Mathilde realises that she needs more than filial empathy.

A coda involving the adult Mathilde (Anaïs Demoustier) dancing in the rain with her mother in the grounds of her care home feels a bit strained. Moreover, in attempting to create a fairytale feel, Lvovsky and co-scenarist Florence Seyvos also come close to presenting mental illness as a beguiling state of grace. However, their use of John Everett Millais's Pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia and Alela Diane's song `Oh My Mama' is much more astute, while the debuting Luce Rodriguez is simply superb as the self-reliant child, whose delight at her strigine friendship and the chance to sing at a school concert is a joy to behold. Lvovsky and the ever-dependable Amalric provide deft support in a story that slips easily between merriment and melancholy, while also making cogent points about the difficulty of functioning when reality no longer makes any sense.