Playlist

In this delightful slacker story, a young Parisian comic-book artist is on the hunt for stability, a career, self-confidence, love – but nothing seems to go her way.

Waitress and would-be graphic novelist Sophie lucks into a job as an assistant at a comic-book publisher despite lacking the requisite qualifications. Approaching 30, she feels her career is finally taking off, but then she falls pregnant and her boyfriend refuses to raise the child with her. This forces Sophie to leave her dream job and go back to waiting tables with her aspiring-actress friend Julia (played by a spirited Laetitia Dosch) until she figures things out.

Nine Antico, herself a graphic novelist and illustrator, makes her feature directorial debut with this shaggy comedy-drama that captures the profound travails of daily life for young people in the French capital: riding the packed Métro, fielding queries from overzealous parents, sometimes-philosophical heart-to-hearts with pals, the perennial pressures of rent and bedbugs. Filmed in black-and-white and pieced together from scenes both intimate and fleeting – including a running gag on Daniel Johnston’s True Love Will Find You in the End – Playlist charms with an insouciant vibe that falls somewhere between Frances Ha (MIFF 2013), Clerks and a Richard Linklater hangout movie.

“An inventive, realist and funny feminist work which breathes new life into a conventional genre … approaching painful subjects with plenty of humour and lightness of touch.” – Cineuropa