I finally got to watch _The Adopted_ and _Galveston_, which are Melanie Laurent's directorial feature debut and her latest feature. She herself is part of the ensemble cast in the former; the latter features Elle Fanning,
Ben Foster, and a cameo by Maria Valverde.

Before I get carried away by her directing/writing work, it is good to be reminded just how extraordinary an actress Laurent is in _The Adopted_. If there are facial acrobatics competitions in the Olympics, she would be on the podium every time.

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_Galveston_ is adapted from Nic ("True Detective") Pizzolatto's novel and screenplay. Apparently the producers specifically contracted Laurent to direct. Pizzolatto declined writing credits, which seems petulant and ungallant -- it is a very good film.

_Galveston_ is incredibly beautiful to look at. She uses color filters (or post-processing palette adjustment?) so that each scene stands from the next, and is color-coded for emotional content. Towards the end there is a bravura
action sequence featuring the hitman Foster's escape from a garment factory full of gangsters out to kill him; much of it is a single hand-held shot, no doubt meant to answer the celebrated "True Detective" season 1 ghetto shoot-out.

Unlike that sequence, _Galveston_ has no racist overtone to it; the story even has a framing device that redeems the hitman in the end. I have reservations about the wall-to-wall country music soundtrack, which seems at odds with the very modern and European sensibility of the cinematography. (I must confess
I hate country music.) Elle Fanning also distracts me. She is Laurent's first and only choice for the role. My take is that she is not up to the complexity. She plays a young prostitute who has a dark past and blood on her hands. Her character requires an actress who go from being catatonic in one scene (after witnessing the violence around her) and dancing the night away in the next.
I just don't think Fanning conveys the desperation that drives her character's contradictions. Foster is appropriately stoic, but Maria Valverde, who stars in Laurent's stunning _Plonger_, steals the film with two scenes as a gun moll. If Laurent takes on this genre film to prove she can direct like a man,
she passes the test with flying colors.

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It is possible that Melanie Laurent is just a freak of nature; in terms of visual mastery, she is as strong as any young director out there. However, many
French actress-turned-directors are more than competent in this department too; there must be a cultural reason. (Not all; I love Sara Forestier as an actress but _M_, which she has directed, is weak.) On the other hand, so many American film-school-grads make absolutely disgusting-looking pictures. Perhaps they don't even know this. I was listening to the cast-and-crew commentary on _Christine_ (starring Rebecca Hall). At one point the director praises himself on one of the tracking shots. It was a perfectly pedestrian shot, and the color scheme is ugly in the extreme! I wonder if this isn't a "David Fincher" effect. Most Fincher films have ugly, uniformly dark and brownish palettes, and critics praise him to the sky for doing that.

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(Spoilers)

_The Adopted_, Laurent's debut, is already visually sophisticated. She uses a lot of short focal length lenses so that the background of many scenes is first blurred and then sharpens into focus. The technique emphasizes the fog-of-war in family conflicts, perhaps? The film is told from the perspectives (if not quiet the points-of-view) of three major characters, in three successive chapters; it has the literary aspiration of one of the sisters who would die.

Lisa (Laurent) and Marine (Marie Denarnaud) are sisters who are best friends, although Marine isn't biologically related. Lisa is a musician and Marine likes
books. One day Alex walks into her bookstore; they are instantly in love and she moves into his apartment. Lisa becomes estranged to both. The Marine has an accident ... The story could have been bogged down by sorrow, but Laurent, who cowrites the screenplay, lightens it with lots of quirky humor. Reading the symposis I thought this is a period piece but the setting is in fact modern.
(In contrast, most of _Galveston_ takes place decades ago.) The film is an auspicious debut; many of the visual and story-telling strengths in her later films can already be glimpsed here.

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