All three films are about people struggling on the margins of society, at
least some of whom resort to crime to survive.

_Queen of Clubs_ hails from almost a decade ago. It is a gripping psychological thriller about crime and some sort of punishment at
the margins of French Society. A thief, his co-dependent sister, and
her lover navigate the aftermath of an accidental manslaughter. The
very underrated Florence Loiret Calle gives a live-wire performance,
drinking, dancing, and clubbing her life away, heedless of the mayhem
around her. (Few Anglo-American actresses can do such instinctive, spontaneous work -- they are just not trained the same way; they
stay still and "poised," let the cinematographer photograph them in
the best light.) Jerome Bonnell directs from his very sparse, lived-in
script in lived-in locations; director and lead actress previously
collaborated in the equally sensitive _Le Chignon d'Olga_. More
recently, Loiret-Calle has done a lot of intriguing work with the
late Solveig Anspach which I haven't gotten to see.

The actress is also sporadically seen in _Last Winter_ (2010), about
a contemporary struggling French farm even farther away from the
geographical center of French cinema (Paris). Her brother in *that*
film comes to an even worse end than in _Queen of Clubs_, lost his
savings and wanders into a snowy oblivion. The question not asked
in these two films, with almost all Caucasian casts, is whether
these poverty-stricken characters are the faces of those who voted
for Marine Le Pen and the anti-immigrant tide.

An all-Caucasian cast also populate _I am a Soldier_. Louise Bourgoin, deglamorized like her protagonist in Nicole Garcia's _Going Away_ but
without the self-confidence or tattoos, plays a young woman who has
not found a job in 8 months. She slinks back to her mother's place
already overcrowded with her unemployed sister her own barely employed
husband. Bourgoin's attempt to hide her bags, her poverty, and shame in
the dog kennel ultimately fails. Her kind but haggard, penny-pinching
mother sends her to her uncle (Jean-Hugues Anglade) who has her cleaning
dog pens. But his puppy business turns out to be a hugely profitable
(if illegal) trade. She showers rich gifts on her family, to the horror
of her mother. At a rendezvous with East European dog-smugglers, she
is almost arrested. Guilt-ridden, she makes an almost suicidal attempt
to escape.

This is not quite Kornel Mundruczo's _White God_ -- the punishment
comes from men, not canines -- but the sense of opression by poverty,
and the sheer mental and physical stress of maintaining one's dignity
in difficult financial times, is palpable in every scene. Bourgoin
is more restrained in this role of a wall-flower loner, but her
willingness to take on and ability to breathe life into social
outcasts are impressive. The actress, apparently once a real-life weather-girl, has gone far beyond her _Girl from Monaco_ ingenue
beginnings. She is now a powerful actress, and carries far more
authenticity than Marion Cottilard. She should be better known in
the U.S.

_Moonlight_ is the best of these films. No Caucasian protagonists
here, and thankfully none of the black-versus-white, liberal-versus -conservative, atheist-versus-christian antagonism that rile up
critics and sells tickets these days either. In all these films, the
political is very personal indeed. One hopes that these characters
will find more in common with each other, in their circumstances
and common humanity, than the irreconcilable differences pundits
attribute to them.

The cast is very good, including Naomie Harris (Money Penny of James
Bond fame) as the cocaine-addicted mother of the gay protagonist
played successively by Allex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante
Rhodes. Director Barry Jenkins said in interviews that he is strongly influenced by Wong Kar-Wai and Claire Denis. Some of the homage
moments can be jarring, but the directing is really quite first
rate. This is a film I should have seen on the big screen.

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