Pierre Jallaud's works deal with the underprivileged people , the disabled children ("une infinie tendresse" and the unwed moms (this movie) ;this is not rebellious cinema , it's just a look at misfortunes ,without taking sides.
"la chaise vide" : the title "the empty chair" tells it all : this is the place of the father , a photographer who disappeared in Angola ,who left a woman waiting , still waiting , who thinks he might be back some day.
All that concerns the mother/son relationship is excellent, a depiction of all the work a mom left alone has to do to raise her endearing little boy ;always humming a tune without words ,when she cooks or cleans after her work and her daily subway ; the stories she tells him are smartly introduced ,and some sunshine breaks through in this small sad flat. No dramatization , no pathos, no melodrama , humdrum ,routine life , a slow-moving film which may off-putting to some;hence it commercial failure.
The heroine has a small circle of friends and she falls for a musician (played by Maxime Le Forestier , a pop singer and the only known name in the cast) , but his post-May 68 looks seems terribly dated today .
And her job remains vague ;she does not seem to work that much ,and what can we say of the father? He's not a working class hero but a photographer who travels around the world,not exactly an underdog . He did not know his lover was pregnant ,but when he left for the broader horizons of Africa , he left her in her seedy apartment all the same !
My feelings are mixed.
