Writer and director Martin Provost's film of the life of trailblazing French novelist Violette Leduc (In the Prison of Her Skin, The Bastard) is elegant and epic, overflowing with fascinating period detail and poignant depictions of the volatile human condition. It instantly earns its place among the finest literary film biographies, including The Brontë Sisters and An Angel at My Table. As the film begins, the Second World War is raging, and Violette (Emmanuelle Devos) earns a living trading contraband. She lives in the countryside with writer, dubious entrepreneur, and general rogue Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py). Theirs is an uneasy truce. She loves or at least covets him. He is gay. They adore, intrigue, and despise one another in almost equal measure. He quietly slips away and out of her life one morning, but not before encouraging her to write to exorcise her personal demons, many of which stem from her distant mother and an absent father who never recognized her as his child. As the war draws to a close, she finds herself in Paris. In the city, her writing ushers her into a now-iconic sphere of authors, philosophers, and raconteurs. She forges a particularly profound bond with Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain). The formidable existential feminist champions Violette's writing even as early sales prove tepid, and Violette in turn falls in love with Simone, the complications of which intensify her already-vast capacity for despair and self-doubt.

This film understands how to fit a life story into the time and space provided by a feature film of a reasonable length. It does not start at Violette's birth nor does it end with her death, and it is not afraid to embrace ellipses or let the significance of certain details or gestures slowly come into focus. What it does perfectly is reveal the soul of its subject. The intimacy achieved is nothing short of magical, and it is important considering Violette is a character who, from the outside, could simply register as hard, unpleasant, and prone to incomprehensible mood swings. Her highs are as euphoric for us as they are for her, and her lows as devastating. The film also finds visual and aural ways, including sparing, but revealing use of voice-over, to depict Violette's creativity and mental processes, both when the insights and phrases are gushing forth and when she fears she is finished as a writer. Anyone who tries (or has tried) to express themselves with a pen or a keyboard will find the rush and the frustration highly recognizable.

The two central performances are monumental. In the paragraph above, I praised the way the film lays bare the emotional and intellectual complexity of Violette, and the committed and ferocious Emmanuelle Devos deserves a significant percentage of the credit. She is one of contemporary French cinema's finest talents, and this may be her best performance to date, eclipsing her astonishing turn a decade ago in the masterpiece Kings & Queen. Her inhabiting of Violette is a marvel. Every smile, syllable, tear, and tic is distinctive and enlightening. Superb, too, is Sandrine Kiberlain as Simone de Beauvoir. She plays her as a figure both stern and sensitive, able to flay when pushed and gently foster when inspired. Even when blended with confusion or fatigue, her compassion for Violette as a person (and depth of conviction regarding her authorial ability) is always crisp and vivid. Together, Devos and Kiberlain create one of the most touching and intricate on-screen female friendships in recent memory. Also of note in a more modest role is Olivier Gourmet. His character is a curious and, in his own way, important footnote to 20th-century French literature: perfume-industry magnate Jacques Guérin used his wealth to encircle himself with such chic, influential minds as De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and also to rescue and collect manuscripts, including many by Marcel Proust. Gourmet's portrayal of him as a friendly, shy, and nerdy acolyte is sweetly charming.

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