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Éléonore Faucher's quietly promising debut makes a noble attempt to revive a sub-genre long thought unfashionable: the old-fashioned "women's picture", with heartbreak and labour pains playing out over a sewing machine. Pregnant teenager Claire (Lola Naymark) struggles to get by in a small corner of rural France. After boredom forces her to quit her supermarket job, Claire finds work with Madame Melikian (Ariane Ascaride), a black-clad seamstress mourning the death of her son in a motorcycle accident.

At the film's heart is an acutely observed and sensitively played relationship between two people very much in need of one another: a mother grieving for a dead child, and a young girl initially hesitant at the prospect of giving birth herself. Claire brings lipstick and pop music into Madame M's workshop; employer gives employee greater confidence in her abilities.

"AN EYE-CATCHING PERFORMANCE FROM NAYMARK"

As the seamstress, the experienced Ascaride isn't the type of actress to let unnecessary sentiment creep into a scene. There's also an eye-catching performance from Naymark - a sort of young French Tori Amos - whose frizzy red mane and lively features come to illuminate the frame.

Faucher can't make the putting-in of hemlines any more fascinating than it is, despite a nasty moment when Claire accidentally rips some fabric. What's striking, though, is how the first-time director marshalls both sound and image with considerable assurance. Along with co-writer Gaëlle Macé, she's also responsible for the year's most agricultural subtitle: "Dad didn't mend the mulcher, so I had to fork-feed the cows."

In French with English subtitles.