Her Way (2021)

Laure Calamy is superb as a Strasbourg sex-worker who has to move job locations to a more dangerous scene in order to earn more money to help her wayward son in Cecile Ducrocq's very fine drama.

Her Way doesn't shy away from the explicit nature of Laure's job, nor does it shirk the difficulties the work brings with certain individual clients but what marks it out from other films dealing with similar subject matter is that it aims for a very firm focus on Laure herself, not the job she's doing.

Calamy is utterly captivating and shows no hatred of her work (certainly in the opening half where she's working to strict rules and regulations in a place she knows well) but things become much tougher when she needs to earn more money and is forced to cross the border into Germany; even then it's mainly co-workers that offer the problem as oppose to the job.

The situation deteriorates as the Mother-Son relationship grows ever more fractious; despite earning all the money to pay her son's way through a prestigious catering college, he becomes completely disillusioned with his own life and how it's being funded, and things begin to come to a head in the final third.

Her Way also offers no didactic underlying threads meaning that the film appears more authentic, helped on its way by the towering performance from Calamy and a truly humane feel to proceedings.

Her Way ends in the most perfect way possible and arguably the only way it can. I'll refrain from giving anything away, but this is a powerful and truly impressive debut feature from Ducrocq, and there's hopefully much to look forward to from her in the future. 7.8/10