Rude journée pour la reine (1973)
Directed by René Allio

Film Synopsis

For Jeanne, life has become one never-ending round of disappointments.  How foolish she must have been, as a little girl, to think that one day she would be a film star or a princess!  Things like that don't happen to people of her class, people who spend their entire lives struggling to make ends meet and living on rundown estates in the suburbs.  Jeanne still has her daydreams, her extravagant flights of fancy, but these have become a kind of palliative to get her through her uneventful days.  And she needs all the palliative she can get, sharing a grotty house in an even grottier part of town with her partner Albert, her parents, her sister Mathilde and her mother-in-law Catherine.  And then there is Julien, Albert's son from a previous disastrous relationship - it is left to Jeanne to bring him up and keep him out of trouble.  That in itself is a full-time job.

To think that Albert once had a respectable career!  Now he works as a lowly night watchman in a shopping mall - a humiliating step down.  Julien has never had a particularly harmonious relationship with his father, but Albert has good reason to be angry when his wayward son manages to get Annie - a girl he barely knows - pregnant.  The girls' parents, a pair of decent shopkeepers, refuse to let the lad come anywhere near their daughter.  Julien continues his campaign of adolescent rebellion by stealing a car and getting himself arrested.  Jeanne is hardly surprised when her partner forbids any member of the family from contacting his son whilst he is in prison.  After his release a year later, Julien appeals to Jeanne to take a letter from him to Annie.  In her fanciful desire to bring about the happy ending for Julien and his girlfriend, Jeanne does all that she can...