Set Me Free

Set Me Free is a 1999 Canadian coming-of-age drama film by Léa Pool and starring Karine Vanasse. It tells the story of Hanna, a girl struggling with her sexuality and the depression of both her parents as she goes through puberty in Quebec in 1963. The film heavily references the French new-wave film Vivre sa vie by Jean-Luc Godard. The film won critical acclaim and several awards, both for Pool and Vanasse, including being named the year's best Canadian feature by the Toronto Film Critics Association. Plot In 1963, Hanna, a 13-year old girl, is living on a farm in rural Quebec with her grandparents and uncle (who apparently has a developmental disability such as Down Syndrome) when she gets her first period. Soon after, she interrupts family dinner when her father calls her, much to her grandmother's annoyance. The onset of puberty (and her grandmother's relatively non-supportive explanation of it), as well as hearing from her father, trigger her decision to return to her parents in Montreal. Hanna is welcomed back by her brother, Paul, to the small family apartment, where the rent is often overdue, sometimes paid with cash raised from pawning household items. Hanna's father is an aspiring poet, a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust in France. Although overbearing and even sometimes abusive to his wife and children, he can show love and tenderness as well. Hoping to connect with his daughter, he encourages her to read The Diary of Anne Frank and speaks about his former wife who had been killed by the Nazis, but he also acts intolerant and demanding. Hanna's mother is depressive, working overtime in a sewing factory to make ends meet but also spending hours at home typing the poems her husband dictates to her. Though often angry with him, Hanna's mother also confesses that she needs him. On rare occasions when she has time and energy to connect with her daughter, she stops short of going into more meaningful detail.