It takes a lifetime, an escape.
You have to keep re-doing it.

Benoîte Groult

Whilst the name Coline Serreau brings to mind her hilarious social com­edy hits, Chaos marks a clean break. From the very first images, violence lends a more sombre slant to this comedy, which is more ironic than funny. It boils over with a rage rarely seen in previous work. By focusing on female characters, more like apparitions in her earlier films – often unforgettable for their outbursts of despair, but secondary – it’s as if a new power emerges from her filmmaking.
The trio, spanning three generations, is made up of Noémie/Malika (Rachida Brakni), a young sex worker on the run; Hélène (Catherine Frot), a bourgeois wife who walks out on her husband, Paul (Vincent Lindon) and his unbear­able son; and Mamie (Line Renaud), a neglected grandmother. The said trio forms a powerful sisterhood. Serreau thus escapes the classic “white saviour” story: these three women save one an­other; by helping each other, they avenge patriarchal violence.
Whilst Coline Serreau often presents a gently mocking view of men, here, they are layered with flaws: the authoritarian Algerian father, the pimps from Eastern Europe, the privileged white bourgeois, feeble and spineless, his shallow son, the misogynistic cops… Standing up to them and against them are these united wom­en, radiant and determined to wreak chaos in the prevailing world order.

Wafa Ghermani