Cinema. We saw "Differente," the moving portrait of fragility under the gaze of Lola Doillon.

Lola Doillon has created a delicate, cliché-free film about autism. Starring Jehnny Beth

An anti-Rain Man . It is a little unfair, restrictive, to define this subtle fiction that is "Different" by opposing it to another film. However, autistic characters have not so often occupied the leading roles in cinema and here, the director Lola Doillon, whose fourth feature film this is, offers an approach radically removed from the autistic "savant" played by Dustin Hoffman in the late 1980s, whose disorder manifested itself in a spectacular way.

Katia, a 35-year-old documentalist (a moving Jehnny Beth), doesn't know, in the first part of the film, that she is autistic. She is aware that a difference isolates her from others and complicates her relationship with reality. This gap translates daily into excessive anxiety, extreme meticulousness at work, unfiltered frankness, and panic attacks when the pressure seems too suffocating. "You're not the easiest girl, are you!" a colleague mocks. Tenderly, because however alone she may be, Katia, surly but incapable of doing the slightest harm, is loved.

One day, a news report leads her to meet an association that brings together autistic families. She discovers, through the connections she makes with this group, particularly with doctors, that she herself suffers from autism. This late diagnosis is a crushing blow, and in a way a liberation. Katia can put a word on her difference, learn to accept it, to live with it, even in her love affair with the endearing Fred (Thibaut Evrard).

The direction is restrained and understated. A bit too much, some style lovers might say. Lola Doillon undoubtedly wanted to avoid any kind of drama, and above all to view Katia with modesty and respect. From a subject that is difficult because it's prone to clichés, she creates a human, intelligent film that highlights a little-known fact: autism is often discovered later in women than in men.

"Different," by Lola Doillon, starring Jehnny Beth and Thibaut Evrard. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, released June 11.