Your Axelle Ropert needs you

Dave White

14 Jul 2025 — 1 min read

If you have the Criterion Channel, I'd advise you to get into the Axelle Ropert quartet of films right now, as they disappear from that streamer after July 31, 2025.

Ropert is a French film critic/filmmaker and her work fully realizes the small moments of human relationships. Of her four features – THE WOLBERG FAMILY (2009), MISS AND THE DOCTORS (2013), THE APPLE OF MY EYE (2016), and PETITE SOLANGE (2022) – not one of them shouts at you for your attention. They move like life moves, quietly observing families and friendships – both being built and dissolving – prioritizing nuance, and ignoring dramatic tidiness.

Time for only one? Choose PETITE SOLANGE for its fully formed presentation of a teenage girl coming to understand the fractures in her parents' marriage, and young actor Jade Springer's perfectly economical performance that, gesture by gesture, takes her from bright-eyed to downcast.

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This newsletter is called SLUGGISH. The name was chosen after a variety of other options that were even worse. When I began writing professionally, editors hired me to write about music, art, fashion, film, television, and food. That was fun. I wrote about The Spice Girls, wrestling, doom metal, porn

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