The film was born of a feeling, rather than an actual story," says Anne Villacèque of Petite Chérie (Little Darling), one of a record 11 films in the Directors Fortnight contending for Caméra d'Or honours. Born in 1963, in Toulouse, Villacèque had previously directed two documentaries on the same theme that leaned towards a fictional treatment.

Trois Histoires D'Amour De Vanessa (Three Stories Of Vanessa In Love, 1996), which was awarded the Prix Jean Lods for young talent, focuses on a teenage girl's education. Les Infortunes De La Vertu (The Misfortunes Of Virtue, 1998) takes its title from the first philosophy essay by new university students. Both were co-productions with Arte France Cinema, as is forthcoming documentary Marrakech-Toronto, Un Aller Simple (Marrakesh-Toronto, One-Way Ticket).

"I felt a fiction film would allow me to approach similar subject matter differently," says Villacèque, "by expressing a hidden, negative side. So Petite Chérie is firstly the embodiment of violent and diffuse feelings: the anxiety of loneliness, the loathing of an indistinct family group, the fascination for ordinary or disturbing details."

The film was inspired by an item in a newspaper that "stuck in my mind and then altered itself over the months and years without my ever trying to check on the exact events," she says.

Petite Chérie is the story of 30-year-old Sybille (Corinne Debonniére), a woman given to romantic dreams and still living with her dull parents. One day, she looks up from her novel to gaze into the eyes of Victor (Jonathan Zaccaï), a passing lothario, falls passionately in love with him and takes him home. Her parents, too, are entranced by the stranger ­ so he moves in. Nothing is too good for Victor. Soon her mother is changing the décor of her beauty parlour, and her father is being led by the nose into a shady business deal. Eventually, Sybille decides she has to act to save her illusions and her new found happiness.

Ron Holloway