WHAT WE’RE WATCHING: Je m’appelle Agneta: There’s no age limit on rewriting your life story

In Je m’appelle Agneta, a woman’s spontaneous leap into French village life leads to self-discovery, personal growth and a celebration of embracing one’s true self.

Agneta’s husband has blacklisted all things French from their household: French wine, French cheese, and anything that “tastes of France”.

But Agneta can’t resist. She hides a wheel of cheese in the detergent compartment of their washing machine – a ritual that’s clearly part of her routine at this point. And it works. Late at night, she sneaks to the kitchen to claim her stash and indulge in her snacks while watching online videos of French estates.

This is Agneta’s everyday life until, as a consequence of a drunken evening, she ends up on a train to au pair a Swedish boy in France, or so she thinks.

The film, based on the novel by Emma Hamberg, follows recently unemployed Agneta (Eva Melander) who, at 49 years old, accepts an au pairing job in Provence, which not only transforms what she sees as an uninteresting, convenient reality into a French village dreamscape, but also transforms her perception of herself through an unexpectedly beautiful journey of awakening.

Je m’appelle Agneta begins in the way that almost every Netflix adaptation of a novel begins, with a voiceover telling you exactly who the protagonist is, want they desire and why they can’t have it.

This, together with its rapid exposition that has Agneta arriving in France within the film’s first 10 minutes before we can even get to really know her, is a symptom of the kind of narrative structure and devices streamers have been deploying in their originals to pander to viewers’ depleted attention spans.

But this is, fortunately, where its similarities to Netflix’s formulaic productions end.

Panicked and disappointed, Agneta calls her unsupportive husband Magnus to get her back home to Sweden. But something makes her stay (and it’s not just the cheese stalls at the local market).

Je m’appelle Agneta is told through heavily saturated colouring, shot with a fisheye lens. Although distracting at times, the distorted visuals create a world that is both fanciful – a depiction of the supporting characters’ visions of reality – as well as overwhelming – a reflection, perhaps, of Agneta’s own initial discomfort from being surrounded by such whimsical personalities.

The movie’s production design is just as immersive in its constructing a fantastical, near-surreal world, through dazzling colours and bizarre props, including phallic objects in what feels like every corner of the main set.

Yet, by being encouraged to tap into her