The face

This film's lead acting is one of the reason I think this movie was successful at inflicting pain on it's viewers. Next to Gollum, I haven't seen such an expressive face in a film when it comes to accumulated suffering or pain. It's like she's an incarnation of "The Scream" painting's character. I think roles like this must be tough to pull off without lending themselves to parody. I blundered into this film as Im trying to learn French so Im going through lots of French language films, and I don't understand why people like melodrama, I wouldn't have watched this one if I knew what I was in for.
I think when it comes to life and sadness, film and drama in general is much more suited to bittersweetness. Like some of Wes Anderson's work, Jean Renoir, Truffaut,director of Kings and Queen and A Christmas Tale.
You need to have some distance, I think movies should either entertain,bring joy,offer new perceptions,explore ideas and art using its unique format, or bring beauty in some way, or you've crossed the boundary into soap opera territory, and I don't know why a director would want to go there.
In the film she stands in front of a giant painting by an less known painter depicting suffering, her friend then takes her by the hand and brings her over to another painting, one of a pretty girl and says he likes that painting better. Given that directors usually don't put things in for no reason, I wonder....