Lucie Borleteau’s emotionally complex and fascinating film challenges traditional notions of gender roles as it chronicles a sexually liberated female sailor’s voyage of self-discovery after she takes a job aboard an old sea freighter.

Alice (Ariane Labed, in a wonderfully free-spirited performance) is a sailor. A woman adrift in a seemingly male-orientated world. While her adoring partner Félix waits for her on land, she takes a job aboard a rickety old freighter - The Fidelio as a last minute replacement when the crew’s mechanic is killed in an accident. As the distance between them grows, the discovery in her quarters of the journal of the dead man she’s replaced (in which he details his various dalliances in every other port) awakens desires and emotions that are not so different to her own. Is that aspect of a sailor’s life exclusive to men? Perhaps this dilemma is what triggers her own slide back into the arms of the ship’s captain, a former lover, despite her intentions to remain faithful as the intensity of short-term passion proves irresistible.

Labed won the best actress award at the Locarno Film Festival and this powerful depiction of a young woman dealing with life aboard an all-male crew and the swell and pitch of complex romantic feelings never once strays off course.

• The screenings of Fidelio: Alice’s Journey on Tue 6 Oct are part of our Cinébites deal: Get 30% off any main dish in the Café/Bar with a valid cinema ticket.

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