Esther Kahn

The English-language debut of French director Arnaud Desplechin, Esther Kahn charts the ascension of a lower-class Jewish girl from a turn-of-the-century London ghetto to one of the stage's leading actresses. Esther (Summer Phoenix) feels set apart from her large, raucous family, who are all ...more

The titular heroine of Arnaud Desplechin's enigmatic film is a poor, unsophisticated woman from London's Jewish ghetto who becomes an unlikely stage star. Set in the gray gloom of the Industrial Age, Desplechin's film recalls antecedents as disparate as Martin Scorsese's Age of Innocence and François Truffaut's Wild Child while stubbornly remaining its own breed. In a performance that divided critics, Summer Phoenix plays Esther as a force of nature, a volatile blend of primal instinct and ...more