La Belle Verte

Mila comes from a distant planet where people live in balance with nature and with one another. Sent as part of an intergalactic mission to make contact with Earth, a planet other civilisations have written off, she volunteers for the journey and lands in Paris. There she meets the doctor Max, his family and a range of ordinary people, and through them she encounters a society organised around technology and routine. Mila has an unusual effect on those she meets: she can loosen the hold the system has over them, so that they start behaving as they really are, often to absurd effect. The film is a comedy that contrasts an imagined harmonious way of life with modern urban existence in France.

Coline Serreau directed and wrote the screenplay, with Alain Sarde producing. Serreau also plays Mila, and the cast includes Vincent Lindon as Max, James Thierrée, Marion Cotillard, Claire Keim and Samuel Tasinaje. It followed Serreau's earlier features Three Men and a Cradle, released in 1985, and The Crisis, from 1992, as her third film as director.

Released in France in September 1996, La Belle Verte runs 99 minutes. It has a lasting following: on IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1 from around 6,200 votes, and on TMDB it rates 7.2 from roughly 292 votes, an unusually small audience sample for a film of its age, suggesting its reputation has spread more by word of mouth than through wide distribution.