The middle-aged prostitute that Isabelle Huppert plays in La Vie Promise has the sunken face and knowing stare of a woman who's been behind doors that others never open, and met people on their worst behavior. As the movie begins, her long-abandoned 14-year-old daughter (Maud Forget) comes to visit and stabs a pimp, forcing the two to flee Nice and head into the country, giving Huppert the first opportunity in years to reflect on how she fell so low. While watching Forget repeat the recklessness of her own youth, Huppert decides to retrace her steps, returning to the site of the mental breakdown that originally cost her not only her daughter, but also a husband and young son. Huppert is amazing in La Vie Promise; all steeliness and sorrow, she may be better than the movie deserves. Director Olivier Dahan and screenwriter Agnès Fustier-Dahan pay equal attention to the melodrama and the romanticism of an independent woman on the road, and have made a movie that's gripping at times, but La Vie Promise's style is too slick for the subject matter. The film's sordid side plays better, as when Huppert temporarily sets up shop at a motel with an attached strip club, or when she and Forget hitch a ride with an ex-con escaping his own demons. The scenes are urgent and desperate in a way the rest of the film is not; it's more leisurely, lyrical, and preoccupied with the treacly idea that mistakes can be retroactively corrected through individual courage. Dahan decorates the story with vivid, colorful outdoor photography, demonstrating sensitive deployment of blur and streak and golden-hued shots of wildflowers in rolling fields. But the beauty clashes with Huppert's bruised performance right from the start. La Vie Promise kicks off with descriptions of roses over images of prostitutes working the street, establishing a problematic pattern of too much flora, not enough hustle.