The Promised Life (2004)

Sylvia is a prostitute in Nice, with a self-protective talent for blocking out huge chunks of her past. When her 14-year-old daughter, Laurence, skips out on foster care to see her biological mom, Sylvia is rudely dismissive. In an episode of bad timing, Laurence ends up stabbing a pimp in Sylvia's apartment. Estranged mother and daughter beat a hasty retreat heading north via train, bus and the kindness of strangers to reunite with the husband and 8-year-old son she skipped out on after the boy's birth landed her in a psychiatric hospital. Sylvia's heartbreaking and perhaps impossible goal is nothing short of trying to put all the things that have come apart in her life back together again.