Australia's touring French Film Festival gets bigger every year. The number of screenings in Sydney alone has doubled from 99 in 2007 to nearly 200 this year. That's a testament to the high demand for French cinema here: many screenings sell out despite high ticket prices ($17.50 + booking fee) and ugly marketing materials. That's roughly 80,000 tickets sold (in 2009), impressive by any standard.
In recent years it seems the program has improved somewhat, and by that I mean diversified. It's also great to see more guests making the trip to interact with local audiences (Deneuve in 2008, Jugnot last year). Confirmed so far are Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose Micmacs is the opening night film, and Philippe Lioret whose Welcome you should not miss.
Jacques Audiard's masterpiece A Prophet is not part of the line-up since it's getting a theatrical release in Australia on Feb 11, while Claire Denis' White Material screens everywhere except Sydney, indicating a likely selection at June's Sydney Film Festival. I'm hoping the same can be said of Patrice Chereau's much-anticipated Persecution, starring Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
For more French flicks see also 2010: A French cinema preview in 12 posters.
Below are 6 I've seen and 6 I'm dying to see (I'm not even mentioning the new Resnais and the new Chabrol, they're a given).
Below are 6 I've seen and 6 I'm dying to see (I'm not even mentioning the new Resnais and the new Chabrol, they're a given).
6 I'VE ALREADY SEEN
WELCOME
An early candidate for best European film of the year, Welcome succeeds both as a moving drama and as a political call to arms. Reminiscent of Winterbottom's In This World in its refusal to sentimentalize (and thus trivialize) the hardships faced by refugees, the new film by Philippe Lioret packs a mighty punch.
Nominated for 10 Cesars, Welcome tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a depressed middle-aged French man and a 17 year-old Kurdish boy trying to make his way across the Channel to England. Set against a backdrop of racial tension and Sarkozy's hard-nosed immigration policies, the film benefits hugely from the sobriety of its approach, from its discreet, cinema-verite direction and Vincent Lindon's restrained performance. Welcome emerges unscathed from a perilous balancing act: drawing the viewer into its engrossing fictional narrative without simplifying the issue or coming off as naive.
ANYTHING FOR HER
With no legal means left to him, a high school teacher devises a daring plan to rescue his wrongfully imprisoned wife from jail. Unlike most films adhering to such formulaic loglines, Pour Elle is not rich in twists and turns, nor does it chart the transformation of an ordinary man into a vigilante (the new trend in American thillers these days). Instead, it sits at the intersection of the personal and the political, examining how by giving up all the things which make his family a typical, ordinary one, this man breaks the shackles of conformity and discovers a brand of personal freedom he never thought existed.
If you're not yet tired of Vincent Lindon (who seems to be in half the films in the festival) not put off by the terrible title, this little thriller should definitely be on your list.
OSS 117: LOST IN RIO
Following the huge success of its predecessor, OSS 117: Nest of Spies, this new send up of De Gaulle-era spy thrillers plays like a French Austin Powers. Built around the charisma and comic timing of Jean Dujardin, the film is a globe-trotting James Bond spoof with a distinct Gallic flavour. This time the action unfolds in Rio, an excuse for skimpy outfits and breathtaking scenery. It's frequently funny, though if you've seen the original, the joke begins to wear a little thin.
LOL
A huge hit in France last year, this coming of age romantic comedy hit all the right mainstream notes, showing that Americans don't have the monopoly on formulaic storytelling (though they will have the last word in this case since it's currently being remade in the US with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus in the leads).
LOL charts the parallel love lives of a divorced mom (Sophie Marceau) and her teen-aged daughter, two charismatic characters the target audience will have no problems identifying with. Claiming to have its finger firmly on the pulse - if the title makes you cringe, you're not the target market - this is a charmingly vacuous affair that's hard to hate if you're a teenager or care for one, hard to enjoy if you're anyone else.
SKIRT DAY
Isabelle Adjani makes a comeback of sorts with this provocative but flawed black comedy. She plays a high school teacher who - in the middle of a nervous breakdown - takes her class hostage, becoming a media phenomenon in the process. Topical in its depiction of the stress and violence present in modern day classrooms, the film is a brutal exploration of sexual and racial politics in a divided society.
In trying to comment on the fuel-to-the-fire role of the media and senior politicians (including Sarkozy, whose provocative racial slurs are widely seen to have polarized attitudes), the film bites off more than it can chew. The result is a thought-provoking piece of political drama perhaps better suited for television. Its rough around the edges, not particularly well acted and tonally dispersed, but makes for a great conversation starter.
LEAVING
Catherine Corsini's Leaving (Partir), stars Kristin Scott-Thomas, Yvan Attal and Sergi Lopez. At first glance, it doesn't seem to offer anything new to the well trodden genre of the French separation drama. In fact the first hour feels so conventional in its tale of a bourgeois housewife who falls for another man you'd be forgiven for thinking you've seen it all before.
Thankfully the third act brings an interesting new dimension to the proceedings as the husband begins a war of attrition centred around economic retaliation. Freezing bank accounts, he ensures his wife is left with nothing, forcing her to choose not just another man, but another lifestyle at the bottom of the economic food chain. Partir becomes about class, the unlikely influence of the global financial crisis on the end of relationships.
By the time the film changes gear however it's too little too late. It's hard to sympathise with this angsty trio, not least the spoiled, naive housewife who takes her material wealth for granted, spending most of her life married to what is clearly an arrogant prick. Kristin Scott-Thomas is a gifted acress but even she can't free this trite character from the constraints of the role. The chemistry she shares with Sergi Lopez, the Spanish tradesman she takes up with, is almost non-existant, while Yvan Attal, as the angry husband, spends the film screaming in a one-note performance.
6 I'M DYING TO SEE
GAINSBOURG: JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS
Filmmakers were so terrified of critical reception that it took 40 years for France to tackle the events of May 68 on film. Singer, songwriter and all-round enfant terrible Serge Gainsbourg is another one of those sacred subjects which have awed French filmmakers into silence. Not anymore. Opening last week to rather good reviews, this biopic seems to get it right: the charisma, the controversy, the music... It seems to help that relative newcomer Eric Elmosnino looks the part. This is the closing night film of the Festival but I reckon it'll be worth the extra cash.
MAKING PLANS FOR LENA
Regular readers of the blog know I'm a huge fan of Christophe Honore's films (despite his bourgois-intellectual Parisian credentials which have all my friends back home rolling their eyes), and that includes his recent recent Princesse de Cleves adaptation La Belle Personne, which is just now being released in the US.
Here Chiara Mastroianni plays a single mother of two struggling through life after breaking up with her partner. She travels to the family home for the holidays, though of course what she gets is an angsty reunion with dysfunctional, meddling relatives. Expect solid female performances, a relative absence of sentimentality (think Desplechin's A Christmas Tale) and the most important things remaining unsaid (think Assayas' Summer Hours), encouraging the viewer to read between the lines.
RICKY
Francois Ozon follows up his misunderstood English-language period drama Angel with another atypical project. This one is based on a short story by Rose Tremain and deals with a very special baby and how it affects its working class family. I won't say any more since the fact that it's an Ozon film should be the only reason you need to queue for tickets. His next film by the way, Le Refuge, returns to the pared down narrative style Ozon is know for, and familiar themes of reconfigured families, sexual fluidity and the complexity of grief.
COCO CHANEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY
Following the worldwide success of Coco Avant Chanel (highest grossing foreign language film in the US last year) comes another portrait of the forward-thinking seamstress, this time played by Anna Mouglalis. The film closed Cannes '09 to decent reviews and - conveniently - picks up where the other left off, focusing on Coco's frenzied love affair with Stravinsky. It's likely to be a more stylized affair than Anne Fontaine's somewhat sober film, not least because this one is directed by Jan Kounen, a director better known for his visual flair (see Blueberry) than his storytelling skills.
REGRETS
When he learns of his mother's coma, fortysomething Parisian Mathieu (Yvan Attal) travels to the family home in the south of France. In his hometown he runs into former flame Maya (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and the two start an obsessive affair.
The synopsis alone hints at a quintessential French relationship drama, and that's not a bad thing. Cedric Khan is a gifted filmmaker and French reviews point to the amazing chemistry between the leads. I'm such a fan of Bruni-Tedeschi I'd queue for tickets if she voiced a robot in the French dub of Transformers 3. Interestingly, Philip Glass composed the original soundtrack for this.
IN THE BEGINNING
Now here's an interesting premise: A professional conman (Francois Cluzet, getting better and better with age) passes himself off as the boss of a construction site building a highway extension. He cons the whole region, hires dozens of workers and profits from his scam until he meets the mayor of a small village (the great Emmanuelle Devos) that the road will go through.
Early word from Cannes - where the film played in competition last year - was very positive, with the film described as engrossing despite a lengthy running time of 153 minutes. The consensus seems to be that the time is used wisely, at the service of generous characterization and accumulated insights. See for yourself if you get the chance...
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If you'd rather spend your dollars on films screening exclusively at the festival, here's a partial list of release dates for those titles with Australian theatrical distribution.
Ricky: Currently out in Melbourne
Welcome: 1 April
Micmacs: 1 April
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky: 15 April
The First Day of the Rest of your Life: 6 May
Leaving: 20 May
The Hedgehog: June
I'm Glad my Mother is Alive: 2010
Mademoiselle Chambon: 2010
Father of my Children: 2010
Wild Grass: 2010
Bon festival!
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