French

Coming Up on TV: Diabolique

by

If you like suspense, you will want to check out Diabolique, to be broadcast by Turner Classic Movies on May 12.  The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress.  When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body, and the killers get a big surprise.  Now the suspense from director Henri-Georges Clouzot really starts.

A master of the thriller, Clouzot was nicknamed the French Hitchcock.  In an achingly scary scene from Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve  – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.  If you like Diabolique, you’ll probably also like another domestic murder – this time set in Paris – Quai des Orfevres.

Cinequest – Four Lovers: those French sure are open-minded

by

Today and tomorrow, I’m catching up by commenting on two films from last week’s Cinequest 22.

In the thoughtful French film Four Lovers, two happily married couples hit it off socially.  They quickly decide that it’s okay to have sex with each others’ spouses.  It’s not “spouse swapping”.  It’s an arrangement whereby both couples continue to live as couples, but each adds a permitted fling with one of the other couple.

Plenty of explicit sex follows, but this is not primarily an erotic film.  Instead it explores what follows from this arrangement.  What rules need to be agreed upon? Is there jealousy and/or insecurity?  Will anyone go past the fling to fall in love with the new partner? Can one be in love with more than one lover?  Can they keep this from their kids?  How deeply do they need their new lovers?  How will this affect the original marriages?

It’s all complicated.  In fact, I think that watching this movie would be far superior than trying this out in real life.

Spoiler Alert:  After the arrangement ends, the couples return to their original married lives.  Something is missing in their lives, but it’s not the sexual thrill of the affairs.  Instead each grieves the loss of a lover.  Given this loss, all four are unhappy for the first time in the film and perhaps wishing that it had never happened.

DVD of the Week: Sarah’s Key

by

Kristin Scott Thomas stars in another French film, this time as a journalist tracking the story of a girl during the WWII roundup of Jews in France.  Her probe of events almost sixty years in the past becomes more and more personal, and profoundly entangles more and more people.  It’s a compelling story, and no actor can portray intensity and doggedness better than Scott Thomas.  Co-stars Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Aidan Quinn.

Sarah’s Key: an investigation becomes unexpectedly personal

by

Kristin Scott Thomas stars in another French film, this time as a journalist tracking the story of a girl during the WWII roundup of Jews in France.  Her probe of events almost sixty years in the past becomes more and more personal, and profoundly entangles more and more people.  It’s a compelling story, and no actor can portray intensity and doggedness better than Scott Thomas.  Co-stars Niels Arestrup (A Prophet) and Aidan Quinn.

DVD of the Week: Queen to Play

by

In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess in midlife. It’s a film about aspiration. First, she must muster the courage and resourcefulness to learn the game. When it becomes an obsession, she and her family must adjust.

The excellent actress Sandrine Bonnaire (Intimate Strangers) is the perfect choice to play this laconic and controlled character, who reveals her thoughts and emotions to the audience almost only through her eyes. A French-speaking Kevin Kline is also very good as the crusty American widower who teaches her chess.

Other recent DVD picks have been Kill the Irishman,  The Music Never Stopped, Source Code, Potiche and Another Year.

The Names of Love: amusing but forgettable

by

The Names of Love is an amusing but forgettable romantic comedy about the attraction of opposites  – a flighty leftwing women who converts conservatives by sleeping with them and an uptight and controlled guy.  Sara Forestier won the Cesar (France’s Oscar) for her portrayal of the most attention deficient character in recent cinema.  Indeed, Forestier is actually convincing as a woman so distractable that she doesn’t notice that she has left her flat and boarded the Paris Metro without wearing any clothes.

DVD of the Week: Potiche

by

Potiche, the delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery, is the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine Deneuve (as if she needs one).   DeNeuve plays a 1977 potiche, French for “trophy housewife”, married to a guy who is a male chauvinist pig both by choice and cluelessness.  He is also the meanest industrialist in France – Ebenezer Scrooge would be a softie next to this guy – and the workers in his factories are about to explode.  He becomes incapacitated, and she must run the factory.

Now, this is a familiar story line for gender comedy – so why is it so damn funny?  It starts with the screenplay, which is smart and quick like the classic screwball comedy that American filmmakers don’t make anymore.  And the cast is filled with proven actors who play each comic situation with complete earnestness, no matter how absurd.

Director Francois Ozon, best known in the US for Swimming Pool and 8 Women, adapted the screenplay from a play and has a blast skewering late-70s gender roles and both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.  Gerard Depardieu plays the Communist mayor, who is both the husband’s nemesis and the wife’s former fling.   Two of the very best French comic players, Fabrice Luchini and Karen Viard, shine in co-starring roles as the husband and his secretary.

DVD of the Week: Diabolique

by

The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress.  When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body, and the killers get a big surprise.  Now the suspense from director Henri-Georges Clouzot really starts.

A master of the thriller, Clouzot was nicknamed the French Hitchcock.  In an achingly scary scene from Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve  – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.  If you like Diabolique, you’ll probably also like another domestic murder – this time set in Paris – Quai des Orfevres.  Criterion has released the Diabolique DVD.

Queen to Play: A passion discovered late

by

In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess in midlife. It’s a film about aspiration. First, she must muster the courage and resourcefulness to learn the game. When it becomes an obsession, she and her family must adjust.

The excellent actress Sandrine Bonnaire (Intimate Strangers) is the perfect choice to play this laconic and controlled character, who reveals her thoughts and emotions to the audience almost only through her eyes. A French-speaking Kevin Kline is also very good as the crusty American widower who teaches her chess..

The Princess of Montpensier: a woman who is loved too much

by

Set in late 16th century France amid the French religious wars, a young noblewoman is forced by her father to marry – but not the man she loves. Her new husband is unhealthily jealous and for good reason – various members of the Court fall in love with her and she is too immature to handle it well.

The 35th film directed by Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de Torchon) is often exquisite. There is brutal 16th century warfare set against the beautiful French countryside, gorgeous costumes, thundering horses, swordplay in the Louvre and heaving bosoms.

It’s a good film that could have been great.  Unfortunately,  Melanie Thierry doesn’t live up to the great role at the center of this romance. Instead, Lambert Wilson steals the picture with an exceptional performance as the husband’s mentor and the Princess’ confidant.