French

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: a muddled mess

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Man, what a disappointment! Somehow the Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). But it’s just a muddled mess.

Binoche plays a Margot Channing-aged actress, and Stewart plays her personal assistant. The star is about to take the older woman role in a play that launched her career (in a younger role to be played by the star of a Hollywood comic book movie). As the movie begins, the play’s author dies and the Binoche character must deal with the loss of her mentor. She’s also going through a difficult divorce and fending off the advances of a onetime co-star, and generally being pretty difficult amid her midlife crisis. None of this interesting and some of the story is confusing to boot.

The only time that Clouds of Sils Maria perks up is when Chloë Grace Moretz shows up as the younger actress, a train wreck who is the epitome of paparazzi-bait . (Kudos to Kristen Stewart – the Moretz role is close enough to Stewart’s real life to demonstrate that Stewart doesn’t take herself too seriously.) It’s a funny role and Moretz nails it.

Oddly, Clouds of Sils Maria is almost entirely in English (for Kristen Stewart?), and Binoche just isn’t as enthralling as she usually is. It’s also odd that a French celebrity would hire a non-French speaking personal assistant for travel in French-speaking country – what’s up with this?

I blame director Olivier Assayas. I really liked Assayas’ miniseries Carlos , but he now has engineered three clunker features in a row (Summer Hours, Something in the Air and Clouds of Sils Maria)., so I’ll have to persuaded to see his next project.

THREE HEARTS: a man with a weak heart

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Benoît Poelvoorde and Chiara Mastroianni in THREE HEARTS
Benoît Poelvoorde and Chiara Mastroianni in THREE HEARTS

The Belgian romantic drama Three Hearts centers on the singular character of Marc, a Parisian tax auditor who has a fondness for the ladies – and they for him. He also is very conflict-averse and handles stress very badly, which has contributed to a sometimes disabling heart condition. On a business trip to a provincial town, Marc misses his train, and becomes romantically involved with a local woman. Because of circumstance, that relationship doesn’t move forward, which clears him to begin a relationship with a second woman in that town. Once he is irrevocably entangled, he learns that the two women are intimates.

In what I think is a really compelling performance, Marc is played by Benoît Poelvoorde. Marc finds himself trapped in an excruciating situation, and the only way out requires courage that he just doesn’t have. Poelvoorde is completely believable as a guy who chats up women, settles into domesticity and then is paralyzed by terror and dread. Plus, Poelvoorde has a gangly walk and often slips into outright goofiness, which effectively lightens the dramatic tension.

Now, some critics do not agree with me. Poelvoorde is not a conventionally good-looking guy. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t expect a guy like this to be able to attract a woman who looks like Chiara Mastroianni or Charlotte Gainsbourg. If you can’t jump this, you’re not gonna buy into the movie, but it worked for me. Marc does seem to one of those rugged guys who has a knack with the ladies, and the two woman characters are in windows of extreme vulnerability and are ripe to experiment outside their own relationships.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Chiara Mastroianni are excellent as the two women. Their personalities are starkly different but they each have an immediate need that they hope Marc can fill. With the regal serenity that she can muster, Catherine Deneuve plays the character who intuits what is going on long before the others.

Three Hearts is directed and co-written by Benoit Jaquot, who recently gave us the lavishly staged and absorbing costume drama Farewell, My Queen.

One more thing – the potential for upcoming confrontation is signaled by Big Music – ominous cello notes that sound like the theme from Jaws played backwards. I saw this as wry self-mocking of the drama, and I found this device to be amusing. It’s just a little part of the movie, but people that I saw Three Hearts with found it to be off-putting.

The bottom line is that Three Hearts worked for me, and I recommend it with the caveat that some willing suspension of disbelief is required.

Cinequest: GEMMA BOVERY

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Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton in GEMMA BOVERY
Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton in GEMMA BOVERY

In the delightful dark comedy Gemma Bovery, Fabrice Luchini plays a guy who has left his Type A job in Paris to take over his father’s bakery in a sleepy village in Normandy. He gets new neighbors when a young British couple named Bovery moves in. The young British woman (played by the delectable Gemma Arterton) is named Gemma Bovery, and only the baker notices the similarity to Emma Bovary. But, like the protagonist of Madame Bovary, the young British woman is also married to a Charles, becomes bored and restless and develops a wandering eye. The baker rapidly becomes obsessed with the Flaubert novel being re-enacted before his eyes and soon jumps into the plot himself. Gemma Bovery, which I saw at Cinequest 2015, is a French movie that is mostly in English.

Fabrice Luchini is a treasure of world cinema. No screen actor can deliver a funnier reaction than Luchini, and he’s the master of squeezing laughs out of an awkward moment. For me, his signature role is in the 2004 French Intimate Strangers, in which he plays a tax lawyer with a practice in a Parisian professional office building. A beautiful woman (Sandrine Bonnaire), mistakes Luchini’s office for that of her new shrink, plops herself down and, before he can interrupt, starts unloading her sexual issues. It quickly becomes awkward for him to tell her of the error, and he’s completely entranced with her revelations, so he keeps impersonating her shrink. As they move from appointment to appointment, their relationship takes some unusual twists. It’s a very funny movie, and a great performance.

Gemma Bovery is directed and co-written by Anne Fontaine (The Girl from Monaco, Coco Before Chanel). Fontaine has a taste for offbeat takes on female sexuality, which she aired in the very trashy Adore (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as Australian cougars who take on each other’s sons as lovers) and the much better Nathalie (wife pays prostitute to seduce her cheating hubby and report back on the details).

Gemma Bovery isn’t as Out There as Nathalie, but it’s just as good. The absurdity of the coincidences in Gemma Bovery makes for a funny situation, which Luchini elevates into a very funny movie.

Cinequest: FEVER

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FEVER
FEVER

In Fever, we meet two teen thrill killers (a la Rope and Compulsion). What makes Fever unique is the introduction of a third character – a woman who may have witnessed their getaway. She doesn’t immediately grasp the connection, but we then watch the story threads (hers and the boys’) get nearer and finally intersect.  In another twist from the Leopold and Loeb set-up, the two boys are classmates who come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Even with two killers in the story, the most compelling character is the woman, played with immediacy by Julie-Marie Parmentier.  At first blush, she’s just a workaday optician who is gradually becoming less satisfied with her boyfriend.  But, watching Parmentier’s sharply observant eyes, we soon become aware that there’s much more going on inside her.

Fever is the first time feature from writer-director Raphael Neale, and it shows that Neale is capable of inventing an unusual take on a familiar story and effectively pacing the tension in a thriller.

Fever gets its title from the Little Willie John song popularized by Peggy Lee, and there some very cool renditions of it in the movie.  (And Fever is another of those French movies that make me so impressed with the intellectual content of some French public high schools.)

Cinequest will host Fever’s US premiere on February 26 at Camera 12, and it plays at Camera 12 again on February 28 and at the California Theatre on March 2.

Cinequest: ANTOINE ET MARIE

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ANTOINE ET MARIE
ANTOINE ET MARIE

In the French-Canadian drama Antoine et Marie, a woman’s life is changed by an event. What happens to her is something that Marie herself must figure out, as must the audience. When we meet her, Marie is a forty-two-year-old clerk at an auto-repair business with a lust for life. She’s living with a guy who adores her, and she enjoys socializing with her with her work buddies. But something makes her unsettled and gradually sucks the spark out of her life. Will she find out the cause and decide what to do about it?

Antoine et Marie is extremely topical, but revealing that topic would be a significant spoiler, so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.

Martine Francke delivers a superbly modulated performance as Marie. Sebastien Ricard is equally compelling as a repressed and dissatisfied blue collar husband and father.

This is writer-director Jimmy Larouche’s second feature film, and he has delivered a brilliantly constructed story with two unforgettable characters – and performances to match. Antoine et Marie is an unqualified success, tense and riveting all the way through.

Antoine et Marie’s US premiere will be February 28 at Cinequest, and it plays again on March 2 and 4, all at Camera 12.

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT: the limits of emotional endurance

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Marion Cotillard in TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT
Marion Cotillard in TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT

In the Belgian drama Two Days, One Night, a factory worker (Oscar winner Marion Cotillard) finds out on Friday afternoon that she will be laid off unless she can convince nine of her sixteen co-workers to sacrifice their bonuses. She must make her case to each of them before a vote on Monday morning. It’s a substantial bonus, and every one of her colleagues really needs it; their spouses are expecting it, too, and many have decided how they are going to spend it. The vote is going to be close, the stakes for each family is high and the tension builds.

Our protagonist is anything but plucky. She needs to be coaxed and prodded by her husband and a militant co-worker. She is buoyed enough by an early victory to keep going, but she’s constantly on the verge of giving up.

She hasn’t been been well, which also complicates things. Because the filmmakers wait until midway to explicitly reveal her illness, I’m being careful not to spoil it here. But the precise illness is important because it affects both her own stamina and the confidence of her co-workers about how well she would contribute to the workplace.

Two Days, One Night is the latest from two of my favorites writer-director filmmakers, the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes. They specialize in contemporary dramas of the Belgian working class. Their The Kid with a Bike was #1 on my Best Movies of 2012. And I think that their 2002 The Son (Le Fils) was pretty much a masterpiece, too. The Dardennes’ hand held (but NOT shaky) cameras intrude right on top of the characters, bringing an urgency and immediacy to every scene. Hyper realism contributes to the verisimilitude and thereby builds more power into the stories; here, a tense conversation in the doorway to an apartment building get interrupted by someone walking in – just as it would be in real life.

At its core, Two Days, One Night explores the limits of emotional endurance. What does she need to rebound form her malaise – the adrelin surge of battle? Or the power from getting to make her own choice?

[Anyone who has visited France or Belgium will recognize the remarkable politeness of the characters – observing all the formalities of greeting, shaking hands and saying thanks and goodbye even in the most awkward and emotionally charged encounters.]

Two Days, One Night is a fine film, just outside the Top Ten on my Best Movies of 2014. Unsurprisingly, Cotillard’s glammed-down performance is brilliant. It’s a compelling story as we walk her tightrope of desperation, heading toward redemption. Two Days, One Night opens widely in the San Francisco Bay Area tomorrow.

French Cinema Now: an early look at two Big Movies

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

One of the absolute gems in the Bay Area’s cinema scene is the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series.  Every year at French Cinema Now, SFFS presents the best and most interesting movies contemporary French movies.

This year’s offerings include early looks at two Big Movies – as in potential Oscar bait or, at least, art house hits.

  • Two Days, One Night: The latest urgent drama from the Dardennes brothers (The Kid with a Bike, The Son). Their movies always make my annual top ten list – and this one features Marion Cotillard.
  • Clouds of Sils Maria: Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in an All About Eve-type rivalry, directed by Olivier Assayas (Carlos).  Stewart has gotten great reviews.

Other tempting treats include:

  • Paris Follies: the always compelling actors Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Pierre Darroussin as old marrieds.
  • Love Is the Perfect Crime: a great cast (Mathieu Amalric, Karen Viard, Maïwenn, Sara Forestier) in a sly story of crime and sex.

French Cinema Now is coming up this weekend on November 6-9 at San Francisco’s Vogue Theater:     French Cinema Now tickets and schedule.

THE BLUE ROOM: what did I get myself into?

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THE BLUE ROOM
THE BLUE ROOM

As the French psychological drama The Blue Room opens, a couple is having sex.  We quickly learn that they are both married, but not to each other.  And next, we see the man being interviewed in a police station. But The Blue Room is not a conventional police procedural, because the audience doesn’t know what crime he is suspected of committing.  He knows what the crime is, but he doesn’t know how it happened. In The Blue Room‘s brisk 75 minutes, more and more is revealed to the audience and to our protagonist. He finally understands it all, but it’s too late.

The structure of the story is very inventive, co-written by the movie’s stars, Mathieu Amalric and Stéphanie Cléau, and directed by Amalric.  Amalric is very good as a guy who spends the movie wondering “how did I get here, and how bad can this get?” It’s a dark little story that requires the audience to keep pace – and it’s pretty successful.

DVD/Stream of the Week: AUGUSTINE: obsession, passion and the birth of a science

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The absorbing French drama Augustine is based on the real work of 19th century medical research pioneer Jean-Martin Charcot, known as the father of neurology. A young kitchen maid begins suffering wild seizures and is brought to Charcot’s research hospital. He ascertains the triggers for the seizures, and begins to close in on cure. Needing funding for his research, he triggers her seizures before groups of his peers; he is showing off his research, but it’s clear that his affluent male audience is titillated by the comely girl’s orgasmic thrashes.

She is drawn to this man whose kindness to her belies their class difference and whose brilliance is the key to her recovery. The good doctor intends to cure her – but not until she has performed for his potential funders. She is unexpectedly cured just before Charcot’s most important demonstration, and she gets to decide whether to continue her exploitation. In the stunning conclusion, she gets the upper hand and her simmering feelings erupt.

The fine French actor Vincent Lindon (Mademoiselle Chambon) excels at playing very contained and reserved characters, and here he nails Charcot’s clash of decency and professional ambition. The French pop singer Soko is captivating as his patient.

It’s an auspicious first feature film for writer-director Alice Winocour. She has constructed a story that about two sympathetic characters whose interests converge, then diverge and then…

Augustine is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, and Xbox Video.

Stream of the Week: ON MY WAY – two unhappy people can find joy together

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on my wayThe extraordinary Catherine Deneuve goes on an escapist road trip in the satisfying French drama On My Way. She plays a woman chained to the stress of running a failing restaurant and caregiving for her mother. Her marriage was scarred by infidelity (both ways) and her life has been one of relationship carnage. After she suffers a personal betrayal, she needs to get away and abruptly leaves the restaurant mid-service, embarking on a random road trip through the French countryside – made even more random because she is geographically disabled. After a series of misadventures, she ends up taking the 11-year grandson (who doesn’t remember meeting her) to his other grandfather (whom she hasn’t met because she refused to attend her daughter’s wedding). She suffers many an indignity along the way, but rediscovers her happiness in an unexpected niche.

On My Way is directed and insightfully co-written by Emmanuelle Bercot, who acted in Polisse, one of my Best Movies of 2012.

Deneuve, once the world’s most beautiful woman, has a pretty solid claim on being the world’s most beautiful 70-year-old. She’s also a good sport, willing to take a part that explicitly references the passing of her youthful beauty at several story points.

On My Way is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

[SPOILER ALERT:   Here are examples of the references to the aging of her looks.  Her age-approximate boyfriend dumps her for a 25-year old. The 30ish guy who picks her up tells her that he was imagining her as she was young during sex.  She resists – until forced by circumstance – to attend the reunion of beauty queens. ]