French

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. ]

DVD/Stream of the Week: You Will Be My Son

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YOU WILL BE MY SON

Niels Arestrup (A Prophet, War Horse) stars as the owner of French wine estate who places impossible expectations on his son, with lethal results. The poor son has gotten a degree in winemaking, has worked his ass off on his father’s estate for years and has even married well – but it’s just not enough for his old man. The father’s interactions with the son range from dismissive to deeply cruel.

The father’s best friend is his longtime estate manager, whose health is faltering. The son is the natural choice for a successor, but the owner openly prefers the son’s boyhood friend, the son of the manager. The first half of You Will Be My Son focuses on the estate owner’s nastiness toward his son, which smolders throughout the film. But then the relationship between the sons turns from old buddies to that of the usurper and the usurped. And, finally, things come down to the decades-long relationship between the two old men.

Deep into the movie, we learn something about the father that colors his view of his son. And then, there’s a startling development that makes for a thrilling and operatic ending.

It’s one of several good 2013 films about fathers and sons, like The Place Beyond the Pines and At Any Price.  (This is also a food porn movie, with some tantalizing wine tasting scenes that should earn a spot on my Best Food Porn Movies.)

You Will Be My Son is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, iTunes and Xbox Video.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Blue is the Warmest Color

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Adèle Exarchopoulos in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

The French drama Blue is the Warmest Color explores first love, capturing the arc of a young woman’s first serious romance with remarkable authenticity and a stunning performance by 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos. Exarchopoulos plays a 17-year-old (also named Adèle) who falls in love with an out lesbian five or six years her senior. The film traces the course of their relationship over the next several years as the couple are challenged by jealousies and their different temperaments and class backgrounds, and as Adèle matures.

The acting is excellent, including Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Midnight in Paris) as the lover. But Adèle Exarchopoulos is a revelation. She is perfect as a teen typically full of curiosity and devoid of confidence, outwardly raunchy but profoundly innocent. And she has an extraordinary gift to seem utterly alone in a crowd. After watching Exarchopoulos, I felt as I did after seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone – I can’t wait to see this emerging major talent again.

This is the first film I’ve seen by Tunisian-born French director Abdelatif Kechiche, who has twice before won the Cesar (the French Oscar). In Blue Is the Warmest Color, Kechiche uses the closeup more than any recent director that I can recall, and he is fortunate to have Exarchopoulos, who can pull it off. It’s an excellent reason to see Blue Is the Warmest Color on the big screen.

Blue Is the Warmest Color is three-hours long, which is an indulgent length, but not too long. I am usually impatient with movies over two hours and quick to find them overlong. But Blue Is the Warmest Color kept my interest and engagement for its duration, and I really couldn’t recommend many cuts.

There is a LOT of explicit simulated sex in this movie. The main characters’ first love scene must sample the entire lesbian Kama Sutra. That scene, reputed by some to last nineteen or twenty minutes, didn’t seem that nearly long. The film proudly earns its NC-17 rating by depicting the (apparently very satisfying) sexual aspect of a romance.

But, in the end, it’s all about Adèle’s romance and Exarchopoulos’ performance. Blue Is the Warmest Color won the top prize at Cannes, and is my pick as 2013’s best film.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now and XBOX Video.