Prototype Issue
City of Lights, City Of Angels Showcases 28 French Features
By Robin Menken
(page 1 of 3)The 12th Annual City of Lights, City of Angels (COL•COA) presented in April 2008 a dazzling week of 28 new French filmsranging from art house fare to horror. Featuring a large delegation of filmmakers, COLCOA is known for fascinating Q&A's and imaginative shorts.
The following recommended films are opening in LA In May, June and July 2008
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is an absolute gas, the happiest comedy this year. Inspired by James Bond, author Jean Bruce’s series about Hubert Bonisseu de La Bath (aka Agent OSS 117) spawned 256 novels and 7 films since 1949. None of them funny. This delightful spoof recalls the best Pink Panthers. Director Michel Hazanavicius’ creative send up of spy thrillers includes some trenchant jabs at French colonial attitudes, and he never milks a joke.
Handsome, self important Agent 117 is a ladies man, when his love of haberdashery or memories of “Greek” wrestling sessions with lost comrade-at-arms Jack don’t get in the way.
A black and white parody of WW ll movies sets the stage. Mid -air, under fire and under cover Agent 117 (Jean Dujardin) and partner Jack (Philippe Lefebvre) grapple with Nazis, rescue stolen documents for the Allies and pull their plane out of a nosedive, while tossing off witticisms.
Ten years later, Jack’s gone missing in Cairo and Agent 117 is sent to find out why. Ordered to solve Jacks murder, monitor the Suez Canal, quell fundamentalist protest and end the conflict in the Middle East, he snaps “No problem.” His boss agrees. How hard could it be? They’re Frenchmen.
Posing as the head of a poultry firm, assisted by comely Larmina El Akmar Betouche (Bérénice Bejo- A Knight’s Tale), Agent 117 finds himself in a nest of spies, all posing as directors of various food related associations. Posing as a musician and forced to perform, OSS 117 morphs into a hit-slinging crooner. Woken in the middle of the night, Agent 117 stomps out of his luxury hotel, in his pj’s, to beat up the local muezzin calling people to prayer.
With his overplayed suavity and deep rolling voice, Dujardin excels in the sort of goofiness that only smart comics can assay (a sort of sleeker, handsomer Patrick Warburton).
Larmina, smarter than him in every way, topples for his charm. In a daft sightseeing drive around Cairo (with jiggling rear screen projection) condescending OSS117 exclaims how much sand there is in Egypt, and hard as Larmina tries to convince him he can’t believe that “millions of people” speak Arabic. She tries to explain “Islam.” He advises her: “It’ll never catch on.” Gags and verbal jokes come fast and furious and play well in French and surprisingly well in the clever subtitles. A master of the martial art of dumb luck Agent OSS117 prevails in the final fight sequence. A sequel’s coming and lucky for us. In such terrible times, we need these kinds of laughs.
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In a suburb as devoid of adults as Gus Van Sant’s Elephant” first time director Céline Sciamma’s Water Lillies nails the casual cruelty of teen desire. Shy, undersized Marie (Pauline Acquart) hangs around with chubby Anne (Louise Blachère), indulging in the universal teenage sport of shoplifting. Marie pines for Floriane (Adèle Haenel), the Captain of the high school’s synchronized swimming team. Self-aware Floriane manipulates man and boy alike, looking for attention. Her resentful classmates shun her. She adopts Marie, letting her join the team practice. Soon she’s Floriane’s beard, covering for secret dates with François (Warren Jacquin), star jock of the water polo team. Abandoned by Marie, blunt Anne offers herself to François. Teased and left wanting by Floriane, Marie becomes his sexual outlet. Marie rides shotgun as narcissist Floriane goes after older guys at a local nightclub. See-sawing from needy children to near adults, Marie and Floriane explore the brink of homoeroticism, but no further. Sciamma illustrates their coming-of age misery with surreal pool sequences. Girls stuffed into sequined suits, with overly made-up fixed smiles, launch into their competitive routines. They are all grace above the water line.
They are all grace above the water line. Under water, their flailing legs seem demonic, a monster from the deep. Powerful thighs treading water in the perilous in between world they inhabit.
Claude Lelouche’s title Roman de Gare says it all. The term “railroad station novel” means popular fiction or “potboiler.” A black & white clip of police headquarters from Clouzot’s Quai des Orfèvres cuts to a police interrogation. Bestselling author Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant), accused of murdering her ghostwriter, and begins her tale. Flashback to a literary talk show, the host praises Judith’s latest book, a fascinating departure from her formulaic earlier books. In a throwback to 30’s films we see close-ups of a hand-over-hand escape by rope, then a car racing recklessly through city intersections at night, as a radio announcer describes the maximum-security escape of The Magician, a pedophile who uses magic tricks to lure his rape victims. We never see the perp’s face.
A truckstop at night. A man and a woman fight besides their car. The car drives off, all observed by a man inside (Dominique Pinon). Huguette (Audruey Dana) can’t believe her bad luck. The lurking man offers to help (a magic trick helps) and soon she’s confessing all. Her “fiancée” has left her on the way to meet her family for the first time. Charmed by Huguette, the stranger explains that he’s basing a character on her in Judith Ralitzer’s new book. He’s her ghostwriter. Huegette’s in heaven, Ralitzer’s her favorite author. The stranger agrees to pose as her fiancée for one night.
Huguette’s family cares for her teenage daughter so she can work in Paris as a stylist (or so she says). While her family prepares a farmer’s feast, the stranger and the daughter disappear into the woods, leaving the family and us on tenterhooks. What follows is a series of interlocking plotlines, an amusing mix of yachts, romance, comedy and crime. No one is who they seem. Lelouche’s theme of the hand of fate in the lottery of love has never been better served.
Patriarch Slimane dreams off doing something for his two families. He picks up a salvaged old freighter. His sons help him revamp it as a couscous restaurant.
Claude Miller gives new life to a Holocaust tale in The Secret. Miller approaches the Holocaust obliquely, focusing on guilty secrets and infidelity complicating two Jewish families’ escape to the countryside, and the post war cover-up that allows them to continue.
The film’s tone of mournful discovery recalls The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. A complex structure of flashbacks flushes out the surprises. Paris 1955- Raised as a Catholic, young Francois (Valentin Vigourt) lives above the family’s clothing store in the bosom of his warm Jewish family. A sickly child, he’s treated with vitamin shots by affectionate neighbor Louise (Julie Depardieu).
His beautiful mother Tania (Cecile de France), former model and swim champion, stops a pool dead with her perfect swan dives. As hard as his father Maxime (Patrick Bruel) tries he cannot make Francois into the athletic son he craves. Francois lives in the sour atmosphere of his father’s disappointment. To compensate, Francois creates a magical invisible brother, a brave athlete who’s everything Francois is not. One day he discovers a toy in the attic and begins to unravel his family’s tragic past. Sidestepping melodrama, Miller gives great immediacy to the horrors of Occupation. The decisions his characters face seem surprisingly contemporary.
In prewar flashbacks, Maxime marries devoted Hannah (Ludivine Sagnier). At the wedding, cocky Maxime is drawn by the blond athletic Tania, and, despite her elegant husband George (Yves Jacques), Tania returns his hungry looks. Life is sweet. Hannah gives birth to Simon, a born champion, the answer to his father’s dreams.
While Hannah’s parents express anxiety about Hitler’s rise, Maxime lives his life as a Frenchman first. When the time comes to wear the Jewish star, he refuses to let his family comply. The two couples grow close, but Hannah, eaten up by jealousy, notes the illicit attraction. Adapting to occupation, Tania and Maxime’s practical natures mark them as survivors. Aryan looking Tania removes her star to work as a high fashion model. Her husband George is taken prisoner by the Germans at the front. The elders fall victim to the roundups. Maxime plans an escape to a safe house in the country. The men go ahead. Carrying false papers, Hannah, Simon and Louise set off on a perilous trip to join them. Hannah’s jealousy pushes her to tragic consequences. Summer opening.
A favorite of French film buffs, The Grocer’s Son, Eric Guirado’s touching film about a family with a traveling grocery business, delivering to aging country people, living in the hills of southern France, opens early summer. Actress Sandrine Bonnaire’s <(i>Her Name Is Sabine) is a sad, lyrical portrait of her talented sister Sabine, misdiagnosed as autistic. Disoriented as one after another sibling moved away from home, Sabine spent 5 years on antipsychotics in an institution, further disabling her.
Bonnaire’s family tried everything before settling on the institution. Eventually Sandrine pursued a progressive doctor and raised money for him to open a second highly staffed group home where Sabine is slowly recovering some of her faculties. Home movie footage over 25 years of family vacations reveal the disintegration of the literate vivacious, highly talented but difficult Sabine into the clumsy angry 38 year old middle aged woman.
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