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.
I spent last weekend at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series, which features current French language movies that have not been theatrically released in the US (and may not be). I’ve written complete posts on five of the eight movies that I saw. Here’s my summary (in order of my subjective ranking).
My favorite was the road trip to redemption, Rendez-vous in Kiruna. A French curmudgeon takes an obligatory drive to northern Sweden, setting up some very funny moments as the film explores the oft unhappy relationships of fathers and sons.
In the drama Suzanne, a young woman makes some bad choices, and the consequences are shared by her father and sister. Very well written and acted, Suzanne may be released in the US in mid-December.
Launched with great notoriety at Cannes, Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac) is a thriller set in a secluded gay cruising spot. There is LOTS of explicit gay sex in this movie, and at least some of it is actual (not just simulated) sex. It does work as a thriller, and it will get an NC-17 release in the US in late January 2014.
I likedMiss and the Doctors (Tirez la langue, mademoiselle), the kind of light romance that the French do so well and that Hollywood would turn into a series of sitcom moments. Two pediatrician bachelor brothers fall for the single mom of a young patient – and then her ex returns to the scene to create a love quadrangle. Miss and the Doctors is sweet and funny, and I think it would be popular with US art house audiences. (The original French title translates as “Stick Out Your Tongue, Miss”.)
House of Radio (La Maison de la Radio), a wonderfully appealing observational documentary that takes us behind-the-scenes for a peek at the operations of Radio France.
Written and directed by its star, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, A Castle in Italy(Un château en Italie) tells three dark story threads but in a very funny, even screwball, movie. It had me until the sentimental and almost pretentious ending. Not bad overall.
Bastards(Les Salauds) is Claire Denis’ dark revenge tale – well made but gratuitously disturbing – and even too disturbing for me to recommend.
My pick for the worst movie in the series wasa French language film from Canada, Vic + Flo Saw a Bear(Vic + Flo ont vu un ours). A 61-year-old lesbian is released from prison and reunites with her fortyish lover/crime partner to go straight. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to commend this film except for a bad ass female villain. The story was pointlessly dark, and the audience did not respond well. Afterwards, I was standing in line in front of a Frenchwoman who ranted, “Stoopeed Canadians – what do zay know about making films…I am just so glad that Jean didn’t show up – he would have puked.” I actually like Canadian films, but this one sucked.
In the French film A World Without Women (Un monde sans femmes), Vincent Macaigne plays a lovable loser who manages holiday rentals in a northern French beach town. He is amiable and good-hearted, but lonely and painfully socially inept. A good timing single mom brings her college age daughter for a week on the beach and teases him out of his protective shell and into a position of maximum vulnerability.
Macaigne’s characterization is outstanding. We really care for him and don’t want him to get hurt. But Macaigne brilliantly employs little touches to illustrate his character’s utter lack of savoir-faire. For example, at one point he and the mom are leaning shoulder to shoulder against a fence. She has her arms crossed, and she’s leading him on. He grasps her her nearest hand with his nearest hand. But since he’s now holding her left hand with his left, he has pinned her left arm awkwardly across her body like a pretzel, which drains all of the sexual spark out of the situation. And he can’t put his arm around her because he’s already using that arm to hold her hand. It’s such a simple action, yet so meaningful.
Laure Calamy is also very good as the fortyish gal who dresses too young and flirts with every available man, leaving male carnage in her wake.
Writer-director Guillaume Brac shows a real command of characters and dialogue in this film. I’m looking forward to his first feature. A World Without Women is only 56 minutes long, and plays with Brac’s 24 minute Stranded, which also stars Macaigne as essentially the same character The two films played together in Paris to surprising popularity. Fortunately, Brac decided not to bloat the two screenplays into two bad 90-minute features. Good for him.
I saw both Stranded and A World Without Women at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series. A World Without Women is not available now on any platform (DVD, Stream, VOD) that I can find, but when it is, I’ll make it a Stream of the Week. This trailer is in French without subtitles.
In the Belgian comedy Mobile Home, two underachievers in their late 20s, decide to move away from their parents. They move into a Fiat version of a Winnebago so they can tour the world. But their big move isn’t really that independent because they park the new home on wheels within an easy drive of their parents. The question in Mobile Home is whether either of them will catch even a whiff of adult responsibility or whether they will continue denying that it is time to get a real job.
This Belgian story is smarter than most Hollywood bromances, but nothing we haven’t seen before. A nice little festival film.
I saw Mobile Home at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series. The trailer is in French without subtitles.
All Together (Et si on vivait tous ensemble?) is a poignant French comedy about five septuagenarian friends who decide to eschew the nursing home and live communally. They hire an anthropology grad student as a caregiver, and he changes his thesis topic to study the social and sexual behavior of the European elderly.
The comedy comes as they resist the insults of age. One elderly activist, bullhorn in hand, is dismissed as an impotent, harmless crank when the cops refuse to arrest him at a demonstration even when he hits a cop in the helmet with a bottle.
The excellent cast includes Jane Fonda (acting for the first time in fluent French in thirty years). Geraldine Chaplin, who has acted in French, Spanish, Italian and German films over the years, is impressively spry. The great French comic actor Pierre Richard (The Man with the One Brown Shoe?) is brilliant as a man terrified by his increasing loss of memory.
Although it covers similar territory as this year’s indie hit The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (a slightly better film), they are different movies, with All Together more focused on mortality and the infirmities that come with age.
I saw All Together at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series. All Together is now available in the US on Video On Demand, including Amazon Instant Video.
