SFFS French Cinema Now Series November 7–10, 2013

[Chris Knipp]

The San Francisco Film Society French Cinema Now series
Nov. 7–10, 2013

General Forum FCN 2013 thread
[French Cinema Now 2012 thread]

Links to the reviews.
2 Autumns, 3 Winters (Sébastien Betbeder 2013)
Bastards (Claire Denis 2013)--NYFF 2013
A Castle in Italy (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi 2013)
The House of Radio (Nicolas Philibert 2013)
Michael Kohlhaas (Arnaud des Pallières 2013
Miss and the Doctors (Axelle Ropert 2013)
Rendezvous in Kiruna (Anna Novion 2013)
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie 2013)-NYFF 2013
Suzanne (Katell Quilévéré 2013)
Vic+Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Côté 2013) [not reviewed]




"This year’s cinema à la Française traverses the globe, from the wilds of Lapland and rural Quebec to a stately family mansion in Italy. Returning French Cinema Now filmmakers including Axelle Ropert and Alain Guiraudie join SF International Film Festival brethren Nicolas Philibert and Sébastien Betbeder for a stellar line-up of the best in current Francophone films." -- SFFS press release.

Following is the schedule of the SFFS French film series, which shows at Landmark's Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore (Sacramento/Clay) in San Francisco at the times given below. These are the SFFS's blurbs for the films. I have already reviewed STRANGER BY THE LAKE and BASTARDS as part of this year's NYFF. Of the rest I will be reviewing all but VIC+FLO SAW A BEAR.


2 Autumns, 3 Winters
Sébastien Betbeder (2 automnes 3 hivers, France 2013)
Sébastien Betbeder, whose debut Nights with Theodore was the winner of the FIPRESCI prize at this spring’s SFIFF, returns with this offbeat story of thirty-somethings navigating whatever crisis comes between quarter- and mid-life. Arman and Benjamin are friends from art school. Arman first meets Amélie when he bumps into her, literally, while jogging. His casual attempts to meet her again fail until one night when dramatic circumstances reunite them, intertwining the lives of all three. Playfully told, despite the serious nature of some of its events, 2 Autumns, 3 Winters applies indie charm to the vagaries of life.
November 7, 7:00 pm

A Castle in Italy
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Un château en Italie, France 2013)
In her third film, director, actress and cowriter Valeria Bruni Tedeschi continues to mine her own experience to portray the lives and crises of the bourgeoisie. Here she plays Louise, an actress tiring of her profession and longing for motherhood. When she runs into younger actor Nathan (VBT’s former real-life beau Louis Garrel) on a film set, he pursues her relentlessly, but he’s not particularly interested in fathering a child. As she has done in her prior work, Bruni Tedeschi presents the problems of the rich and famous without apology but with refreshing nuance and humor, and surrounds herself with a formidable cast.
November 7, 9:15 pm and November 9, 2:30 pm

Rendezvous in Kiruna
Anna Novion (Rendez vous à Kiruna, France 2012)
Ernest is working on a major architectural project at his firm when he receives an unwanted call from Sweden. His biological son whom he has never met has died in a boating accident and, with the mother away, Ernest must come to Lapland and identify the body. Although he protests that he has no emotional connection to the dead youth, he ends up on a long drive north during which he picks up Magnus, a young Swedish man on his way to visit his grandfather. Director Anna Novion’s interest in Bergman and her own Swedish heritage add a quiet flair to this story of unavoidable emotional ties.
November 8, 7:00 pm and November 10, 3:30 pm

Michael Kohlhaas
Arnaud des Pallières (France/Germany 2013)
Arnaud des Pallières’ austere and visually splendid medieval-era drama tells the story of Michael Kohlhaas (Mads Mikkelsen), a horse trader who is one day forced by a ruthless Baron to give over two of his prize steeds. When the nobleman’s subsequent mistreatment of the horses is revealed, Kohlhaas demands justice. But when a nobility-favoring court rules against him, and the Baron and his henchmen commit other hideous acts, Kohlhaas turns to the sword and crossbow for his revenge. Though the themes and moral conflicts will be familiar to Game of Thrones fans, the remarkable style recalls Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac.
November 8, 9:30 pm

Miss and the Doctors
Axelle Ropert (Tirez la langue, mademoiselle, France 2013)
With the same playful humanism she exhibited in The Wolberg Family (FCN 2009; R-V 2010), Axelle Ropert’s latest film details the romantic and professional travails of sibling bachelor doctors Boris (Cédric Kahn) and Dimitri (Laurent Stocker). Attending to a precocious diabetic girl, Boris finds himself interested in her mother, a bartender named Judith (Louise Bourgoin). When Dimitri expresses similar feelings—“I hope there’s a second Judith,” he tells Boris—this offbeat love triangle is set in motion. With serious issues of the heart and the human body at stake, Miss and the Doctors manages to remain wonderfully lighthearted and buoyant.
November 9, 4:45 pm

Suzanne
Katell Quillévéré (France 2013)
Told in elliptical fragments that span 25 years, Katell Quillévéré’s follow-up to her debut Love Like Poison (FCN 2011) is the story of a woman and the effects of her irrepressible passions on those around her. We first meet Suzanne as a girl, living with her sister and widowed truck-driver father, but quickly move to the girls’ teenage years and the news that Suzanne is pregnant and will keep the baby—just the first bombshell that this mercurial woman will drop on her family. The dramatic twists and turns of their lives are presented in non-judgmental fashion and elevated by sharp performances from the film’s leads.
November 9, 7:00 pm

Stranger by the Lake
Alain Guiraudie (L’inconnu du lac, France 2013)
Alain Guiraudie’s analysis of gay male desire is set entirely in the environs of a cruising spot on the shore of a picturesque French lake, where men prowl the nearby woods for hook-ups. On the first day, Franck spots a devilishly handsome man named Michel but keeps missing his chance. Later, he sees the dreamboat do something terrible, but instead of running away Franck throws himself into Michel’s arms. Guiraudie tackles weighty subject matter—the intermingling of danger and desire, physical versus intellectual engagement, and the nature of intimacy—with a playful sensibility and striking visual style. Note: This is a sexually explicit film.
November 9, 9:30 pm

House of Radio
Nicolas Philibert (La maison de la radio, France/Japan 2013)
Master documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s latest takes a delightful and surprisingly humorous look at public radio, French style. Inside an unusual round building in Paris is Radio France, comprised of several premiere stations. Luckily for us, these bustling offices are full of great characters both known (Umberto Eco in for an on-air interview) and unknown (a news manager who gleefully sorts through grisly news briefs, the director of a radio drama, a telephone operator who screens for a call-in show). Mixed in with the quiz shows, live musical performances and sports reporting, they form the fabric of a beautifully observed and pleasurable view of a public institution and beloved medium.
November 10, 1:15 pm

Vic+Flo Saw a Bear
Denis Côté (Vic+Flo ont vu un ours, Canada 2013)
At 61 and newly released from jail, Victoria (Pierrette Robitaille) is trying to start over. Laying low at the home of her paralyzed uncle Émile, she’s visited by her former cellmate and younger lover Florence (Romane Bohringer), who wants to move in. With their days bordering on the mundane—driving around the isolated countryside in a golf cart or splashing about in a wading pool—Flo becomes frustrated at their hemmed-in existence and their bucolic life together is threatened. Upending viewer expectations with surprising tonal shifts, director Denis Côté (Curling) memorably reinvents the romantic drama genre.
November 10, 6:00 pm

Bastards
Claire Denis (Les Salauds, France 2013)
Claire Denis’ troubled and troubling new film, highlighted by Agnès Godard’s masterful cinematography and Stuart Staples’ (of Tindersticks) evocative score, begins with rain and death and rarely lets up from there. For reasons at first mysterious, a sea captain named Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) arrives in Paris and rents an empty apartment. Living directly downstairs are business tycoon Edouard Laporte (Denis regular Michel Subor) and his mistress Raphaëlle (Chiara Mastroianni), whose lives will intersect with Marco’s in dark and devastating ways. Denis’ latest is an angry and upsetting film, detailing a world where money and the power it wields can have poisonous and far-reaching effects.
November 10, 8:30 pm