Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center 2015

[Chris Knipp]

CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ: MÉTAMORPHOSES (2014)


AMIRA AKILI AND SÉBASTIEN HIREL IN MÉTAMORPHOSES

Honoré's mythological misfire

Perhaps this is an "ambitious undertaking" as a blurb says, but Christophe Honoré's foray into classical mythology is inexplicable and hard to make much sense of. Despite a lot of nice-looking young people, who look good naked and are often seen that way, Métamorphoses is a big disappointment. It brings to the screen, obviously "reimagined," a selection of tales from Ovid’s magnum opus. Honoré, whose films have mostly been light, though melancholy, and specifically rooted in everyday Parisian life, here tackles the great Latin narrative poem of transformation, mythology, and the history of Roman civilization, transplanting it to a, mostly vague, version of present-day France. The cast, when dressed, wear a motley assortment of informal modern-day clothes. Sometimes they take to the water, and dip in a lake. Sometimes they wander the woods. Sometimes they enter the banlieue, urban projects on the periphery, where police arrive seeking, without apparent success, to quell a large gathering. From time to time classical music, ranging from antique to modern, is heard.

As the film begins, Jupiter (Sébastien Hirel) absconds with buxom schoolgirl Europa (newcomer Amira Akili). Their courtship is the film's unifying thread, which is interspersed with interludes involving Narcissus (Arthur Jacquin), Orpheus and Eurydice, Bacchus (Damien Chapelle), and the Bacchantes, with humans repeatedly changed into animals. One such scene riskily staged on the floor of a mosque shows a naked couple making love, later turning into live lions, the female violently pawing the male.

Christophe Honoré's sublimely melancholy Parisian winter musical Love Songs, a Rendez-Vous 2008 selection, is a film I never tire of, and nearly all of his films have appealed to me, some very much. I like Honoré and I too am a fan of his muse, Louis Garrel. Perhaps the director needed a break from his usual stars and milieux. But this is the kind of thing Cocteau or Rohmer could probably have done better. Honoré succeeded (in La Belle Personne with an updating of the 17th-century Princesse de Clèves of Madame de Lafayette, but ancient Rome is too far afield for him.

Métamorphoses, 105 mins., debuted at Venice 30 August 2014, showing in a dozen other international festivals. This is a perfect festival film; it has almost zero theatrical release potential. AlloCiné press rating 3.2. Shown as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its North American premiere, where it was screened for this review.

[Chris Knipp]

ANTOINE BARRAUD: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST/LE DOS ROUGE (2015)


BERTRAND BONELLO IN PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

In search of the monstrous

Clearly director/musician Bertrand Bonello (House of Pleasure, Saint Laurent) is at home with decadence, and it's hard to tell how much of this exploratory, improvisational mood piece, which languidly flirts with grotesquerie, horror, and eroticism, is the work of Antoine Barraud and how much might simply be inspired by Bonello himself. In it he plays "Bertrand," an "artist" (filmmaker, photographer) who spends his days meeting with with an art eccentric female historian called Célia Bhy (alternately played -- inexplicably -- by either Jeanne Balibar or Géraldine Pailhas) chatting and visiting museums, where he's looking for a work of art, presumably a painting, that exhibits the qualities of the "monstrous," which will be a central element in his next film. In off-and-on conversations in various venues Bertrand and the two Célias discuss Diane Arbus as well as Bacon, Leon Spilliaert, Caravaggio, Theodore Chasseriau, Hans Bellmer, Bosch, and others. There are particular viewings and discussions of an 18th-century Brazilian painting by Joachim da Rocha of a slave with a skin disease and Balthus' large early portrait Alice dans le miroir (in the Pompidou Museum). Bertrand's wife is Barbe, Barbara (Joana Preiss), and from time to time he chats with "Pascal" (Pascal Greggory). Meanwhile he is developing red spots on his back that don't hurt, but keep spreading. About these he has an odd consultation with a friend who's a retired doctor, played by Barbet Schroeder. Is Bertrand's preoccupation with the grotesque showing up as a skin rash? The doctor isn't interested in answering, and doesn't even look. Apparently Bertrand is a victim of Stendhal Syndrome, "a psychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to an experience of great personal significance, particularly viewing art" (Wikipedia).

Bonello, on screen, is a shortish man with birdlike features, frail, boyish, slightly androgynous. A small unprepossessing director playing himself, energetic, with a quizzical, deadpan manner: one thinks of Woody Allen. And why would there not be a French Woody Allen, since the French admire the actual Woody so much? But the self-conscious intellectualism of the dialogue and Bonello's far-off, slightly sad look make one forget Woody. There is none of his quick-wittedness and humor.

This film is moody, atmospheric, beautifully photographed. But its scenes move slowly, and lack a discernible progression, and its two hours-plus run-time starts to feel long.

One lugubrious motif, among several, is an interminable interview, never completed satisfactorily, with a shy young gay man who appears to have a "thing" for Bertrand, and whose admiration Bertrand takes advantage of to pose him for stills shot with a Hasselblad posing semi-nude wearing a bra, after Diane Arbus. In one late episode Bertrand takes the train somewhere, perhaps Germany (Frankfurt?) with one of his girlfriends (a flirtation with Célia has begun) who disappears in the modern art museum they visit, and he must return to Paris on the train alone. The director, Antoine Barraud, and Bonello, play all sorts of games, which add to a surreal mood.

This film seems to have been sponsored by, or produced in collaboration with, several art museums. Unlike two such productions, produced by Musée d'Orsay, Olivier Assayas' (Summer Hours) and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's (Flight of the Red Balloon), which are superb (and one may also think of Jem Cohen's appealing Museum Hours), this darker and more peculiar film will appeal to a smaller, more special audience. A voice-over is provided by Charlotte Rampling. Bonello not only stars in the film, his first such performance, but composed the score; and in one scene he performs on an unusual and wonderful instrument.

According to an article in Variety, Barraud is "a tireless producer-director with a hectic one-decade career," and has "helmed a long series of experimental shorts on figures such as Kenneth Anger, Shuji Terayama and Koji Wakamatsu," as well as one previous feature, Les Gouffres ("The Sinkholes") with Nathalie Boutefeu and Mathieu Amalric (Locarno 2012).

Portrait of the Artist/Le dos rouge, 127 mins., is scheduled to debut at Berlin 2015. It is scheduled for French theatrical release 22 April 2015. Screened for this review as part of the March 2015 edition of the Film Society of Lincoln Center-UniFrance joint series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

[Chris Knipp]

FRÉDÉRIC TELIER: SK1/L'AFFAIRE SK1 (2014)


RAPHAËL PERSONNAZ AND OLIVIER GOURMET IN SK1

Catching and trying a suspected serial killer the French way

Frédéric Tellier's debut feature is an elaborate polar-noir based on Patricia Tourancheau’s non-fiction book about "SK1" (Serial Killer 1,) the notorious French '80's-'00's Guy Georges case involving a series of rapes and brutal murders of pretty young women. Since it depicts a prolonged and frustrating police investigation, it's roughly speaking a Zodiac-style film. But it has cops and not newsmen doing the investigating, and it's resolved with DNA testing. In the foreground is a handsome young Paris Quei des Orfèvres police HQ inspector, whose progress and growing obsession we follow. There is the wife who feels abandoned, the competing older cop who usurps the case, and the mellow mentor. Tellier's use of such familiar elements doesn't mean this isn't a successful film. With an excellent cast, complex mise-en-scene, and constant action, this is an engrossing police thriller with a distinctive French flavor.

There are two overlapping chronologies. We follow "Charlie" -- the moniker assigned to the rookie detective (Raphaël Personnaz)-- as he comes under the wing of Bougon (Olivier Gourmet) and faces the case's takeover by possessive oddball officer Jensen (Thierry Neuvic). This is a story that covers a decade. But early on the film also joins a two-person team of defense lawyers, with a young advocate (William Nadylam) and the higher profile partner Maître Frédérique Pons (Nathalie Baye) whom he persuades to join him on the case, with her much more reserved about the prisoner's possible innocence.

We also get vivid glimpses and volatile courtroom testimony from the prisoner, (Adama Niane) who has confessed to police interrogators, yet now vehemently protests his innocence -- despite substantial jail time and conviction of rape. Colorful courtroom scenes of a very Mediterranean style of justice alternate with complicated police procedural stuff that includes plenty of images of bloody, nude young female victims (something David Fincer's film notably lacked). Eventually toward the film's end the two story lines and chronologies come together, just as "Fred" Pons and "Charlie" meet and express their mutual respect outside the Quai des Orfèvres building.

We don't know at first whether the killer has been caught or not, though the concurrent focus on the trial somewhat dampens the suspense of the investigations and turns them into flashbacks. What makes this movie interesting is the combination of camaraderie and infighting and the constant grim tastes of the rape-murders, giving us a strong sense of how obsessive such investigations can be and why. Tellier and his writers do an excellent job of keeping all the threads and characters clear. Personnaz is dashing but not the most emotionally rich of French actors -- but the always gritty Olivier Gourmet and the soulful Nathalie Baye make up for that. We may remember Baye as a cop working with an appealing rookie in Xavier Beauvois' touching cop film Le Petit Lieutenant (R-V 2006) -- one of her four César performances. As the orphaned, life-long victim suspect, Adama Niane is interesting, both sensitive and scary, and this is a terrific role for the actor.

SK1/L’Affaire SK1, 120 mins., debuted 24 August 2014 at Angoulême). French release 7 January 2015 to generally good reviews (AlloCiné press rating 3.8) Some French critics found it striking, others thought its Zodiac à la française style a bit too cold and mechanical. Screened for this review as part of the FSLC/UniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its North American premiere.

[Chris Knipp]

ABD AL MALIK: MAY ALLAH BLESS FRANCE!/QU'ALLAH BÉNISSE LA FRANCE! (2014)


MARK ZINGA IN MAY ALLAH BLESS FRANCE!

From hood to rap star, unblemished

Celebrated rapper and spoken word artist Abd Al Malik makes his directorial debut with the autobiographical coming-of-age story May Allah Bless France!, based on his published memoir about his early life. He starts out in in a cité of the Neuhof district of Strasbourg as a petty hood, though not of a dark sort, as the luminous young Congolese-descent actor Marc Zinga makes clear with his upbeat performance. And though he engages in pocket-picking and drug-dealing, Régis Fayette-Mikano (his birth name) clearly always was articulate and educated: one of his teachers is a big fan. Born Régis Fayette-Mikano to Congolese immigrants, he grew up in Strasbourg’s housing projects, participating in petty crimes that cost the lives of his friends. He found release in writing and performance, converting to Sufism at age 24 and penning the memoir that informed this adaptation. Marc Zinga is consistently engaging in the role of young Régis, movingly embodying his path to a better life. Shot in black and white, the film visually and thematically, in its early sections, recalls Mathieu Kassovitz’s seminal urban crime drama La Haine.

Abd Al Malik clearly knows his milieu and has cast and wrangled lively Arab, black, and white males who talk the lingo and have the speech rhythms of the Strasbourg ghetto. DP Pierre Aim does some tricky but understated things with zoom, and editor Kako Kelber keeps us awake with some lively transitions.

But engaging and fresh as this film is, it lacks something in the specifics. John DeFore's Toronto review for Hollywood Reporter puts his finger on this when he warns that "Viewers expecting an 8 Mile-like experience from May Allah Bless France! should recalibrate." Abd Al Malik doesn't go to much lengths to show himself mastering or practicing the art of rap. Nor does he delve here very deeply into the life of crime he led as a lad. He does show briefly the serious consequences the crime brought to some of his comrades. But with the distancing effect of the black and white images and the schematic treatment of day-to-day events, May Allah Bless France! sometimes takes on an abstract, Brechtian quality. One emerges impressed favorably by Abd Al Malik and feeling positive about what he has been able to do, but the movie hasn't provided a very profound experience. The unique part -- still also a bit thematic -- is Regis' turn to Islam after the death of someone very close to him. There is a trip by the protagonist to an unspecified Muslim country where Qur'anic recitation is heard, and he says the Fatiha while sitting among mature holy men. It's also unusual that, following his devout Muslim faith, Abd Al Malik depicts his relationship with his sweetheart Nawel (Sabrina Ouazani)as chaste. Even their kissing comes only at a climactic moment, and film's ceremonial high point isn't so much the first big rap performance, though that is important, but the ceremony in which Nawel and Abd Al Malik are wed. But the rapper-director's piety seems to explain the film's unwillingness to depict the uglier side of his early life with graphic realism.

The one extended rap song, heard more than seen performed, is Tin Soldier/Soldat de plomb, an impressive and articulate piece that shows a mesmerizing sincerity. There could have been more.

May Allah Bless France!/Qu'Allah bénisse la France!, 95 mins., debuted at Angoulême, showed at a few other festivals, and won the FIPRESCI Discovery Prize at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. The French theatrical release 10 December 2014 met with mixed reviews (AlloCiné press rating 3.1). Some were thrilled by the upbeat message; others thought the film called too much for immigrant homogenization, with its style correspondingly too generalized and generic. But notice the title: Abd Al Malik embraces his identity as, above all, not black, or banlieue, or Muslim, but a citizen of France, unified, new, and democratic. Screened for this review as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its North American premiere.

[Chris Knipp]

SOPHIE LETOURNEUR: GABY BABY DOLL (2014)


LOLITA CHAMMAH IN GABY BABY DOLL

Shaggy rustic French rom-com

In Sophie Letourneur's tongue-in-cheek sophomore effort as a director Gaby (Lolita Chammah) is a ditzy French version of Greta Gerwig (and this actress is just as prolific) whose shrink has lent her his big house in the country for a rest cure. She has trouble sleeping, and can't sleep alone. Her peculiarities and lack of interest in sex cause her boyfriend Vincent to depart after one night. She then starts picking up one man after another at the sparsely populated local cafe to keep her company. Her behavior causes her to be 86ed from the cafe and she goes for all that's left, invading the tiny cabin of the groundsman of the neighboring chateau, Nicolas (Benjamin Biolay), a grubby, hirsute loner who tolerates her, but takes no interest in her. A sort of companionship develops, which ends in romance.

Letourneur's style is minimal, rustic, classic. The natural-light photography brings out the colors of skin, fire in fireplaces, dawn, and leaves. No cell phones, TV. No plot, for that matter, or so it may seem. But what develops is like a shaggy dog story that has its own natural and logical rhythm. This is a film that, unlike many more complicated ones, does tell a story, a kind of fairy tale with a slutty Cinderella and a concealed Prince Charming.

Sophie Letourneur’s follow-up to 2012’s Les coquillettes (New Directors/New Films.

Gaby Baby Doll, 88 mins., debuted at Vendome and Les Arcs. French theatrical release 17 Deeember 2014 to poor reviews, finding it "anemic" and "long, very long" (AlloCiné press rating 2.8); but, notably, Cahiers du Cinéma, Les Inrockuptibles, and Le Monde -- important voices in the Paris cinema world -- loved it. The Les Inrocks critic calls Letourneur "the most Asian of young French filmmakers," referring to her noncommittal, Zen simplicity. Screened for this review as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its North American premiere.

[Chris Knipp]

MARIE AMACHOUKLI-BARSACQ, CLAIRE BERGER & SAMUEL THEIS: PARTY GIRL (2014)


JOSEPH BOUR AND ANGÉLIQUE LITZENBERGER IN PARTY GIRL

A wayward woman's attempt at catharsis and rehabilitation

Party Girl is a strange film and a hard one to judge since in it one of the three La Femis film school directors, Samuel Theis, uses his mother and his three siblings Mario, Severine and Cynthia, playing themeselves, and reenacting thing that happened. His mother, Angélique (Angélique Litzenburger) is a sixtyish cabaret "hostess" inhabiting a big strip bar on the edge between France and Germany far beyond her expiry date, but still loving to smoke, drink too much, dress up in sexy outfits, and flirt for drinks and tips. She lives in a little room above the bar, and her friends are the other girls and barmaids. The film depicts how she decides to marry a favorite customer of several years, Michel (Joseph Bour), who has retired from his mining job, and now is sick of going to the cabaret. He asks Angélique to marry him. She agrees. But the decision to settle down and give up the honkey tonk life does not sit well with her, though marriage includes a loving reunion of her children, including a now 16-year old daughter, who has been in foster care and not seen for a decade.

The directors are skillful at staging events and wrangling large numbers of people at the wedding and in various club scenes. In stark contrast are the few intimate and awkward scenes between Michel and Angélique.

These scenes are both realistic and, perhaps, cathartic. DP Julien Poupard's cinematography is handsome. However the laborious recreation or approximation of earlier actual events does not work so well as a film. The elements and where they are going to lead -- Angélique's addiction to the cabaret life; her tendency to drink too much and be a mean drunk; her lack of a physical attraction to Michel -- are all too obvious from the start to deliver any sense of development. The film meanders, but goes nowhere unexpected. The protagonist is vivid, but lacks depth or appeal. The directors achieve a kind of gritty, specific realism in which the principals, especially Angélique, are perfectly cooperative and adept at playing themselves, but despite a special berth at Cannes for this film, it merely seems a novelty item, lacking the resonance of true cinema.

Party Girl, 96 mins., the directors' Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger & Samuel Theis' first feature, debuted at Cannes as the opener at Un Certain Regard, receiving two awards, including the Camera d’Or. French release 27 August 2014, to good reviews (AlloCiné press rating 3.6); Metacritic rating 69. Screened for this review as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its US premiere.

[Chris Knipp]

PIERRE SALVADORI: IN THE COURTYARD/DANS LA COUR (2014)


OLEG KUPCHIK AND CATHERINE DENEUVE IN THE COURTYARD

Indulgence of losers

Catherine Deneuve deserves credit for taking on the totally unglamorous role of the retired social worker Mathilde, but this film's light eccentric comedy is overwhelmed by content that is inexplicable and pointlessly downbeat. It all takes place in that classic locus of French cinema, a big bourgeois apartment building. Here the distracted, nutty Mathilde, without quite paying attention, persuades her husband Serge (Féodor Atkine) to hire a very unqualified, unconvincing applicant to be the building's new concierge (more modernly now called gardien). This is a mess of a musician who's run off from his performing career due to drug problems and general confusion. His name is Antoine (Gustave Kervern). The idleness of retirement seems to be making it hard for Mathilde to maintain her own sanity and sense of balance. Like Antoine, she can't sleep, and she becomes so worried by a crack in a wall of the apartment that she creates paranoia about crumbling foundations in the whole neighborhood. For a while, Mathilde bonds with Antoine, finding his gentle, distracted quality soothing. For her his disarray strikes a common chord. Director Salvadori lets this play out for a while, till it all collapses.

Best known for light comedies like Après Vous, director Pierre Salvadori shambles around from one tone to another, as a series of foul-ups occur due to Antoine's inability to maintain discipline in the building. Antoine just lets a crazy Slavic security guard named Lev (Oleg Kupchik) distribute fliers for a creepy cult and then provides him with a place to stay, and even hosts his large guard dog. He also allows Stéphane (Pio Marmaï), an ex-athlete who's broke but owns one of the apartments, to store his collection of bikes in the courtyard, against Serge's wishes. Antoine turns out to have a serious cocaine habit that he shares with Stéphane.

This is a tale where people go from being amiably ditzy to being dangerously out of control. Eccentricities are played for laughs, but the humor begins to fail because psychological and drug problems and social malfunction aren't funny. The way the issues Mathilde faces are resolved is facile and unconvincing. That she would go so far wrong and then would snap back to being right again so easily is implausible, and Antoine's charm comes to seem pathetic.

In the Courtyard/Dans la cour, 97 mins., debuted at the Berlinale; some other festivals. French theatrical release 23 April 2014 with very solid and admiring reviews ("a little gem of tenderness," 20 Minues); AlloCiné press rating 3.8. Shown as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015, its North American premiere, where it was screened for this review. A US theatrical release is coming via Cohen Media Group.