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    Paris movie journal oct.-nov. 2017

    PARIS MOVIE JOURNAL OCT.-NOV. 2017




    BPM/120-BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE (Robin Campillo 2017). Campillo's vivid evocation of the Nineties French ACT-UP organization fighting the slowness and indifference of government and Big Pharma to the AIDS crisis. Members of the group debate, fight, carry out dramatic actions, and fall in love. This film won the Grand Prix and four other awards at Cannes. The best about this is that it feels authentic, done by Campillo for himself, not trying tp prove anything or lecture anybody, evoking his own experience. In doing this successfully, he may communicate better across age, sex, and generation lines than many more conventional gay films. Included in the Main Slate of the NYFF. AlloCiné press raging 4.5, Metacritic 84%. Watched at MK2 Odéon St. Michel (Hautefeuille) 22 Oct.



    NUMÉRO UNE/NUMBER ONE (Tonie Marshall 2017). A big role for Emmanuelle Devos as Emmanuelle Blachey, an executive moving to the top of international corporations. She convincingly speaks Chinese too. But it's wasted because this story is bloodless and unsexy and full of uninvolving plot details, more a sociological tract than a film. Marshall, who's half American and half French, made one prize-winning film, Venus Beauty Institute (1999). This new movie is bursting with empty competence. AlloCiné press rating 3.3. Watched at UGC Danton 23 Oct.



    L'ATELIER/THE WORKSHOP (Laurent Cantet 2017). A successful Parisian novelist (Maria Foïs) comes to coach a cross section of seven young locals of various ethnicities in a summer writing workshop to create a collective mystery thriller in La Ciotat, a town on the Mediterranean coast near Marseille whose shipping manufacturing industry has faded. She clashes with one more talented and provocative student of white racist leanings, Antoine (Mathieu Lucci), whose air of danger may make more sense when we realize the screenplay was coscripted by frequent collaborator Robin Campillo, of Eastern Boys (as well as the current BPM). Cantet, as in his Palme d'Or-winning The Class 9 years ago, returns to form with a cross section of popular society and its discontents. Though this turns into more of a two-hander and thriller, it is more about class conflicts than violence, and Antoine's ability to write provocatively is his best trait. AlloCiné press rating 3.9. Watched at MK2 Odeon 24 Oct.



    AU REVOIR LÀ-HAUT/SEE YOU UP THERE (Albert Dupontel 2017). An ambitious WWI-aftermath fantasy ($22 million budget) starting with a disastrous trench battle just at the end of hostilities when Edouard, a young artist (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart of BPM), who loses his jaw, and the older Albert, who was an accountant (director Dupontel) are thrown together, and remain together in secret in peacetime carrying out a crooked scheme involving war memorials, while Edouard avoids his powerful domineering dad (a rather one-note Niels Arestrup). This is an enthusiastic (and over-laborious) adaptation of the Goncourt-Prize-winning novel of mystery thriller writer Pierre Lemaitre. While Albert is a Chaplin-esque sad sack, his voiceless, miming young pal, whose death he fakes, wears a succession of elaborate masks and has a girl urchin who speaks for him - all well-designed for fans of quaint and colorful period costume spectaculars. AlloCiné Press rating 4.0. Watched at UGC Danton opening day 25 Oct.



    POUR LE RÉCONFORT/COMFORT AND CONSOLATION (Vincent Macaigne 2017). Feature directorial debut of the prolific French indie actor who drops his usual ditsy persona and casts Parisian theatrical mates for a passionate, angry, autobiographical rant about privilege. Focus is on siblings who come back to their family estate near Orléans after five years living it up in NYC and Mexico to face financial problems of the family finances, hanging out, dancing, and drinking at length with less wealthy contemporaries they grew up with, who couldn't afford to wander. One of the lattter wants to buy the property for a trivial amount, for retirement home use. This hard-to-watch film, an editorial about social inequities and non-adaptation, is rife with noisy rock parties and violent arguments. In Academy ratio and minimal, with angry, strident yelling where a plotline or cinematic flair might be. AlloCiné press rating 3.2. Watched at MK2 Odéon St. Michel (Hautefeuille) on opening day 25 Oct.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-29-2017 at 03:39 AM.

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    LE SENS DE LA FÊTE/C'EST LA VIE! (Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache 2017)/. Jean-Pierre Bacri in a typically grumpy and energetic role as chief caterer at the helm of a large, unruly team of waiters, cooks, musicians, et al. responsible for a big wedding party in a 17th-century chateau plagued by many mishaps in this lively but unchallenging mainstream entertainment. Toledano and Nakache made the huge French hit Intouchables 8 years ago with François Cluzet and Omar Sy. There's not the same successful use of touching minority cliché here, or as human a topic. This is a well-oiled machine with mostly good continuity and excellent use of music and spectacle. Chances for more complex plotting or richer layers of social commentary are missed, but that's not the point: it's all about keeping the laughs coming. Vincent Macaigne reappears as - guess what - a schlub with romantic pretensions. Bacri evidently contributed to his role here and performs it with unflagging vigor, if the result is not as sophisticated as he has often achieved in his dry, witty collaborations with Agnes Jaoui. AlloCiné press rating 3.7. Watched at UGC Danton 26 Oct.



    LOVING VINCENT/LA PASSION VAN GOGH (Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman 2017). However silly the story (but I didn't find it silly; it's too obsessive-compulsive for silliness), bringing to life the paintings of Van Gogh in animation makes for a beautiful and surprising film. Sometimes the images are clichés of course, but mostly it is so astonishing for them to come to life, and some of the people, especially Armand Roulin, the postmaster's son who's played by the actor Douglas Booth and who is the narrator-investigator of the story, are beautiful to look at. Most descriptions of this film don't seem complete. Are these "tens of thousands of paintings"? Is what is happening motion-capture by numerous actors, with rotoscoping of the painting-images over them? Or is stop-motion used in some other unusual way? (Investigation will show clearly, at least, that Douglas Booth in real life is a very pretty young man.) In France we see a French version, which seems better, since this happens in France. Armand Roulin is voiced by the well-known young actor Pierre Niney. AlloCiné press rating 3.5. Metacritic rating 62%. Watched at UGC Odeon 28 Oct.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-15-2018 at 07:41 PM.

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    TOUS LES RÊVES DU MONDE/ALL THE DREAMS IN THE WORLD (Laurence Ferreira Barbosa 2017). Pamela Constantino-Ramos stars in an authentic role as a reluctant young woman in France of Portuguese parents who came in the Eighties. This low-key, descriptive film shows what it's like for several young people to live oscillating between two cultures. The Portuguese family village has something irreducibly solid and authentic Pamela feels strongly, and she endorses traditional values, but for her generation Portugal is rural, not Lisbon, and just where they go on vacation. She bonds with another girl of similar background but very different outlook and a crisis unfolds with small drama. Barbosa, who worked notably with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Jeanne Balibar, makes her first feature in nearly a decade. The look at coming of age is subtle, but there are longueurs. More nods to plot convention might not have hurt. AlloCiné press rating 3.5. Watched at Cinéma Étoile Saint-Germain-des-Près 28 Oct.

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    LET THE SUNSHINE IN/UN BEAU SOLEIL INTÉRIEUR (Claire Denis 2017). Denis' lightest, talkiest film is a bitter-sweet and funny dive into the world of a beautiful 50-something French woman (a superb Juliette Binoche), a painter, still very much looking for love and nearly always in the wrong places. The quirky, comically stumbling dialogue has strong contributions from novelist and playwright Christine Angot, with regular dp Agnès Godard providing mostly intimate closeups this time, the scale less ambitious but the approach no less distinctive (Denis' Friday Night being the closest comparison). A string of famous and some hot male French actors including Xavier Beauvois, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Paul Blain, Alex descas, and yes, Gérard Depardieu. Opened in Cannes Directors Fortnight, French release 27 Sept.AlloCiné press rating 3.5. Metacritic 79%. Was in the NYFF Main Slate. Watched at Cinéma Les 3 Luxembourg 29 Oct.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 11-01-2017 at 03:38 AM.

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    JEUNE FEMME/MONTPARNASSE BIENVENUE (Léonor Serraille 2017). La Fémis graduate Leonor Serraille's debut feature, made with an almost entirely female crew, stars Laetitia Dosch of Justine Triet's 2012 The Battle of Solferino as an aimless young woman trying to get by in the Parisian neighborhood of the English title. The film, which is mainly a tour de force for its lead, who indulges every crazy whim yet implausibly juggles work in a cosmetics store and as an au pair and romances a handsome overqualified black security guard named Ousmane (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye), debuted in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2017. It's a feather in everybody's cap, if not a picture of impressive womanhood. AlloCiné press rating 4.0; Metacritic rating 80%. Watched at UGC Odéon on opening day 1 Nov.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 11-03-2017 at 10:57 AM.

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    CARBONE (Olivier Maréchal 2017) The French intro: "Threatened with the loss of his business, Antoine Roca, an ordinary man, develops a scam that will become the breakout of the century. Caught up by banditry, he will have to face betrayals, murders and settling of scores." Which are his downfall. Ex-cop and frequent crime movie writer Marchal directed the excellent 2011 Gang Story/Les Lyonnais (R-V 2012) but even with Benoît Magimel and Gérard Depardieu (who worked well together in the recent French TV series "Marseille"), he doesn't whip up as much excitement here. Actually, the cast isn't as well matched this time. There are a number of crisp and striking visuals but the real star is Magimel's character's dashing black Porsche Carrera. And the scam part is something new in French gangster films: online, computer trading crime, even if the animosities and revenges are old school. Opened in France 1 Nov. Watched at UGC Odeon 2 Nov.



    THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (Yorgos Lanthimos 2017). This presentation of a mysterious, occult revenge for a debatable wrong works better for me, even if it goes on a little long, than the cruel and offensive mockery of human mating represented by the Greek avant-gardist's widely seen previous film, The Lobster. Perhaps, as A.O. Scott of the Times argues, it's Lanthimos' most conventional film yet. But in so being, it achieves more mainstream appeal and it amuses with its sharp use of the dialogue and neat cross-cutting and haunting use of a neutral American setting (mainly Cleveland). The characters talk in stilted words like those of Eugène Green, but there is no movement toward truth and light. Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell do well as beleaguered parents, but the movie belongs to the young Irish actor Barry Keoghan (also in a key small role in Dunkirk) playing the son wishing to avenge the death of his father under the knife to a cardiologist (Farrell). (French title Mise à Mort du Cerf Sacré. Watched at MK2 Odeon 2 Nov.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 11-02-2017 at 03:17 PM.

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