Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2019

[Chris Knipp]

SEBASTIEN MARNIER: SCHOOL'S OUT/L'HEURE DE LA SORTIE (2018)


LAURENT LAFITTE, LEFT, IN SCHOOL'S OUT/L'HEURE DE LA SORTIE

Class of nowhere

You may recall François Ozon's In the House (R-V 2012), in which "A high school French teacher is drawn into a precocious student's increasingly transgressive story about his relationship with a friend's family." The victim was played by Fabrice Lucchini. Other French films about teachers with difficult students led to grief for these actors: François Bégaudeau in Entre les murs (2008), Isabelle Adjani in La journée de la jupe (2008) and Isabelle Huppert in Madame Hyde (2018).*

Well here is another one and it is a good one: Laurent Lafitte, an actor the French are taking a liking to (he's in another film in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Paul Sanchez Is Back! ), in Sébastien Marnier's jazzy, beautiful, disturbing School's Out/L'Heure de la sortie. Pierre is a substitute called in temporarily to replace the French teacher of an exceptionally brilliant class of snotty élèves at the fancy St. Joseph school (have you ever seen classrooms as elegant as this?) when their regular prof has offed himself by jumping out the window. It doesn't take long for us to suspect that these students may have driven their prof to do himself in; may be fast on their way to driving Pierre in the same direction. They know how to put him down and ask impertinent, embarrassing questions. And give condescending answers. Kafka, who he's, at forty - isn't that old to be only a substitute? one asks - doing his late dissertation on? Yes of course they've all read him. They're doing next year's work. And they don't approach it that old way anymore.

They soon have Pierre following them and spying on them as they do peculiar, scary things to each other and carry out odd rituals: this suggests Hitchcock and a Stephen King horror movie, but with an elegant, sun-kissed French look. And Laurent Lafitte is a big, tall muscled man with matching tattoos on both shoulders. He has an ex-boyfriend whose arms are covered with them, and is a tattoo artist. He's unattached and admits to a colleague he's afraid of attachment, and afraid of being afraid (or is it of people who are afraid?).

And the students likewise. Where they are going we can only guess, but it's nowhere good. This is a movie full of surprises even as its genre aspects make it seem pleasingly familiar, but not quite. This is an excellent entertainment we can't spoil by talking about too much, and it relates to very contemporary issues, things that make the younger generation see nothing but doom in their futures and feel nothing but anger and contempt toward their elders.

Lafitte is a compelling presence. The kids are increasingly disquieting. The photography by Romain Carcanade sparkles. The production design by Guillaume Deviercy has a sticky glow. The music by the group Zombie Zombie is pleasingly doom-riven. In the face of all the creepy horror invading Pierre's digs and the apocalyptic and suicidal rituals of the kids, the double finales, though ambitious for a small French production, may feel somewhat climactic.

School's Out/L'heure de la sortie, 107 mins., debuted at Venice Aug. 2018; shown at Austin Fantastic Fest. Sept. 2018. Opened theatrically in France 9 Jan. 2019 to excellent reviews (AlloCiné press rating 3.7). Screened for this review as part of the 2018 UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Rendez-Vous showtimes:
Friday, March 8, 3:45pm
Saturday, March 9, 8:30pm (Q&A with Sébastien Marnier)
________
*See Louis Guichard, Télérama.


LUANA BAJRAMI, VICTOR BONNEL IN SCHOOL'S OUT

[Chris Knipp]

PATRICIA MAZUY: PAUL SANCHEZ IS BACK!/PAUL SANCHEZ EST REVENU! (2018)


ZITA HANROT AND LAURENT LAFITTE IN PAUL SANCHEZ IS BACK!

In search of an exhausted, hysterical imposter

Patricia Mazuy's surprising police thriller - a laugh, a puzzler, and an adrenaline rush - takes us to a place we don't know, the warm, semi-mountainous region of Le Var, a completely unfashionable part of the Côte d'Azur. At first the action looks quite conventional: a police procedural involving bumbling provincial cops. But a lot of energy is generated with this simple, familiar raw material creating a mix of suspense, humor, sexiness, the penetration of a dark violent mind, and sustained mystery - even as we seem to be seeing all that's happening. The ending may be obvious - it's been telegraphed repeatedly - but still takes one aback. There is something crowd-pleasing, yet also almost conceptual, a flip-around of the genre. This shows the French are smart, even in recognizing how dumb they can be. It's all done with material that's universal, like celebrity killers, media madness, ambitious young people, and provincial desperation.

Acknowledgement of stupidity focuses particularly on the true-blue rural French Gendarmerie. That's the proud crew we peer in on where we meet some key characters. Marion (Zita Hanrot) is the eager young woman on the staff who wants to work her way to the top and gain the admiration of her commander, and that's how she addresses him at every opportunity, "Mon Commandant" (Philippe Girard). The commander is a dry, reedy fellow, secure in his command and firm in his advocacy of tact and restraint. Things are quiet here, and he wants them to stay that way. The offices of the Gendarmerie are interesting. They are spiffy and up to date, yet nothing is going on. Somebody filming himself slashing Arab guys' tires and posting it on YouTube is a big story.

Tact and restraint don't describe what Marion has just been doing, which is trying to arrest Johnny Depp for getting a blow job on the road, and then seizing his Porsche and driving it away. But while this famous person's name is being bandied about, up pops the name of the most ambitious young local journalist, Yohann Poulain de Var-Matin (Idir Chender), who wants to be famous. The commander wants to keep him far away from Johnny Depp's Porsche or any word of his recent behavior. But soon Yohann is there: nobody is far away.

Word is going around HQ of another celebrity, suddenly sending emails and making phone calls to local people. He is the grizzly, long-gone local murderer, Paul Sahchez, "the Beast of Gévaudan, Jack the Ripper," who killed his wife and children and incinerated them and escaped a decade ago, and has never been caught. After sightings round the world but never being close to capture, word is he's suddenly, inexplicably, in Le Val. And he is, sort of, and his presence, real or imagined, is going to dominate the rest of the movie, and provide its mix of desperation and adrenaline, contrasting unhinged events with confusing coverage by contrasting local and national media.

This was the last film I saw in the 2019 New York Rendez-Vous with French cinema, and confirmed that for me the discovery of the series was the male actor Laurent Lafitte, of the Comédie Française. Lafitte, a tall, muscularly built man with a dark, dour yet sympathetic face, surely should be hard to miss. But he has been hiding from me in plain sight, since he turns out to have sixty-two film credits (as well as no doubt many stage ones), including roles in such notable films as The Crimson Rivers, Tell No One and Elle. But the day before I saw him in this film, where he has the leading role, I saw him play the lead in Sébastien Marnier's elegantly edgy thriller, School's Out/L'heure de la sortie, where he memorably plays the role of Pierre, beleaguered substitute teacher of a class of maniacally brilliant and dangerous young teenagers.

The producer of Paul Sanchez told us Laurent Lafitte is very famous in France. Now we know why. He is, once you notice him, a powerful presence. Let's forget the twenty-five-year-old rising star Vincent Lacoste for the moment - both star in two films of this year's Rendez-Vous - and focus on the forty-five-year-old Lafitte.

Here, he plays Didier Gérard, a local guy who sells swimming pools, who has gone berserk and disappeared from his family. (Earlier, we have seen his wife come to the station to report his disappearance. Marion has told her not to worry, to get her hair done.) Evidently though Le Val isn't rich and fashionable, it has people who can afford pool constructions, along with the right climate for them. Soon we realize it's Didier Gérard (Laurent Lafitte), driving around in a gaudy, rather pathetic little company panel truck, failing in getting bank approval for a twenty-four thousand euro SUV, now calling Yohann and saying that he's Paul Sanchez, back in town, mulling over his past violence and contemplating more.

As we follow the doings of Yohann and the police, we're also following Didier Gérard, who's a man increasingly wildly on the run. Whoever this man is - and we start to wonder - the film editing, plus Laurent Lafitte's presence, generates a hysterical, and yet also weary and desperate, energy.

Yohann and Marion are excited, and drawn to each other. They seem the right couple. The weather is hot, the time is right. They get it on. Almost. But the phone calls are increasing. Yohann has to take one, just when they get naked: Marion knows who it is. Which is more exciting, sex or a notorious killer? Sadly, for this ambitious young couple, it's the killer. Or the chance of one.

Marion's foolishness with Johnny Depp has hinted how unreliable, what a potential loose canon she is. And yet her energy suggests uprightness and duty. But the buffoonery of the Gendarmerie increases with the hysterical flight of "Paul Sanchez" through the region, trashing his own real identity, setting fire to it, hiding on Roquebrune rock, but sneaking into town to use the internet, stealing weapons. He frantically buys stuff to supply his hiding out, and a couple at a convenience store definitely confirm it: Paul Sanchez is back! They have seen him. This is all the commandant needs to conclude the rumor is true, to call out the gendarmerie and start combing the region.

But Marion has an inside line, and she finds her way directly to him, and tries to keep him to herself. In the event, she will have none of Didier Gérard's protestation now: "I am not Paul Sanchez!"

We can't reveal more; we've already revealed too much. But it will be just as much fun to watch it unreel nonetheless.

Another note: just before the film was introduced to the audience, someone confided to me he'd been told this was the best film of the festival - because it was endorsed by Cahiers du Cinéma. An interesting endorsement. Cahiers certainly rarely likes a film. Generally their critics detest the films other critics most like. Worth considering.

Cahiers is not wrong. Patricia Mazuy, here, does something admirable and enjoyable: there are pleasing genre elements but there is no genre predictability here. She takes convention and turns it on its head, providing fresh insights, an enjoyable watch, and non-stop energy. And she makes admirable use of the tall body and the dour, tired, slightly frightening face of a new idol already well known to the French: Laurent Lafitte of the Comédie Française.

This is the rare Patricia Mazuy's fifth feature (she made only only four over the past 30 years). It's enlivened by a percussive, bracingly strange score by John Cale.

Paul Sanchez Is Back!/Paul Sanchez est revenu!, 110 mins., opened theatrically in France 18 Jul. 2018; later Warsaw and Mar del Plata fest showings. A small number of very good French reviews were received (AlloCiné 3.3). Screened for this review as part of the UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Mar. 2019.

[b] Rendez-Vous showtimes:
Friday, March 8, 8:30pm
Saturday, March 9, 5:45pm\North American Premiere

[Chris Knipp]

GILLES LELOUCHE: SINK OR SWIM/LE GRAND BAIN (2018)



Desperate pleasures

Gilles Lelouche's movie Sink or Swim is a bold, crazy, satisfying tale and one of France's most popular movies of the year. It's about the empowerment and recognition of a small group of desperate men, à la Full Monty. They meet at their municipal swimming pool every week to train in a sport normally relegated to woman: synchronized swimming, an absurd activity for men, most would think, but one that lets them feel useful in a common pursuit and forget their worries. Camaraderie absorbs desperation. And eventually leads to triumph - because, with their two wildly energetic and equally eccentric female trainers (both desperate in their own way), they conceive, and execute, the absurd fantasy of competing in the world men's synchronized swimming competition in Norway. This film, a charmer at home perhaps, has little future in international competition itself: Guy Lodge called a "a mostly innocuous but unmemorable exercise" in his Cannes review for Variety.

In this outlandish effort (movie and story) the filmmakers have elicited some of France's best known film actors, Matthieu Amalric (as Bertrand, who starts things off, at the pool to escape his two years of unemployment and depression and finding the notice of the team on the bulletin board), Guillaume Canet, Benoît Poelvoorde, Jean-Hugues Anglade, and Philippe Katerine, plus a couple of oddball unknowns to round out the group, and as their coaches the estimable Virginie Efira (of Justine Triet's In Bed with Victoria) and Leila Bekhti. These men are not handsome, for the most part they are not young, they're not in particularly good shape. They have all sorts of problems. But that doesn't stop them. One of the characters speaks only Sinhalese. Everyone understands. It's that kind of movie.

This film succeeds, and is interesting, because of the constant unpredictable ways the tale of male empowerment is interrupted by the unpredictable and outlandish but also familiar and universal personal stories of Bertrand, Marcus, Simon, Laurent, Thierry, and the others. How well this plays outside francophone territories is uncertain. French comedy does not tend to translate ideally, and this is quintessentially almost a patriotic local crowd-pleaser. But there is, obviously, a strong visual element, most obviously in the glorious competition finale with its thrilling music and dazzling colors and lights. Lelouche shamelessly seeks to surprise us: nothing is allowed us to anticipate how brilliantly the little team will be able to perform in Norway, and that includes the team members themselves, who are desperately frightened and overwhelmed as they head toward the competition pool.

This film is overstuffed, but its slightly over two-hour run time makes sense with so such disparate characters to develop in some depth. We explore Simon (Jean-Hugues Anglade), who works in the kitchen of his daughter's school, lives in a van, and has made over two dozen self-produced albums nobody listens to; Marcus (Benoît Poelvoorde)a man concealing mostly only from himself that his business is going under; Laurent (Guillaume Canet)m who has spectacular marital problems. Americans are unlikely to know Philippe Katerine (or that he played Boris Vian in Gainsburg: A Heroic Life), but as Thierry, he is a memorable eccentric who looks like Claes Oldenburg and acts like an energetic clown, more competent than he seems. Delphine (Efira), who shouts at the team (but not as brutally as Leïla Bekhti's wheelchair bound Amanda when Delphine's out of commission for a while in rehab) chain smokes and reads poetry as part of her instruction: she is a recovering drunk, two years sober, having lost control when her ace swimming career was derailed.

You never know when a scene from one of these lives will intrude on the picture. It's that unpredictability that (at least intermittently) undercuts the feel-good obviousness of the self-realization tale. And from everything, Lellouche and his editor Simon Jacquet know how to take a complete break once in a while, most satisfyingly when, after the successful competition, the team stops in their van to stand in quiet awe and admiration before a glorious Nordic sunset.

Sink or Swim/Le grand bain, 122 mins., debuted at Cannes 13 May 2018 out of competition. It opened 23 Oct. 2018 in France, receiving a 4.1 press rating and 3.9 public score on AlloCiné. It received ten César Award nominations, including Best Film, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Cinematography.equaled only by Xavier Legrand'sCustody (R-V 2018), the eventual Best Picture winner.Screened for this review as part of the 2019 UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Rendez-Vous showtimes:
Saturday, March 2, 8:45pm
Monday, March 4, 9:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA 2019: COMMENTS.

A lot of the films seem to fall into either silly comedies or earnest social studies, with playful philosophical stories in between, which may also be love stories. And a bit of genre (would that there were more!).




Silly comedies

Obvious silly comedies are the opening night film, Pierre Salvadori's THE TROUBLE WITH YOU, Quentin Duprieux's consistently nutty AU POSTE! (the English title KEEP AN EYE OUT! is a witty bit of word play), Gilles Lellouche's grandly appealing feel-good ensemble comedy SINK OR SWIM/LE GRAND BAIN, and (why not?) Bruno Dumont's COINCOIN miniseries. That may be a very peculiar auteur silly comedy, but silly comedy it is. Within his own self-defined genre, Dumont reigns supreme. I would like to see him do a serious feature film again.

Partly I feel these are brought into the series because they were very popular in France. But their success shows that actually, sometimes, a French comedy can make sense in English subtitles.


VINCENT LACOSTE IN AMANDA

Earnest issue films.

Earnest "issue" films seem somehow more typical of French cinema, but it may be merely that they play better with the US arthouse audience. More of the Rendez-Vous fell into this category: Michaël Hers's AMANDA (about terrorism and grief), Thomas Lilti's THE FRESHMAN (about a cruel selection system), Eva Husson's GIRLS OF THE SUN (not a French story, but a woman director'e earnest war story). Jeanne Henry's IN SAFE HANDS/PUPILLE is about the fate of a baby. This might just be a TV movie here. But the French take their social issues seriously, so it's a good deal more.

INVISIBLES is about homeless women and the social workers who bend the rules trying to help them. It combines feel-good social issues picture with silly comedy. In so doing, it loads on more than one movie can easily carry.

THE TRUK/L'ENCAS is the reverse, a debut film so pared-down it leaves one cold. But its lead is charismatic and its storytelling impressively efficient.

MAYA is about a war correspondent recovering from hostage trauma by traveling in India. This is sweetening the pill too. But it is also a Mia Hansen-Løve film, so it is unpredictable and complex even if the reliance on English dialogue and the exotic setting lead her astray.

Vergil Vernier's willfully edgy SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS is about issues too, the issue of violence predominant. It's very serious, even if its prurience undercuts that and it fails to convince.


MARGAUX MEETS MARGAUX

Philosophical and playful love stories

Good examples of these are Sophie Fillières' amusing MARGAUX MEETS MARGAUX/LA BELLE ET LA BELLE and Judith Davis' vivid WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MY REVOLUTION/TOUT CE QUI RESTE DE MA RÉVOLUTION. They're intellectual but also amorous studies. Romain Laguna METEORITES is a tale of young love - or a girls's sexual adventure - but it also has a mystical or spiritual element, hence the meteorites. This surely is an area in which the French excel.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's THE SUMMER HOUSE/LES ESTIVANTS is bookended by the filmmaker's own character's abandonment by her man. In between there is all kinds of Checkovian family drama, and philosophy too, I'm sure.

Genre films.

A film festival is unlikely to include a pure genre film. But genre provides a welcome leavening of the mix. With SCHOOL'S OUT/L'HEURE DE LA SORTIE Sébastien Marnier delivers a mix of of horror and mystery within a familiar format: the teacher tormented and exploited by his students. Patricia Mazuy's PAUL SANCHEZ IS BACK!/PAUL SANCHEZ EST REVENU! is a genre-twister too, and both star the riveting Laurent Lafitte - the discovery, for me, of this year's Rendez-Vous.


LAURENT LAFITTE