Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2021

[Chris Knipp]

FABIENNE GODET: LIFELINES/SI DEMAIN (2020)


LUCIE DEBAY, JULIE MOULIER IN LIFELINES

In search of lost time

When we meet the protagonist, Esther (Julie Moulier, who also appeared in Fabienne Godet's 2013 and 2018 features]) has been drinking for ten days and winds up in the hospital because she can't deal with being dumped by her boyfriend. Then she receives a journal, source unknown, about an 18-year-old devastated when she survived a motorcycle accident her boyfriend died in.

This meditative road picture takes us along with Esther as she forgets her sorrow by trying to track down what happened to this young woman, who apparently ran off and may be traceable to Toulouse. Moulier has a funky, soulful quality; her face looks lived-in, perhaps a drinker's face, though she turns out to be trim and energetic. Esther leaves behind her best friend, Elena (Lucie Debay), even though Elena's cancer has come back. Elena insists she feels fine and she wants Esther to track down this story. Moulier's lived-in quality makes her relatable. If you go with the flow, this is a watchable picture. It takes us to Spain and then to Lisbon, where there is a little girl called Antonietta who goes to the French school and, eventually, the name of the lost girl and her identity is revealed.

Esther is a translator who wanted to be a writer. When she winds up in Spain she speaks fluent Spanish. She also has a stoicism that she needs when a handsome young hitchhiker she was traveling to Spain with doesn't show up the next morning and then her car dies on a remote road and her bag disappears later when she's begun hitchhiking. The handsome young man is played by Arnaux Valois, also the love interest in another Rendez-Vous '21 film, Susanne Lindon's Spring Blossom.

You may guess the surprise ending before it comes, and before that this bracing journey may start to feel futile. But as a place-marker, and thanks to Moulier, and Godet's dp Marie Celette (also the dp for the 2018 film) and surroundings that don't feel conventional, Lifeline has a certain offbeat appeal.

Lifelinea/Si demain, 85 mins., debuted at the Arras Film Festival Nov. 2020. It was screened at home for this review as part of the all virtual Mar. 2021 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. It is unreleased.

[Chris Knipp]

EMMANUEL MOURET: LOVE AFFAIR(S)/LES CHOSES QU'ON DIT, LES CHOSES QU'ON FAIT (2020)


Niels Schneider, Guillaume Gouix in Love Affair(s)

Mouret's Shall We Kiss?/Un baiser si'l vous plaît was featured in the 2008 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, when I cited Derek Elley of Variety sayint he was a combination of Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer. Here, the delicacy is still there; it's shown in its use of Vincent Macaigne and Niels Schneider. The three women are fine. But Mouret's mastery has taken him too far this time. He's working at such a high pitch now, with so many couples coming and going and so much well-chosen classical music from Chopin to Italian opera, that this movie is a bit indigestible. You get lost in it more than once. It's not just me: Even the French critic of Les Fiches du Cinema quoted in AlloCiné, for instance, says it's "difficult to savor the brilliant dialogue. . . under the constraint of the rapid pacing." He adds something I'd not thought of: that "the actors' restrained acting doesn't help." Many viewers find it all too pretentious and overwrought. That's not the Emmanuel Mouret I was so taken by 13 years ago.

It probably is true that many in the cast do downplay, and this robs the film of a comic element one feels surely is meant to be there, but gets lost in the love-longing and false moralist stubbornness of the ladies who refuse to grant their favors sometimes when you know they want to. It's a droll twist to saddle the dreamy Niels Schneider, still notable and compulsively watchable here, with inappropriate casting as a perpetual loveless loser while making the geeky Vincent Macaigne into an apparent success with both wife and mistress and, presumably, job as well, since he lives in splendid digs with grand tapestries, furniture, and paintings. A number of French spectators on AlloCiné, not as thrilled as the critics, saw the plot complications as tedious "Marivaudages" (plot twists of theatrical farce) and the wealthy Parisian "bobo" settings and the formalized, elaborate talk out of touch with reality.

What's to like? Well, the acting is interesting and able at times anyway, and the two main women characters, Louise played by Emilie Duquesne and, especially, the statuesque Daphné played by Camélia Jordana, are very watchable. Everyone is watchable, including the actor playing Gaspard, Guillaume Gouix, who's the only one whose scenes have a broad comical flavor. The ceaseless classical excerpts certainly often do exactly what they're supposed to do to underline the sense of a scene, but are a bit overwhelming and ultimately cloying, like everything else. Some French critics (and viewers) think that Mouret's great success in 2019 with his more mainstream costume film Mademoiselle de Joncquières (which was well received, but I found somewhat lacking) may have given him too much of a swelled head. I don't know, but that might be true.

This is one of the most celebrated of 2021's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema films, also one of the longest and over two hours. It's nominated for 13 Césars (the awards come in three days from now), and its critics' rating on AlloCiné is 4.3/5 or 86%. But one cannot enjoy what one cannot follow.

Love Affair(s) / Les Choses qu’on dit, les choses qu’on fait, 120 mins., was a Cannes 2020 official selection released on the internet Jun. 26, 2020, and showed in about eight other international festivals including Busan, Tokyo, Thessaloniki and Stockholm. Screened online at home for this review as part of the 2021 all virtual UniFrance-Film at Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Mar. 9, 2021.

[Chris Knipp]

EMMANUEL COURCOL: THE BIG HIT/UN TRIOMPHE (2020)


UN TRIOMPHE/THE BIG HIHT

French prisoners perform "Waiting for Godot" as if it's never been done before

This is a kind of sequel to Rachid Helmi's Orchestra Class/La Mélodie (2017)( R-V 2018) - the movie starring Kad Merad about a teacher to disadvantaged folks, an established genre. As the end titles explain, this surprising story is a "fait divers" (news event) that really happened in Sweden.

The result is what the French call "un feel good movie," and one judged worthy of the name. About rediscovering one's passion, and the actor's trade.

In this we're told that the French are just discovering that prisoners relate strongly to Beckett. I don't quite believe it. Beckett has been playing in prisons for decades. Beckett wrote his major works first in French. He lived across from Paris' La Santé prison and collaborated with California prisoner turned Beckett director Rick Cluchey for many years. How could the French not have discovered this natural affinity between waiting for Godot and rotting in prison?

That said, this is great stuff. In prison, there's no messing around (nor, in a sense, with ghetto kids either). Scenes of Etienne working with the five prisoners chosen to be actors focus on two, Jordan (the vibrant Pierre Lottin), who can barely read, but must learn to recite the 3 nonstop pages of Lucky's wild, complex, nonsense speech, an "Everest" for him to scale, and Kamel (Sofian Khammes), an Arab guy who is a prison caïd who turns up later, having wangled his way in, buying out another guy. The warden Ariane (Marina Hands of Lady Chatterly and Tell No One), whom Etienne must constantly deal with, thinks having Kamel around on the project is very dangerous. But Étienne must insist on keeping him because there is no time and Kamel has turned out to be good. These scenes alternate with argument and pleading with the prison bureaucrats to get the conditions in which Etienne can prepare the play. He has six months. He must fight to get quality time. And thus the docu-style drama maintains excitement.

When the preparation is done, they are taken out of prison, to the Théâtre de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon. "The wind has a smell!" one exclaims, when they leave the prison gate. They're as excited as children. They sort of are children. This is part of the power of such a production: the prisoner actors are fresh, full of pent-up energy and need. This is their chance to do something special, to count as individuals, and a ticket to escape - for a short time - into the outside world.

The film makes every performance - and after one, they're invited to come to theaters in three other cities - different and exciting because of the indiscipline of the prisoner cast members: thoughts of making a run for it are not lacking at times. After the last show, they get wild in the bus and dance naked in front of the jail, resulting in disciplinary detention. A new complication: they've now been invited to perform at Paris' Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, one if France's national theaters, but their misbehavior means they are banned from travel. Can Étienne get the judge d'instruction to waive this prohibition?

If at many moments this film feels real, even when we absolutely know it can't be,it's because the prisoners are played by professional actors, and pretty good ones. In this it's unlike the Taviani brother's Caesar Must Die (NYFF 2012), about a prison production of Julius Caesar using prison actors with relatively clunky results, a tedious structure and obviously rehearsed dialogue. Here, the "prison" cast often seems explosively spontaneous. Even if this is manipulative, every success in the Beckett performances is made to seem miraculous because it always seems they might go wrong. Étienne is kept important and collaborative - present and communicating during every performance. The Algerian-born Kad Merad costarred in the most popular French-made film in France of the 2000's, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, and a very popular one, Les choristes: he is gallic movie mainstream "feel good" gold. We'll see if the pleasing twists of this film play well with French critics and audience in its upcoming release. It seems geared to do so.

The Big Hit/Un triomphe, 105 mins., was part of Cannes Official Selection May 2020, and as such debuted at Angoulême in Aug.; IMDb lists seven other festival showings. Scheduled for theatrical release in France Mar. 24, 2021. Screened online at home for this review as part of the all-virtual FLC-UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

[Chris Knipp]

SAMIR GUESMI: IBRAHIM (2020)


ABDEL BENDAHER IN IBRAHIM

Bressonian banlieue boy

Watching Ibrahim is almost like seeing a film by Bresson, or an early postwar Italian neoreaist film. Dialogue is staccato or nonexistent. In particular though 17-year-old Ibrahim (Abdel Bendaher) and his father Ahmed (Guesmi himself, an actor with 136 credits, for whom this is the feature directorial deut) are all they've got, they don't say much to each other. Some scenes have an element of mime. Much revolves around a central, badly understood and overwhelming financial issue. Ahmed is missing most of his front teeth. Dreaming of becoming a waiter at the Royal Opera restaurant where he works selling seafood out front, Ahmed has had removable dentures made but he has to pay a lot of money to pick them up now.

Ibrahim seems childlike, and there's something Chaplinesque in his conception. He's easily manipulated by his dumb but more confident and older friend Achille (Rabah Naït Oufella, Nocturama, who lures him into stealing things and visiting a rich gay man, but he always runs. One failed exploit forces Ibrahim's father Ahmed (director Guesmi) to pay much more than the money he owes on the dentures to save his son from the police. Through Achille the film paints what a life of petty crime might be, also how an impoverished teenage boy (and perhaps Achille is gay) might become a male prostitute.

Then a couple of girls from the trade school he and Achille attends take Ibrahim to a restaurant, and he winds up with one of them. (This is a feel-good episode that adds little to the realism of the film.) Ibrahim's world is sketchy and illusory, but can also go from emptiness to something huge in a moment. Largely inarticulate, he may dream of being a professional soccer player, but in the club he's only a substitute. Discovery of this, and the costly theft, and other clumsy misbehavior, anger Ahmed, but he's never punishing or violent toward his son. A final scene about Ibrahim's mother helps explain his gentleness: he has much to ask forgiveness for.

What is pleasantly retro is also the way the story unfolds in simple sequence. No elaborate cross-cutting, no flashbacks.

Bendaher has a striking, pure face, often framed in a protective balaclava: he is at once impoverished and beautiful. Mostly in motion, he seems tall and slightly bent forward. Clear especially when he and Achille undress in the club locker room, his whole body is gestural. The film has been praised for its simple, direct storytelling. Not everything quite computes. We don't question the action too much because it's so breathless, vivid, and well directed.

Two of this year's best and most distinctive Rendez-Vous films focus on teenage banlieu boys, the other one being Gagarine/Gagarin(Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh's Cité portrait, Gagarin, where young Yuri, unlike the innocent, confused Ibrahim, is the star and mastermind of the dwindling housing complex community. But each is isolated and overwhelmed in his own special way.

Samir Guesmi is an actor with 137 credits making his feature directorial debut and screenplay (with Rosa Attab) here. He collaborated on the adaptation and script here as well. The dp was the well-known Céline Bozon, the art director Laurent Baude, composer of the scoreRaphaël Eligoulachvili. The editing was done by Pauline Dairou. Abdel Bendaher reports having generally ignored French movies, but recently having looked at Jacques Audiard's Un prophète and "a movie called La tete haute" (by Emmanuelle Bercot) and being "very impressed by the performances." Indeed: models that might lead him forward in this unexpected job of actin

Ibrahim, 79 mins., debuted at Angoulême Aug. 2020, named there best film, best director, best screenplay and best music; it was also shown at Busan and received Rome's Alice nella Città Golden Camera Award.. Theatrical release scheduled in the Netherlands May 20, 2021. The French distributer is Wild Bunch. Screened online at home for this review as part of the all-virtual FLC-UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

[Chris Knipp]

NICOLE GARCIA: LOVERS/AMANTS (2020)


BENOIT MAGIMEL, PIERRE NINEY IN AMANTS

This noirish drama never quite acquires a pulse

Nicole Garcia has 97 acting credits and 11 directorial ones. Of the latter I've only seen four. She seems to go for convoluted plots that draw you in even when they're not working. But they don't always work, and this one really doesn't - so little, in fact, that its decor is more interesting than its people.

Amants states its subject clearly enough. It's dark, "painterly," but also may be "marred by a silly script" as Xan Brooks wrote from Venice in the Guardian . Its noirish plot bears little connection to ordinary reality. But where was that ever a problem in the movies? Variety isn't wholly wrong to say it's "lackluster" but Jordan Mintser has a point too. In his Hollywood Reporter review he hypes Lovers as a "good ol' fashioned doomed romance." He points to its "eye-popping exotic locations," its "traffic-stopping cast," and lists its "lavish wines, great catering, guns, drugs, sex and lies." He says Garcia "delivers the genre’s essential items" in a "slick film noir throwback" that's "carried by" three "strong performances." Is this true? Ba, oui et non. All the nice accoutrements are there, but the characters leave much to be desired. Accomplishments aren't up to aims here.

Watching a Nicole Garcia plot line unfold, one must be willing to go with the flow. Pay patient attention as the hefty love sequence is followed by some discreet drug dealing. The girlfriend, LIsa (Stacy Martin of Nymphomaniac), is a hotel-school student, so there are scenes of fussing over table-settings for a fancy restaurant and napkin-folds with three long thin ears poking up. Simon (Pierre Niney) is at a bar and it's amusing to find Grégoire Colin cast as Niney's older brother, Paul, which works very well: they have the same long nose. The allusion to Claire Denis is appreciated.

But are the young lovers well-cast? It's sexier to see Lisa and Simon, he bare-chested, watch an old American noir movie on a screen occupying a whole wall, than having sex, always shot in monochrome and in the missionary position, cut short by the editor; or dining with Simon's doomed rich client in his multi storey parents' house, which appears to have a Vermeer upstairs. A lot of this is, pace Mintzer, about posh decor. That, and the artwork, satisfy: but decor isn't enough to make a movie.

The film is in chapters: Paris, the south seas, Geneva. It moves rapidly at first to separate the hot young lovers so that, three years later, they will renew their passion - on an island in the Indian Ocean - despite Lisa now being married to the rich owner of an international insurance business, Leo (Benoît Magimel), who began pursuing her when she became a hat check girl after Simon fled the country and lost touch with her and in her despondency she let herself get kicked out of hotel school. Lumpish, somewhat sullen, but basically a decent man, Leo is someone the rather emotionless Lisa can't give up even though she's drawn to Simon when he magically turns up at the Madagascar hotel stacking surfboards and handling day trips. Things are left unresolved between Simon and Lisa when they're back in touch reunited. The writing is vague, but Niney and Martin also decidedly continue to lack chemistry. Niney is cool looking and soulful, with his long face, sharp features, and lean body that makes him look taller than he is. But he's not sexy. Stacy Martin simply seems wan, sad, and absent.

So, on to another chapter. Geneva is where Leo has a big house, enjoys fancy Japanese whisky, and continues to toy with adopting a child, but mind you, he can't have one with a deformed foot. (Does that make him a bad guy?) Surprise: Simon turns up again. This movie, apart from rich lifestyles, is most clearly into catering, hotels, and personal service, and before you know it Lisa has persuaded her young lover, who's by now acquired culinary skills, to come and cook a big line-caught sea bass in an Oceania recipe for her husband, who, most appreciative, impulsively hires him as his driver for a hasty trip to Zurich.

It is now clear where this is going, if you pay any attention to noir crime film rules. Simon is getting closer and closer to the person he wants out of the a way. While the action that follows goes against expectations, it hasn't the fun twists of a neo-noir. The writing simply lacks the punch and clarity of that genre. Furthermore, the two young lovers never acquire the minimum necessary level of appeal and edge. It is not good that the old guy, the bourgeois fat cat husband, should be the most interesting character, especially given that Magimel's part is so underwritten.

Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily is cruel but to the point. He notes how right at the start the generic title points to lack of imagination. I don't know that he's right to fault the lack of significant black or Asian characters. Surely that is part of the point? But he is right on the mark in calling this a "lugubrious essay in lifestyle melodrama"
and thinking it "irredeemably dated and listless." Alas, the world will little note nor long remember this Nicole Garcia film.

Lovers/Amants, 103 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 3, 2020 and was part of Toronto (Industry Selects) Sept. 14. Screened online at home for this review as part of the Film at Lincoln Center-UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Mar.11, 2021.


STACY MARTIN, PIERRE NINEY IN AMANTS

[Chris Knipp]

GUILLAUME BRAC: À L'ABORDAGE! (2020)


STILL FROM A L'ABORDAGE!

When things don't go the way you want it's not so bad

I have written about Brac's several films featuring Vincent Macaigne, 2012's World Without Women (FCN) and 2014 Tonnerre (R-V) and his episodic and Rohmeresque 2017 July Tales (R-V). Brac has an element of Rohmer in his young men and women looking for connection in summer settings. But the Rohmer dialogue and neat structure are missing.


À L’Abordage! is a return to fiction filmmaking for director Guillaume Brac, whose last release was the feature documentary Treasure Island (2018). But it represents a continuation of a theme which is evident throughout much of his work – that brief escape from reality afforded by holidays. Here, much of this and that. There is everything from a car accident to karaoke. The new twist is the main vacationers in this town with a mediocre camping ground are two black city boys among all the white people.

The strapping Félix (Eric Nantchouang) meets Alma (Asma Messaoudene) one night and they spend several hours together. She goes on vacation with her family. Félix, a caretaker for older people, discusses this with the old lady. This is the introduction to genial boundary-crossing, because it's a serious talk. He persuades his pal Chérif (Salif Cissé), a big, chubby guy who works in a supermarket to take five days off, and they ride-share with Édouard (Édouard Sulpice), a typical middle class young French white guy. He was expecting girls, and is very annoyed. But camaraderie soon crops up between the three guys. An accident forces Édouard to stay at the campground too: it'll take a week for the parts to arrive.

Alma is anything but pleased when Félix shows up without prior warning at the vacation spot where she's staying in a house with her parents, and they're in conflict for the next couple of days. However, Chérif meets up with Héléna (Ana Blagojevic), an attractive young mother with a delightful tiny baby. She's been left there by her husband, because he made the decision to start a new pizza restaurant while his wife had a baby. He's off tending to an emergency at the restaurant. Chérif likes taking care of the baby and hanging out with Héléna. By the time this is all over he realizes being with Héléna counts more than the baby.

There is a small trace of turnaround and dreams they didn't know they had coming true. But essentially Brac's interest is a pleasant randomness. It is surely a very big not-so-hidden point that nobody pays any attention to the fact that Félix and Chérif are black. There are snooty, egocentric young guys in all directions. But they would be there anyway. And is forgiven. Even Alma apologizes to Félix, though he realizes they weren't meant to be together.

The title, a traditional cry of French pirates about to board a boat, is taken from the comedy routine of a young woman being a clown in town for kids dressed as a pirate. She will turn up at the end after Félix, on what he plans is his last night on the trip, has slept outside in the open and Chérif has spent the night with someone different this time. Édouard, not the posh boy anymore, is cleaning latrines to earn money to pay for fixing his mom's car.

À L'Abordage! ("All Hands on Deck"), 95 mins., debuted Feb. 25, 2020 at the Berlinale. Eight other international festival showings including Reykjavik, Odessa, Bordeaux, Busan, Thessaloniki and Goteborg. Screened online at home for this review as part of the Mar. 2021 all virtual UniFrance-FLC Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

[Chris Knipp]

QUENTIN DUPIEUX: MANDIBLES/MANDIBULES (2020)


DAVID MARSAIS AND GRÉGOIRE LUDWIG IN MANDIBLES

This time a Dupieux film that's actually fun to watch and talk about

Having reviewed three of Dupieux's oddball films, Reality (2014), Keep an Eye Out (2018) and Deerskin (2019), and now watched Mandibles, I have an idea of the cruelty, buffoonery, and ingenuity of this sui generis and determinedly uncommercial French director's œuvre, though since he has ten features, and each film is different from the last, I can't confidently generalize about the whole range of it. One may observe that with Keep an Eye Out his US reviews improved, going from Metacritic 50's (or 20's) to 60's, 62 for that one, 65 for Deerskin. This may reflect a mellowing of the manner, but also quite likely the growth of a more receptive Anglophone audience of critics aware of Dupieux's toung-in-cheek midnight movie cult potential and poised to enjoy it. Mandibles clearly focuses less on the ingenuity and more on the buffoonery. I confess to having fun, and not looking at my watch. And the Metascore has gone up a whole ten points this time.

MAndibles focuses on two lawless losers; it's a buddy picture, and that gets it away from the terrible isolation of Deerskin and its toxically egocentric protagonist whom even the bland Jean Dujardin couldn't make palatable. The tall, unshaven, longhaired Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and his pote Jean-Gab (David Marsais) - note the cozy names - are pals who knuckle-bump constantly to declare their friendship. WTF? If their get-rich schemes fail, who cares? Life is good. And they've got each other. There is also sociability later when a woman thinks Manu is her old friend Fred, and for a while Manu and Jean-Gab are adopted by her weird family and stay in their roomy hoouse.

This is technically a goofy sci-fi film and replacing the MacGuffin of the deerskin jacket last time is a giant fly, yes, a fly the size of a hefty dog, which turns up in the beat-up light yellow Mercedes Manu hot wires. (By the way, Dupieux uses a image processing again that makes the whole thing look like a faded seventies B picture.) Or perhaps this is magic reality. It's not Kafka. Nobody's transformed into this fly. They decide it's a girl, name her Dominique, and adopt her as a captive pet that Jean-Gab pets and prepares to train so they can use her like a drone that can steal stuff and make them rich.

This is a secondary plot that becomes the primary mover of the story. The initial gig is to transfer a briefcase between two shady businessmen. The contents of it, when revealed, may be something of a letdown, though still strange and glitzily criminal in flavor. But the fun is getting there, and when that's done, after much delays, there's still Dominique.

Dominique (spoiler alert!) at one point eats a small dog, while Manu and Jean-Gab are staying at the house, with pool, of the woman who thinks Manu is Fred. Only the family concludes, by odd circumstances, that the dog was eaten by one of their number, the brain-damaged Agnès (Adèle Exarchopoulos of Blue Is the Warmest Color), whose condition causes her to shout when she talks, and be overexcited. The family's decision to have Agnès taken away may seem cruel, but she enjoys being heavily sedated: it makes her voice return to normal and her speech become calm.

The Dupieux cruelty is held in check by the buddyhood and the inemptitude, except early on, when Manu and Jean-Gab steal a man's trailer house and tie him up, and then while trying to cook dinner Manu torches the trailer and they abandon it. Dupieux extracts no menace or cruelty from the giant fly and equally refrains from making her cute. A couple of brief glimpses of things through Dominique's multifaceted eyes is bracingly strange. Indeed one of the criticisms is that Dupieux doesn't make sufficient imaginative use of the fly, but his skill is not of imagination but of working out premises, and this time he has done us the kindness of one that leads to harmless pleasure.

Mandibles/Mandibules,77 mins., debuted at Venice; showed also in Germany's Fantasy Filmfest, Sitges Catalonia, Busan, Thessaloniki, and (virtual) Rotterdam, and is scheduled for US release May 7 2021. Screened online at home for this review as part of the all-virtual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Mar. 12, 2021. Metascore: 75%.