Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center 2012

[Chris Knipp]

JEAN-FRANÇOIS LAGUIONIE: THE PAINTING (2011)


SNOBBISH "FINISHED" FIGURES IN AN UNFINISHED PAINTING

A hierarchy of creation leads to a painting revolt

From veteran French animator Jean-François Laguionie (of A Monkey's Tale; Gwen, the Book of Sand; and other films) comes The Painting/Le Tableau, a lush 76-minute animated feature focused on figures in a painting. The artist has left some of them unfinished, abandoning the canvas for years. And in the interlude a caste system has developed. The Toupins or "all painted" people lord it over the Pafinis, the "not finished," excluding them from the chateau. As for the Rofs, the merely "sketched" -- lines without color who have trouble finishing their sentences -- these the "all painted" ones treat as worthless and try to destroy. And so there is a hierarchy of creation in which some believe themselves more favored and use an aesthetic basis for their exclusionary policies. Yet what did the artist intend? Is he finished? Or will he return? These ideas form the basis for a somewhat meandering philosophical tale. They are so suggestive and the images so beautiful perhaps it's inevitable the results fall a bit short of our expectations. We can also perhaps forgive the story for wandering away from its main themes at times in search of pure adventure or visual stimulation.

Eventually we follow a few main characters on a journey that leads outside their canvas and into other ones, beyond to the dingy studio, and finally outside in what we might call the “real world,” where the most adventurous Pasfini finds the now venerable white-bearded painter. As we might have expected, in old age he has turned to simple landscapes en plein air, because it's "less difficult." It seems from a tour of the studio that he became Picasso, and then Miro or Mondrian, and now he is late Braque.

There are the inevitable amants maudits, the star-crossed lovers. Ramo, a Toupin youth in love with a Pasfinie girl, rejects the discriminatory system and wants to lead a revolt. Driven out of the chateau, he and Plume (a Rof) and Lola, a bold and confident Pasfinie, go in search of the artist. They explore the over-lush garden outside and brave the menacing forest and then, if they can escape the limits of the canvas itself, who knows? They may find find the artist and persuade him to finish his work. But before that they enter, half by accident, the worlds of several other paintings.

The theme offers the opportunity for play with styles and color. In a sense that's what it's all about. For some of us Rofs like "Plume" who are only a few lines may be more appealing and suggestive than the conventionally painted, old-style Toupins.

In the studio the explorers meet a large and langorous nude, once the artist's mistress. They also make their risky way into a painting of Venice; one of them unwittingly takes a gondola ride with Death. It looks great fun to be in Venice at festival time but they learn that celebrating every day is a drag. At sunset there are dozens of artists, and they find out what they can do: become artists and finish themselves! They get bags of paint, and returning to the colony of unfinished people. At first it's a great mess, but when they develop some skill and enter the chateau in multicolored finery their originality makes the snobbish Toupin people terribly jealous.

And then there is the inevitable twist: the worlds within worlds. The artist Lola finds is real (he's not animated), but the field they're in has a big frame around it. Who painted you? asks Lola.

The Painting received César nominations and critical raves (Allociné 4.1) but was less of a winner at the French box office. It was seen at the Annecy Festival and opened in Paris cinemas November 23, 2011. It is included in the joint March 1-11, 2011 UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, and was watched at a presss screening for the series for this review. It is presented in collaboration with the New York International Children's Film Festival. Public screenings will be:

Sat., March 3, 1:15pm – EBM; *Sun., March 4, 11am - IFC
*In person: Jean-François Laguionie




RAMO GETS TO TOUCH UP HIS BELOVED'S FACE BECAUSE SHE'S A PASFINIE

[Chris Knipp]

JALIL LESPERT: HEADWINDS (2011)


BENOÎT MAGIMEL WITH HUGO FERNANDES AND CASSIOPÉE MAYANCE IN HEAD WINDS

Trouble resolved in Brittany


Jalil Lespert is the star of two of my favorite contemporary French films, Laurent Cantet's 1999 labor union drama Human Resources and Xavier Beauvois' emotional 2005 policier, Le petit Lieutenant. He's a powerful actor. A 36,he's already establishing himself as a director. This is his second performance in that other role.

In this quietly tumultuous little film, Paul Anderen (Benoît Magimel), a writer, fights with his doctor wife (Audrey Tautou), insisting that she take care of the house as well as her hospital duties so he can write, but she's fed up and voilà! she disappears without a trace -- leaving him with two adorable and vulnerable little kids. His life shattered, after a year of hoping in vain that his wife will be found, forced to go back to zero, Paul retreats from Paris to his childhood home in Saint-Malo, in Brittany, where his older brother Alex (Antoine Duléry) sets him up with a place to live and work as a driving instructor. Then he screws one of his first students, the pretty, flirty young Justine (Marie-Ange Casta). And he takes in a jobless, homeless man (Ramzy Bedia) who steals his kid from school. The cops and the mother (Lubna Azabal of Incendies) are not too pleased. This is not so good because when hiw wife first disappeared, he was a suspect. He also befriends a man who's lost his job and license for running over a kid on a bike at night (Bouli Lanners). Paul must deal with the passive-aggressive officiousness of the local police chief (Isabelle Carré).

Des vents contraires, the bestselling novel this is based on by Olivier Adam (who collaborated with Lespert, Marion Laine and Marie-Pierre Huster on the screenplay), clearly chooses to throw the works at its sensitive yet durable protagonist and Magimel has to be a kind of damper: he absorbs, and the noise stops till something new comes along to challenge him. Clément and Manon (Hugo Fernandes and Cassiopé Mayance), the two kids, fare surprisingly well. One of the story's points seems to be that the French social safety net is too intrusive at times and the police investigations, school administrators, and therapists ought to mind their own business.

An older woman comes along to learn to drive, an admirer of Paul's books (Aurore Clément), who gives him her big house at a very reasonable rent. There is resolution, and life begins again.

The criticism is that this is a TV movie, a very good one, but a TV movie. Magimel is soulful and appealing; you may wish you had his rueful smile, his quiet intensity. At 38, he has already had a formidable career, winning the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his work with Isabelle Huppert in Haneke's Le Pianiste at 27 and a regular for the late Claude Chabrol. Nice restrained music here by David François Moreau (with a minute of wild rap by DJ Pone), and creditable lensing by Josée Deshaies. I like the way Lespert varies his tone. This is not all gray as some seem to think.

Headwinds/Des vents contraires, with its wintry gray Breton setting, opened appropriately in Paris in mid-December 2011, to generally favorable reviews (Allociné 3.1). There were a few dissenters: Cahiers du Cinéma found it taking shelter "under a gray smile," too cowardly "to work with fire and ice." Lespert may still be a better actor than director, but he knows how to find the best actors and work with them. The scenes with children are natural and sometimes fun. Headwinds opened in UK cinemas Februarly 17, 2011. The film is included in the March 1-11, 2012 Film Society of Lincoln Center-UniFrance collaboration, the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Public screening schedule:

Tues., March 6, 6pm – IFC; Thurs., March 8, 4pm – WRT; Fri., March 9, 6:15pm - WRT

Tues., March 6, 6pm – IFC; Thurs., March 8, 4pm – WRT; Fri., March 9, 6:15pm - WRT

[Chris Knipp]

PHILIPPE LEFEBVRE: PARIS BY NIGHT (2012)


ROSCHDY ZEM AND SARA FORESTIER IN PARIS BY NIGHT

Weiss of Vice

Roschdy Zem plays Commandant Simon Weiss, pronounced "Vice," and he works for the Paris police vice squad. For this evening's tour of duty he is joined by a new policewoman signed up for the evening to be his driver in a posh Peugeot as he makes the rounds of clubs and checks up on various contacts. Is he an honest cop? In this particular department isn't that an oxymoron? Weiss clearly is a fair dealer, but that's another story. Does he apply the law, or simply the highest standard of the Parisian gangster code? We watch Paris by Night for Zem's suave, austere performance. We wish the screenplay didn't wind up with a surprise ending that leaves us flat.

Philippe Lefebvre is reportedly the maker of two creditable thrillers during the Eighties (Le Transfuge and Le Juge). After twenty years working in TV, he has returned to the big screen with a creditable, if slightly disappointing, noir about a solitary Paris vice squad cop (played by French veteran Zem) and his driver for the evening, Laurence Deray (Sara Forestier of last year's The Names of Love). The French title is Une nuit, "A Night," and this is a movie that scrupulously observes the unities and noir's preference for darkness. The black is lightened, however, by the use of digital cameras. These enable filmmakers to work inexpensively (no elaborate lighting setups) and seamlessly (no pauses to reload cameras). They also give the kind of glittering look we see in Michael Mann's gangster movies (notably in Collateral, mentioned as a model by the filmmakers, and Public Enemies). The Paris press has favorably spoken of the result as in the spirit of noir classics by Jean-Pierre Melville, this film being perhaps comparable to Alain Delon in Melville's Un flic/A Cop. But Un flic is not the best of what Delon and Melville did together.

This Michael Mann-style digital noir gives us glitter. We can see everything. The digital camera opens up the shadows, and that's remarkable. But it lessens the mystery. And it robs us of those velvety blacks. This isn't black and white. There is a lot of brown. There is realism of factual detail too, so we're told: police insiders were extensively consulted. But that is a mixed blessing. Where is the myth? Where is the magic?

The action takes us with seeming randomness from one night spot to another as Weiss doles out addresses to Deray, and a kind of plot emerges, or a laundry list of complicated involvements and events. In the course of a night's work, Weiss smashes up a bar; force-feeds a dealer heroin (not to mention a transvestite's poodle, which inadvertently OD's); sends Jerôme (Baptiste Amann), son of Weiss' longtime friend Tony Garcia (Samuel Le Bihan) to his mother for protection after getting him off coke-dealing charges. In several meetings, one presided over by the excellent Richard Bohringer (Gorodish in the 1981 classic Diva), he negotiates the opening of a new nightclub, which is in violation of various codes, with leading underworld figures. There is a lot of fuss over Tony Garcia's lawyer, Paul Gorsky (Gégory Fitoussi), who has screwed his friend in more ways than one. But I give away too much. Except that none of it matters quite enough, because it's in the nature of the screenplay that these events are a series of tableaux. What counts are the personalities, and so the highlights are only two: the scene between Garcia and Weiss early in the morning, when Weiss drinks too much Scotch and home truths are exchanged; and the meeting between Weiss and his driver in the light of day. It is nice to see Zem and Forestier sitting in a police office talking it all over. "I am not dangerous," Weiss says. "My job is." Indeed. One can't imagine a scene -- or two protagonists -- of such simple elegance in an American cop flick. But one longs for something more tragic and vital.

Zem's craggy, stoical mug -- he could be a taller, slimmer, Arab version of Jean Gabin -- is well suited to cop flicks and he has been in many. He has a toughness and elegance that suits him to a kind of passing on of the mantle -- but who could assume the mantle of the young Delon, or of Melville in his prime?

Paris by Night/Une nuit opened in Paris cinemas January 4, 2012, and got very good reviews (Allociné 3.8), though it seems to have been passed over by some of the more cinephile publications. The Mann-ish night images are a pleasure; so are the performances; the classic fatalism is gone, though fans of French film noir are welcome to come and look for it. This may not be one of the great ones, but it's still a good watch.

This is included in the March 1-11 joint Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance presentation of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Public screenings schedule for Paris by Night in two New York locations during the Rendez-Vous:

Mon., March 5, 4pm & 8:30pm – WRT; Tues., March 6, 10:10pm - IFC

[Chris Knipp]

DELPHINE GLEIZE: MOONCHILD (2011)


QUENTIN CHALLAL AND VINCENT LINDON IN MOONCHILD

A patient and his doctor who must part

Moonchild/La permission de minuit is a medical tale that avoids the usual dangers of such tales even as it risks being stereotyped anyway. This is one of a number of stories (there was a film in 1988 in which Brad Pitt was the victim) about someone with the rare genetic disorder of xeroderma pigmentosum (XP). It occurs in only one in a quarter million in the US; more in Europe; six times that in Japan. In XP the body's ability to deal with the effects of ultraviolet rays is severely disabled. Fewer than 40% with the condition live beyond the age of 40; many get severe cancers before they're 20. Delphine Gleize's film handles this subject with delicacy and tact. Finally her subject is only partly the disease and more particularly the adolescent patient, his faithful longtime doctor, who goes through a big transition in his career, and the fraught relations between the doctor and the boy.

Here the patient with XP is is a 13-year-old called Romain (newcomer Quentin Chalal), who is "cool" (by his own declaration), energetic and tousel-haired. Romain likes girls and rugby and surfs in the moonlight, and, of course, since it's safe for him at night, he can go to parties. But he can't play night rugby with his pals because the playing field has UV lights. And he must be constantly checked, use a UV-reader to monitor the light safety even of indoor spaces, and wears a hood and mask and gloves when he goes out in the daytime.

Romain clearly wants to live life to the fullest he can. He wants pals, he wants parties, he wants a girlfriend, and he wants to make love, and he gets all that. but aside from his banishment from the light, he is otherwise isolated. His father split when he was diagnosed as a small child, and David (Vincent Lindon), his doctor, has taken on the role. They are very close. Perhaps Romain is the most important relationship in David's life. David is a bit of a workaholic, sometimes not very present for his wife (Caroline Proust).

With his stylishly wild mop of long hair and his springy athleticism Challal radiates a naturalness and spirit that save Romain from ever seeming the least pathetic, though he's allowed the occasional moment of fatalism about his condition. Lindon is as soulful and solid as usual. But David doesn't handle everything so well. He's been offered a significant post in his specialty with WHO in Belgium that he applied for twelve years ago, and he's leaving, but he doesn't know how to tell Romain about this. When the boy gets the news indirectly from his mother after an outing with David he becomes furious. He turns against David. The moment of cowardice is an excuse for lashing out at all he's angry about, both his condition and his sense of abandonment.

The new doctor replacing David is Carlotta (Emmanuelle Devos), whom Romain willingly switches to, partly to hurt David. The relationship between David and Carlotta itself is fraught. David isn't really ready to go, and he takes it out on Carlotta.

Lindon is always a pleasure to watch, and there is some similarity to his role in Philippe Lioret's Welcome here: again he's a middle-aged man in crisis guiding a youth through worse. Devos too is always fascinating and complex, and her Carlotta shows class and grace in handling David's clumsy turning over of the reins. The last third of the film is dedicated to smoothing things out. Ultimately it's all about moving on.

La Permission de minuit was released March 2, 2011 in France and received generally good reviews for its taste and good acting (Allociné 3.4), but with some dissenters among the more hip who thought this a conventional bore, a TV movie; Les Inrockuptibles and Cahiers du Cinéma were particularly cruel. This is unfair: Delphine Gleize studiously avoids pathos and melodrama. But her studiousness may call too much attention to itself. An incurable medical condition is an elephant that will dominate any cinematic room.

Included in the UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center joint March 1-11, 2012 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series. The public screening is:

*Sat., March 3, 2012, 9:30pm
*In person: Vincent Lindon

[Chris Knipp]

FRÉDERIC LOUF: 18 YEARS OLD AND RISING (2011)


PIERRE NINEY IN 18 YEARS OLD AND RISING

Class comedy

Frédéric Louf's smart political comedy about the Upper Bourgeoisie in the time of Mitterand skewers both snobby rich kids and the working class boy who sets out to enjoy them and then falls for a self-centered girl. The laughs are physical as well as witty and dominated by the Comédie-Française's skinny, nimble, talented youngest male member Pierre Niney as Primo Bramsi, a supposed school failure with dash who despises his provincial florist father and neglects to pay the rent on his tiny Parisian chambre de bonne -- but keeps bouncing back and surprises his prof by passing his bac.

Primo isn't political. He's a free-wheeling, picaresque character, almost a Felix Krull, who will say anything to get ahead. Watching him improvise is a giddy pleasure. Coming back to Paris after a short, disastrous visit to his parents, he crashes a party given by some snobby rich Parisian kids and though his shoes fall apart, the girls fall for him. He falls hopelessly for the insufferably self-centered Gabrielle (Lou de Laâge), though it's the quirky Delphone (Audrey Bastien) who may want him the most. Gabrielle does invite Primo to summer with her and her family in Saint-Tropez, but she quickly disinvites him when he gets beaten up by some right wing toughs and the bruises on his face make him look like a raccoon. Appearances are everything for these silly young snobs.

Louf, who co-wrote (with Régis Jaulin) and directed this debut romantic farce, heightens the sociopolitical emphasis by setting its events in 1981 when the socialist François Mitterand is just getting elected President, beginning a 13-year period when the communists were invited into the government and the right wing was in a continual state of alarm and outrage. Primo's pal at his building is a young Arab with natural leftist leadings called Malik (Ali Marhyar) who has told him to vote for Mitterand, but that never happens, though Primo's friendship with Malik survives his flirtations with the pampered rich.

After being banished by Gabrielle, Primo is invited back by Gabrielle's rich boyfriend to a wine party for which Primo blows all his rent money, 1800 francs, for a bottle that will impress her friends -- he gets a 1961 Chateau La Conseillante, which is worth $2,700 today. But when Malik is shocked at this waste Primo opens the bottle and drinks it with Malik up on the roof, later refilling the bottle with 10-franc plonk from the supermarket to take to the party. The rich boys know it's not La Conseillante because Malik threw away the cork, but are fooled into thinking it's good stuff.

Part of the fun of 18 Years Old and Rising is the way Primo keeps getting away with everything: it's a celebration of the durability and sociopolitical flexibility of youth, and Neney (who has a droll cameo in Guédiguian's new film, also in the Rendez-Vous, The Snows of Kilimanjaro), seems made of shape-holding rubber. His character jumps into fistfights at a moment's notice and often threatens to jump out of windows, which he occasionally makes good on. He accordingly spends much screen time all bruised or limping. But the real victims are the rich kids whose received prejudices are continually skewered. Miriaculously and rather inexplicably, Primo passes his bac and his philosophy prof stands him to a bottle of good champagne. Both of the rich girls still seem to like him, his Arab friend doesn't hate him and the rich boys keep looking sillier and sillier. If you're leanings are anti-youth or pro-money, none of this is going to taste very sweet.

The combination of politics, history, and romantic comedy is reminiscent of last year's French US art house hit, Michel Leclerc's The Names of Love, which substitutes for the victorious Mitterand the defeated Lionel Jospin and is set twenty years later and whose nimble comic is a female one, Sara Forestier. Leclerc's film is more layered, but Louf's is purer, simpler fun. Premiere compares Niney to Louis Garrel, and he does resemble Garrel's more madcap, crazy side, only skinnier. Niney was nominated for the Jeune Espoir Masculin (Most Promising Male Actor) award at the 2012 Césars for this performance.

Suiting its wild summer mood, J'aime regarder les filles opened in Paris July 20, 2011 to fair reviews (Allociné 2.9): some didn't get the joke. The film has also aired at several festivals, including Toronto in September 2011.

The French title is taken from Patrick Coutin's 1981 hit. The film is included in the March 1-11, 2012 joint UniFrance and Film Society of Lincoln Center series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Public screenings will be:

Mon., March 5, 6pm – IFC; *Sat., March 10, 3:45pm - WRT
*In person: Frédéric Louf

[Chris Knipp]

DAVID AND STÉPHANE FOEKINOS: DELICACY (2011)


FRANÇOIS DAMIENS AND AUDREY TAUTOU IN DELICACY

A widow's quirky romance

Audrey Tautou stars in this melodrama-as-rom-com about a recent widow who gets involved with a seemingly inappropriate coworker. The screenplay slowly introduces this situation through a host of drawn out and calculated set-up scenes. The point is to dispose of the husband so the bereaved wife can fall into her confused affair. Delicacy seems to mean taking a very long time to get where a classic comedy would take us in a jiffy. Perhaps something has been lost in the translation by these first-timer brothers of David's bestselling novel. Anyway for some reason it's necessary to have a full-fledged meet-cute with soon-to-be-gone hubby François (Pio Marmai) and Nathalie (Tautou) -- it involves his voiceover and her choice of apricot juice at a café. Then he proposes -- using a key ring as a pledge. Then there has to be a wedding in the snow captured in a whirling dolly shot. The cute voiceovers continue with a (mercifully) quick scene showing the pair, legally a couple now, in bed. No baby yet, they decide -- that would doubtless hamper the widow's romance, though the decision to delay children unwittingly underlines the fact that Tautou is not so young as she used to be. It's over a decade since her success in Amélie. Hasn't her ticket on the ingénue train expired by now?

Finally François goes out for a jog. At last! He's going to get killed. Only not quite. First there must be a pointless hospital sequence. But now last he's out of the way and the story can begin.

Nathalie puts her life back together, only just: her job interview with the Swedish-based company she's going to work for involves a pointlessly predatory boss, Charles. He's played by the usually sultry and mysterious Bruno Todeschini, miscast here as a blatant bore. He will persist in pursuing Nathalie despite her declared lack of interest, and will tell another coworker that she's a real Yoko Ono, capable of breaking up the world's biggest rock group. This is the movie's concept, which it attempts to foist upon us. The action does not bear this out. No one is interested in Nathalie, except Charles, and maybe, a shlubby Swedish guy. Several years inexplicably pass, and Nathalie inexplicably grabs the Swedish guy, Markus. He is played by the excellent François Damiens, the first cast member allowed to introduce a little nuance. Markus is an oddball, because he's not handsome or pretty like Nathalie, François and Charles, and he's weird, because he's Swedish.

No worries, because Markus speaks perfect French, not surprising since Damiens (recently seen in Heartbreaker, with Romain Duris) is Belgian. Nathalie gives Markus a French kiss, and then the confusion can begin.

But what is the confusion? It seems to be general, but so unfocused it's hard to care about it. Nathalie tells Markus she was thinking of something else, and has no idea why she kissed him. Nonetheless they start dating. He thinks he may be falling in love with her, or will soon because it's Paris and the Eiffel Tower is right behind them flashing those sparkly lights at night, another one of the movie's predictable, manipulative scenes. But he's also not sure he's in love with her and thinks maybe he shouldn't be. She isn't in love with him. But they go on dating. Charles finds out, and tries to intrude. Is that, and his drunken evening with Markus, supposed to be funny? This is really hard to say.

Delicacy/La Délicatesse -- or its story -- may deserve credit for attempting to be different, and even for suggesting romance need not be with a handsome, prepossessing guy (Markus does however repeatedly show that he has a good sense of humor). This is a good role for François Daniens (how, though, can we imagine him to be Swedish?); but one actor worth watching in a film is not quite enough. One must still make allowances (though the film's look is quite classic and glossy) for these first-timer Foenkinos brothers' making some missteps in telling their already successful story. There are blatantly derivative moments, including a bereaved street song for Nathalie that's a tepid echo of Honoré's Love Songs. But this still seems a film that's often tedious and inexplicable. From the start it indulges in button-pushing, it pushes its quirkiness too hard (nothing "delicate" about either of these), and it has a shaky sense of pace. It seems the filmmakers were not sure enough of themselves. None of this seems to get in the way of popular box office success, necessarily. La Délicatesse has been well received in France -- it opened there just before Christmas 2011 -- though the critics did not love it very much (Allociné 2.5 indicates mediocre reviews).

Delicacy is the closing night film for the March 1-11, 2012 joint UniFrance and Film Society of Lincoln Center series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Two screenings at that time:

*Sun., March 11, 6pm & 9pm - WRT
*In person: David & Stéphane Foenkinos and Audrey Tautou

A UK release is scheduled for April 12, 2012.

[Chris Knipp]

LUCAS BELVAUX: 38 WITNESSES/38 TÉMOINS(2012)


SOPHIE QUINTON AND YVAN ATTAL IN 38 WITNESSES

Bad witnesses

Lucas Belvaux's Rapt, starring Yvan Attal, considered the moral ironies in a rich executive's kidnapping when his bad prior behavior emerges. In 38 Witnesses/38 Témoins the Belgian-born director known for his brilliant multi-genre Rashomon-style Trilogy tackles another moral issue. He adapts a novel by Didier Decoin, Est-ce ainsi que les femmes meurent ? ("Is This How Women Die?") based on the 1964 Kitty Genovese case of the woman in Queens whose rape and murder 38 witnesses were aware of but never called to report. The setting has been moved to Le Havre -- not the quaint, humanistic version given us in Aki Kaurasmäki's recent film, but anything but. Belvaux's filmmaking here is severely elegant, with some small sense of imploding Greek tragedy in it. And yet it's hard to care, and some of the emotion seems pushed. This Le Havre is gray and off-putting in harbor, building, and street, the objective correlative of soullessness and a frozen moral sense. While Rapt was an intense thriller, 38 Witnesses (again starring Attal) is rather static, a long wait to find out that people didn't do anything, which we already knew. It's a grim, depressed film, impressive but without emotional impact. Belvaux has a great command of style, but one begins to see a cool indifference in his work.

Belvaux's digital widescreen images of cold-colored harbor industrial spaces and big cargo ships and a pilot boat roaring through a wintry sea are grand and terrifying and beautiful. They made me think of the much more layered and complex Adieu by Arnaud des Pallières, which also deals with moral responsibility (it combines the issues of Rapt and this and much more). Belvaux's shipping images, which show the power of the sea and of freight vessels, exude a sense of helplessness, especially through the effective use of sound design, which makes water and engines oppress us and seem alive -- more alive than any of the people in the film.

Pierre (Attal) is a harbor pilot, and he works at night; he lives in a spacious flat, gray like everything else, with big windows. It overlooks the place where a girl was brutally murdered. Her screams rang out. One man heard them and yelled; he is the only one at first who admits to police that he saw. Pierre's fiancee Louise (Sophie Quinton) works in shipping too, but she returns from a trip to China at the end of the fatal night.

The local journalist exploring the case, Sylvie Loriot (Nicole Garcia, as good as she can be in a conventional role) comes to question people, but at first only Louise will talk to her. Louise assumes Pierre didn't hear the violence, as he at first claims. But he has a doomed, grim look. He predicts the end of their relationship. It's all over before it's begun.

Everything in the film goes like this. It's all a foregone conclusion. What are we here for? To have the witnesses' cowardice and lying revealed. But we already know about them. To brood over the wrongness of it all.

On another night the increasingly desperate, guilt-ridden Pierre (who does he think he is, the murderer?) delivers a painfully overwrought, though whispered, soliloquy as he sits near the sleeping Louise that in effect finishes off the film by removing whatever element of naturalism or dramatic truth it might have contained. It may have seemed necessary to explicate his sense of guilt at having heard everything and gotten up and looked and then still done nothing, but the whispered speech exemplifies 38 Witnesses' art-film lack of realism and ordinary detail. Everything is grandly, coldly staged; nothing is naturalistic and specific. Is this what Belvaux has always done? The cold relentlessness worked splendidly in Rapt, but here, it's the kiss of death, because we need to see little people feeling guilty and responsible. Instead we get a grandiose sense of doom.

Louise is sleeping but "hears" the soliloquy and thinks it's a dream, but Pierre confesses it's true. His next step is to go to the police. The commissioner's first choice is not to do anything because there are too many guilty people to prosecute. But then an uneasy cop (François Feroleto) tells Sylvie and she writes the silent witness story. This forces the cops to go back to the people in the building, who admit they had lied when they said they heard nothing. The cops stage a "recreation" of the crime and the witnessing of it and then Louise, who had pledged to stay by Pierre, announces that she is leaving him.

Belvaux is at the top of his game, but in things that don't matter. A frantic drive around the port by Louise looking for Pierre is superfluous, but has terrific rhythm and visual style. A man alwyas staring at Pierre from a balcony across the street is silly but elegantly shot. But these are pointless gestures, and the essential is missing. A curious casualty of the storytelling is the police procedural aspect, which is barely touched on -- except for the few final minutes, which are terrifying and yet somehow seem thrown away, almost an afterthought, an obligatory gesture and nothing ore, however well done.

The stars of 38 Witnesses, despite the well-meaning efforts of Nicole Garcia and Yvan Attal, are the great container ships and the dockyard cranes and the big apartment buildings with their disquieting spaces and sounds, the digital cameras with their excellent lenses manned by dp Pierric Gantelmi d'Ille, and the mikes manned by Henri Morelle that have caught the sounds of the sea and engines and cries of the victim and someone reenacting her final ordeal.

38 Témoins will be released in France March 14, 2012. It debuted at Rotterdam, where it was the opening night film, and was screened for this review at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in preparation for the UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, where it will be shown to the public three times at two locations, the IFC Center and the Walter Reade Theater:

Fri., March 2, 7pm – IFC; Sat., March 10, 6:15pm – WRT; Sun., March 11, 1:30pm – WRT