Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center 2012

[Chris Knipp]

CYRIL MENNEGUN: LOUISE WIMMER (2011)


CORINE MASIERO IN LOUISE WIMMER

Long slow round of days

Cyril Mennegun's 80-minute writer-director debut feature Louise Wimmer is an "unapologetic work of social realism" focused on the daily life of a hotel chambermaid and housecleaner (Corinne Masiero) now approaching fifty who has wound up living out of her car. Her whole life is devoted to trying to put together the money to get an apartment, and start anew. The film is composed of many very short scenes that put together a cumulative picture of how she spends her days, how her existence is continually being eaten away despite her patient and persistent efforts. No compelling, precipitous narrative here à la Dardennes. The emphasis is on a convincing performance by Masiero and an authentic feel to the settings, people, and action. And the sequence of scenes provides a kind of gradual revelation of hints about how Louise got here and what her story is and where it is going. Within the limited range where Mennegun chooses to work, his accomplishment is impeccable. And this is by no means a simplistically downbeat miserablist piece of work. Louise has good things in her life and she is not giving up.

This was screened as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (a March 1-11, 2012 joint presentation of UniFrance and The Film Society of Lincoln Center). The film will be shown to the public at the IFC Center and the Walter Reade Theater:

Sat., March 3, 3pm – IFC; Mon., March 5, 2pm – WRT; Tues., March 6, 6:15pm - WRT

[Chris Knipp]

OLIVIER MARCHAL: A GANG STORY (2011)


TCHÉKY KARYO AND GÉRARD LANVIN INA GANG STORY

Vicissitudes of the gangster code

There are still a few more films in the 2012 Rendez-Vous series not included in the press screenings. This one, which swings back and forth between the Seventies and more recent times, is a bracingly violent and complicated gangster movie based on a memoir. Olivier Marchal, whose sixth feature this is, is a former policeman. Within its limits this is extremely well done. The French make their own kind of crime movies, and if Guillaume Canet's Tell No One and Jacque Audiard's The Prophet are any example, they do it better than Hollywood nowadays. This one has touches from The Godfather -- it's trendy opening titles don't conceal the fact that it owes debts to the past -- but it's rooted in Mediterranean omertà. It fundamentally concerns two childhood pals, bound by a gypsy bond of masculine friendship. They're Momon Vidal and Serge Suttel (played as fifty-somethings respectively by Gérard Lanvin and Tshéky Karyo) who are jailed together for their first crime, stealing a case of cherries, when in their teens and then get put away later for longer stretches due to an informer who is never identified. Starting out, they work for gangsters around Lyons -- the French title of the film is Les Lyonnais -- and then risk the anger of the big boys to start a gang of their own.

In the present, less faded-out scenes, Serge has been caught after many crimes and much hiding and Momon is called upon to get him out, but he has a younger, more unscrupulous crew do the job, a choice he later regrets. All this is mixed with flashbacks to the history of Serge and Momon's friendship and joint lives of crime, so both tales slowly advance simultaneously. Both are very violent. Marchal has a way with cars and automatic weapons of any period and the violent scenes are beautifully if sometimes shockingly or numbingly staged. Given its basic theme of gang loyalty, the film is needlessly complicated. If it were a little simpler and less elaborate technically and had less loud racy music it might have more lasting emotion. But it's still a good watch for fans of French gangster movies and tells an agreeably tangled tale of criminal loyalty and betrayals.

The Variety reviewer Boyd von Hoeij points out that the film's violent crime scenes which he (a little unfairly) calls "mayhem-chic montage sequences" are all set in the past, with the exception of the jail break for Serge with Momon absent. Hoeij feels that since the "more contemplative moments" belong to Gérard Lanvin (whose gnarly wrecked good looks provide a glamorous screen to flash back disillusion) and the film contains separate narratives that don't quite "coalesce." It looks as if Marchal had a lot of fun shooting the Seventies young-men gangster sequences and makes them go on too long, or not long enough since they have too little dialogue or distinct plot.

Les Lyonnais is very conventional but it has the power to entertain. Banking on this working in American art houses, Harvey Weinstein has thought fit to pick it up and release it in the US (at a date not yet announced). It got a mixed reception from French critics when it opened in Paris November 30, 2011, with an Allociné rating of 2.8, showing a few enthusiastic reviews but a number of ones with reservations. It's been compared to the much more elaborate gangster biopic Mesrine , but that fared much better with critics. Its narratives of different periods were more fully developed, and rather than focusing on nostalgia for a dying gangster code, it concentrated on rich historical detail, though still offering plenty of violence and excitement. But that was two features: Marchal's film comes in a tidy 75-minute package.

Presented as a part of the UniFrance and Film Society of Lincoln Center March 1-11, 2012 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Scheduled at IFC Center and Walter Reade Theater for:

Sat., March 3, 4:45pm – IFC; Thurs., March 8, 8:45pm – WRT; Fri., March 9, 4pm - WRT

[Chris Knipp]

THE BEST AND WORST OF THE RENDEZ-VOUS, 2012



Opening night film : UNTOUCHABLE by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. March 1.a
A true story of two men who should never have met - a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects. Jay Weissberg of Variety describes this as "cringe-worthy" for its "Uncle Tom racism." More likely it's just cliched and saccharine, which UniFrance and the Rendez-Vous unfortunately have a weakness for, and would provide on opening night. It has been box office gold in Franc. Allociné rating 3.7.
NOT SHOWN TO US

OPENING NIGHT FILM

Closing night film : DELICACY by Stéphane and David Foenkino. March 11.
A French woman mourning over the death of her husband three years prior is courted by a Swedish co-worker. Audrey Tatous: need I say more? More clichéd sugar, evidently less well executed, since the Allociné rating was a measly 2.5.
NOT LIKED

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

SUMMING UP THE RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA OF 2012. ("Best and worst" may be a misnomer.)

The Rendez-Vous is a representative series that shows the quality and variety of French filmmaking. It would be nice but unusual if it included the best French film of the year but also unlikely to include the worst. The opening and closing films are usually the series' most glitzily mainstream. Much else is more sophisticated.

A favorite of mine was first-time director Fred Louf's 18 Years Old and Rising, a witty and fun period coming-of-ager satirizing bourgeois fat-cats and starring Pierre Niney, the youngest member of the Comédie Française, who is fabulously nimble and funny. This film is something Americans don't know very well how to do: smart, sexy political comedy (compare The Names of Love).

I was struck by the warmth and fluency of Robert Guédiguian's left-oriented family story that talks about the working class and its responsibility to the have-nots, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. This is the first time I've seen him fully on his own turf and it was impressive. Very enjoyable to see his regular team of actors working so well together.

I must admit to thoroughly enjoying Daniel Auteuil's remake of Pagnol's 1940 The Well-Digger's Daughter. It's such a humane and satisfying world, and Auteuil's chops are certainly up, in a directorial debut he wrote and starred in. The French critics were not very excited. They've been there too many times before. For me it was satisfying to find Auteuil in a Pagnol movie that didn't bore me. All this stuff is tremendously retro: but why not go back and look at it?

A surprise and a place where I seemed on another wavelength from the rest of the mostly American press audience at the Rendez-Vous IFC screening was my enjoyment of Alain Cavalier's conceptual piece about French politics, Pater, which may succeed better through the sympathetic presence of Vincent Lindon. His warmth (not to mention his tremendous authority and credibility as an actor) balances out the dry rather smug manner of Monsieur Cavalier, who however is to thank for the structure and many of the ideas.

The press screenings put on by Lincoln Center for this series didn't include everything this year and the most notable omission was Untouchable, which is the opening night film and a huge blockbuster in France. In his NYTimes' intro piece for this year's Rendez-Vous, Stephen Holden calls this "a crass escapist comedy that feels like a Gallic throwback to an ’80s Eddie Murphy movie." But it would be good to see what's box office gold in France now. The Artist received six Césars the other day, echoing the Oscars and other prior American and English awards for this safe, nostalgic, and French-free film, but they gave the Best Actor César to Omar Sy, the black star of Untouchable, rewarding popularity. Untouchable has been picked up by Harvey Weinstein (who scored with The King's Speech and The Artist , and for him perhaps this is another promising import). Americans will get to see Untouchable in theaters starting May 25th.

Holden joined the early American band wagon condemning Untouchable. He is right to harp on this inclusion, to make clear the Rendez-Vous is not by any means an elite cream-of-the-crop festival like the Lincoln Center's fall New York Film Festival. Holden particularly liked Benoît Jacquot's off-center film about Marie Antoinette, Farewell, My Queen, which indeed is different and nice, and Léa Seydoux seductive and offbeat, but the film not so very memorable, I think. Holden thought the teen pregnancy piece, 17 Girls "feels really contemporary." Yes, feels. But it'd be better if it were not inaccurate and so light. Jean-François Laguionie’s The Painting animation is indeed "witty" and rather touching; I liked it. I liked almost everything! The world is full of nice animations. Holden expressed some "disappointments." Yes, one cann find those, I suppose (but I said I liked almost everything). He was disappointed in the Audry Tatou vehicle Delicacy. Yes, it's a kitsch pseudo-American mess; but why was he expecting anything? (It is the closing night film -- often a warning). Holden was disappointed in Belvaux's 28 Witnesses -- because it's cold and gray and Belvaux made the riveting Rapt. Yes, we all were.

Frankly a low point was Mathieu Demy's clumsy Americano, which the French press gave a free ride to (their picture of America is different from ours). Amalric's modern dress Corneille The Last Screening was a bit disappointing, too hard to follow and -- dare one say it? -- unnecessary. I wanted to love Low Life, but it seems self-indulgent.

Others films that were good if not extraordinary are the grim but true Guilty (whose star Phiippe Torreton got a César nomination); the film about a special friendship, Moon Child; the solid policier, Paris by Night (with Roschdy Zem); the slightly pale (but about a good topic) Free Men, with Tahar Rahim (who I hope can live up to the extraordinary beginning Audiard gave him in The Prophet). Headwinds, Magimel directed by Lespert, was creditable.

But there don't seem to have been as much in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema to set my heart on fire this year. I don't think there was anything as exciting as Rapt or In the Beginning in 2010, 35 Shots of Rum, Mesrine (both parts) or Séraphine in 2009; Lovesongs, Heartbeat Detector or All Is Forgiven in 2008; Flanders or La Vie en Rose or The Singer or Tell No One in 2007; The Little Lieutenant in 2006.

It says something that one of the most striking new French films I've seen in the past few weeks was Mathieu Kassovitz's Rebellion/L'ordre et la morale. It is very accomplished technically and approaches a complex modern subject on many levels. And it wasn't in the Rendez-Vous series at all. It was in Film Comment Selects, which also included a new film by Chantal Ackerman (which I missed). Likewise Pierre Schöller's exciting political film The Minister, a powerful film -- not in the Rendez-Vous but coming up in New Directors/New Films, the next series at Lincoln Center (jointly run with MoMA).

New Directors/New Films, the Lincoln Center film series coming up after the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, will include several French films: Djinn Carrénard's Donoma, Pierre Schoeller's The Minister/L'Exercise de l'État (which I've already reviewed), Roschdy Zem's Omar Killed Me, and Antoine Delesvaux's animation from Joanne Sfar, The Rabbi's Cat. New Directors/New Films 41 runs from March 21-April 1, 2012, but I will be commenting on the films earlier during the Mar. 5-21 press screening period.

Note that I watched some of the eclectic, unclassifiable Feb. 17-Mar. 1, 2012 Film Comment Selects series: Alexandr Sokurov's Faust, James Franco's My Own Private River (all except the Franco part), Hirakazu Koreeda's I Wish, and the aforementioned Kassevitz's Rebellion.


The 2012 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema begins at IFC Center, NYC March 2.

[Chris Knipp]

VINCENT GARENQ: GUILTY (2011)--R-V


PHILIPPE TORRETON IN GUILTY

Intense victim-based docudrama of a judicial nightmare

The first sixteen minutes of this film, Guilty/Presumé coupable ("Presumed Guilty"), alone are devastating. It is hard for anything afterward to live up to them. Philippe Torreton is nominated for the César for Best Actor for his performance as Alain Marécaux, a hard-working bailiff, who with his wife and a dozen other people was the victim in 2001 of one of the worst judicial errors in modern France. They were accused completely falsely of being members of a ring of pedophiles guilty of horrific crimes. The judicial and police system is singularly brutal here. What we see in thos opening minutes is Alain and his family having their house invaded in the early morning, being rapidly and brutally taken away by smirking cops, handcuffed, interrogated, threatened, and treated as a sick maniac. It turns out this is the now notorious Outreau affair, and 17 were accused, of whom only four, who were those who accued the others, were ever proven guilty. A overview of the events of the case will be found on French Wikipedia. It took five years for this to be concluded, and some, including Marécaux, spent most of this time in prison. He lost everything, including his job, his family, and his reputation. He attempted suicide several times and went on a hunger strike.

Unfortunately this precipitous opening is a hint of the whole approach, which is too direct and humorless. A bit of detachment is needed to make anything more than mere pseudo-documentary out of the story. The constant in-your-face hand-held focus on Torreton emphasizes his anguish and suffering and the injustice of the whole affair, but limits the picture given of what is a complex social, political, and legal matter. We get that Maréceaux knew nothing about all this and was innocent and that this was a nightmare for him. But how did all this come about? What are the forces behind the miscarriage of justice? What happened to the principle of presumed innocence? Who stands to gain? Choosing to focus unwaveringly on the judicial victim proved to be a tactical error.

We are left to draw our own conclusions. Some of them are obvious. The public loses its perspective completely in the case of sex crimes, particularly of a pedophile nature. False allegations of pedophile rings also came up repeatedly in the US as well. These may be the witch trials of modern times. But Garenq's film sheds little light on this process. The kind of ambiguity we find in Capturing the Friedman's is missing, and instead of being troubled and stimulated, the viewer feels bludgeoned over the head repeatedly for 102 minutes. Material that should be the cause of reflection is not. Due to the drawn-out nature of the judicial nightmare, datelines might have helped. What is made clear in the final court proceedings is that the young investigating judge (juge d'instruction) responsible for all this suffering does get exposed, even though his superiors defend him. Years later Marécaux is able to resume his duties as bailiff, finally exonerated.

In order to manifest his character's physical and psychological suffering in prison, Torreton, an experienced stage actor with many roles for the Comédie Française and other companies to his credit, lost over fifty pounds. His performance is a dedicated one otherwise as well, and it is for this that one watches Guilty. Torreton excels at showing the humiliation, anger, depression and gradual degeneration of this humble servant of the law as he suffers the effect of his unjust incarceration. We must bear in mind that in this he stands for the many, because there were 17 accused.

What this account shows is that as in American cases, children are coerced by suggestive questions to make false statements and a collection of rumors and accusations builds up. The involvement of Maréch aux's own son recalls the Friedman case.

Guilty opened in Paris September 7, 2011 and received generally favorable reviews from the more mainstream publications. Others expressed the same reservations I have, but all note Torreton's dedicated performance. It was also shown at Toronto, London, and Montreal. The film is part of the joint Film Society of Lincoln Center-UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema of March 1-11, 2012, and public screenings are as follows:

Mon., March 5, 6:15pm – WRT; Tues., March 6, 1:30pm – WRT; Thurs., March 8, 10:25pm – IFC