Reviewer: James van Maanen
Diabolically Yours -- Rating (out of five): **½
Our Story: ****
The Gypsy: ***
The Swimming Pool: **
The Widow Couderc: ***½

I think you'd need to be well over your mid-century mark to rise to attention at the mention of Alain Delon. This mildly famous (in America, that is; in Europe he achieved blockbuster status) French star, who rose to international prominence on the coattails of great films such as Rene Clement's Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) and Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers, followed by The Leopard and Antonioni's L'Eclisse, was never much noted for his acting ability. Though he was a perfectly competent actor--sometimes much more than that--no matter what acting roles he or his directors or producers chose (he finally took over all three reins himself), nothing ever began to eclipse Delon's true ace in the hole: his amazing, downright staggering beauty.

That face--the body wasn't bad either--set hearts and lower extremities aflutter around the world. Delon also possessed a real charm, which he used in an interesting fashion from role to role--sometime more, sometimes less, often peeping out from under wraps, more often front and center. The charm seemed effortless, and it drew audiences to him as surely as has the charm of other popular actors from Gable and Grant to Clooney to DiCaprio. Yet none of these could match Delon for pure facial beauty. He was, for lack of a better comparison, the male Elizabeth Taylor. And as beautiful as he was, he still came across as a straight man--even when, in some of his film roles (Purple Noon, for instance) he played a bit toward bi- or pan-sexuality.

Continue reading "The Alain Delon Collection" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

There are those who feel that Agnes Varda's film La Pointe Courte represents the true birth of the French New Wave. After finally viewing this forgotten film (practically unseen by the world since its debut back in 1954), I would tend to agree. Every bit as ground-breaking as Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless, it has it's own measured pace and quiet inquiry--due, no doubt to its being made by a woman, and a woman as unusually gifted as Ms. Varda.

Continue reading "La Pointe Courte: Early French New Wave" »

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Both Erin Donovan and James Van Maanen volunteered to work their way through Criterion's recently released Agnes Varda collection. And while the odds are they'll more or less agree on the overall quality, each has their own unique takes on these films. We'll start with Le Bonheur (1965).

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of five) *****

Funny to call a movie a masterpiece when you're not really certain that you like it all that much. But I'm afraid Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur qualifies for just this adjective-overused as it may be-along with the caveat. I first saw the film, controversial upon its debut and even more so today, during its initial American release over 40 years ago. Revisiting it, I find it holds up even better than I remembered--possibly because I am older and, I hope, a bit wiser than I was in my 20s.

Continue reading "Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur: Jim's take." »

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Both Erin Donovan and James Van Maanen volunteered to work their way through Criterion's recently released Agnes Varda collection. And while the odds are they'll more or less agree on the overall quality, each has their own unique takes on these films. We'll start with Le Bonheur (1965).

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

Agnes Varda's third feature film examines the viability of monogamy in the age of free love and the search for happiness in a time of total unrest. Le Bonheur is similar in concept and cynicism to Jean Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou (both released in 1965, no less) but contains none of the bitterness of Pierrot. Varda's deep affection for each of her characters even as they make terrible choices that bring them to eventual doom makes a statement about sexual politics and the fleeting nature of human affection that feels modern even watching it forty-three years after it was made.

Continue reading "Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur: Erin's take." »

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Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ***

Jean-Luc Godard's tenth film Pierrot Le Fou, one of the last he made before going full-tilt Marxist, has been restored and reissued in the extraordinary fashion we've all come to know and respect from Criterion. The Technicolor/Cinemascope print has been cleaned up from sad, past versions and a second disc of supplemental materials offers new insights into the film's genesis, production and lasting impact.

After attending a painfully buji party where the men only talk about cars and the women only talk about perfumes, Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) decides he's had enough of his wife, children and other middle class trappings. He runs off with Marianne (Anna Karina) his children's babysitter, with whom he had an affair years prior. They hit the road, fleeing a group of gangsters her brother had been involved with, take up in abandoned mansions by the riviera, begging for money from tourists and murdering anyone who gets in their way. Eventually romantic idealism gives way to monotonous expectation and obligation and Pierrot and Marianne break up, get back together, declare their love and hate for each other and eventually die.

Continue reading "Pierrot Le Fou" »

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Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ***

Starring French actor extraordinaire Daniel Auteuil (probably most known to American audiences for his extraordinary performance in Michael Haneke’s Caché, among many other diverse films), Aprés Vous is an entertaining romantic comedy by Tunisia-born filmmaker Pierre Salvadori.

Autueil plays Antoine who, while on his way to meet his girlfriend Christine (Marilyne Canto), runs into a stranger, Louis (José Garcia), who’s trying to commit suicide. Affected by Louis’ unstable emotional state, Antoine decides to take him in, much to Christine’s dismay, demonstrating an unusual amount of kind-heartedness and generosity. Showing a suspiciously big interest in Louis’ well-being Antoine not only lets him stay at his apartment, but also manages to get him a job as a sommelier in the fancy restaurant where he works as a waiter, and fabricates intricate conspiracies to get him back together with Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain)—the woman who Louis almost took away his own life for. Of course things take a very different turn when, despite his seemingly pure intentions, Antoine finds himself falling for Blanche.

Continue reading "Apres Vous" »

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Reviewer: Monica Peck
Rating (out of 5): ****

This filial drama from writer/director Philippe Falardeau reveals the bizarre story of Belgian engineer Michel Roy who learns at age forty-one that he was adopted and actually born in a barn in rural Quebec. Played by Oliviér Gourmet (L'Enfant, Les Fils), Roy embarks on a journey to uncover his lost familial roots. Humor and poignancy intermix as Roy begins to learn the truth about his birth through a series of unlikely serendipities. Out of respect for your enjoyment of Falardeau's brilliantly woven divulgences, I dare not reveal anything more of the plot. Suffice it to say, this cinematic puzzle deserves more than one viewing, if only to admire the deft way Falardeau uncovers its many-layered secrets. It is no wonder that Congorama won a Genie for Best Screenplay from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television in 2008. As a doctor remarks in the movie, "It is all so unlikely, it can't be anything but true."

Continue reading "Congorama" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Bertrand Blier is at it again: pushing those envelopes; surprising, delighting and confusing us; in short, shaking us up. This award-winning writer/director (César, Oscar, National Society of Film Critics and more), with 21 films to his credit, is now approaching age 70. From his first international hit Les Valseuses (titled Going Places here in the U.S., and which gave Gerard Depardieu his breakout role), to his Best Foreign Film Préparez vos mouchoirs, through Buffet froid, Beau-Père, Menage, Trop belle pour toi, Un deux trois soleil and Mon homme, he has pretty consistently knocked around our ideas about men, women, love, sex, society and relationships. His latest, How Much Do You Love Me? (Combien tu m'aimes?) does it all over again, while providing succulent roles for a prestige cast: Bernard Campan (seen this past year in The Man in My Life), Monica Bellucci, Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Edouard Baer. Though the film had a (very slight) theatrical release in 2006, you couldn't prove it by me. The only American reviews seem to have come from little-known sources--mostly, I suspect, from those viewing the just-released DVD.

Continue reading "How Much Do You Love Me? Bertrand Blier is still shaking us up." »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Seeing The Man of My Life a second time within the year (it was originally part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2007) has made me appreciate even more its richness, intelligence and subtlety, while also alerting me to some flaws in its structure. First time out, I was so blown away by the film's beauty of conception and place (it is brilliantly edited and set during a vacation in the Provence countryside), not to mention its relevance to my own life (a marriage sundered by one mate's sudden attraction to a new acquaintance), that I was more than willingly drawn along by the situation and the spectacularly persuasive performances of Charles Berling, Bernard Campan and Léa Drucker.

Continue reading "The Man of My Life: Gorgeous love story, flaws and all" »

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Reviewer: Liz Hille
Rating (out of 5): ****

The beautifully shot film To Be and To Have started, admittedly, a little slow for me, but bit by bit I became hypnotized. French documentarian Nicolas Philibert takes us through a year in George Lopez's classroom--about a dozen kids, ages 4-11--in a rural section of Auvergne. Anyone who's taught is familiar with the chaotic scenes presented, and Philibert does a spectacular job of catching the quiet, banal moments that, when looking closer, are actually sublime. Nothing special happens in class: there are fights, dictations, distraction, but the patient and direct way Lopez deals with the kids is at the center of the film. He doesn't coddle nor lie to them, instead, he lovingly prepares them for the harsher world they'll soon be entering (for some, that's a larger, bureaucratic middle school).

Continue reading "To Be and To Have: To learn and to teach" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

My personal award for "Most unusual while remaining intelligent, enjoyable and accessible" movie of the year goes to Missing Victor Pellerin, an ain't-seen-nuttin'-like-it wonder from Canada--a land which continues to wildly impress for spawning unique winners (anybody seen Slings and Arrows?). To try to explain this singular film is to try to pin down a changeling that keeps on evolving, right up to its staggering finale.

All due praise must be given to one Sophie Deraspe, who is credited with the writing, direction, cinematography and editing (she probably did the catering, as well). There are a few other names listed in the crew, but's basically a one-woman show. Ms Deraspe has created something else. But equal praise must be heaped upon the movie's cast of unknowns, all of whom manage to nail their characters beautifully and succinctly, even as the film keeps evolving right out from under them. Did the cast know from the beginning exactly where their stories and the movie were going? How did they manage to create such complete and complex characters so elliptically and wittily, when these characters are also changing?

And speaking of change, the movie jumps genres, too--from documentary to fiction, mystery, satire -- as it follows the path of Pellerin, a young star of the Art scene who disappeared from Montreal without a trace. I suspect the film will stay with you long after it's over, if only because you'll keep filling in the pieces. Yet, as weird and all-over-the-place as events become, stick with them, because they do coalesce. And if you know anything about the state of our current "art world"--which is one of the film's major themes--you're probably going to love and appreciate Missing Victor Pellerin even more. It possesses that elusive combination of a great concept and amazing execution.

Posted by at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****

Summary: A terrifically gripping WWII drama that manages to balance introspection with bursts of battlefield action.

Days of Glory was likened by some critics to Saving Private Ryan, but this is a bit simplistic, as the film deals with a racially oppressed underclass, the Algerian soldiers who fought bravely for France against Germany without getting their due. Like Private Ryan, Glory does end with a modern day tail, but here it's more moving because the subtext is these men were not given any acknowledgment for their heroism, and the ending while equally emotional, is that much more bitter. It took until 2002, and then with this film, for these men to be given the respect they deserved all along, when the French government paid the surviving soldiers and their families the pension they had previously given French citizens for their efforts.

But separate from that history, this film by Rachid Bouchareb (a Frenchman born to Algerian parents) never feels like a polemic. Lead by the remarkable cast of unknowns, who won an ensemble award at Cannes for their collective performances and are heartbreakingly empathetic, Days of Glory does what all great war films should do: have us rooting for the protagonists and praying for their survival, even when knowing in your heart that they won't all make it. They are lead by a staff sergeant (the hollow-faced Bernard Blancan) who is stern, even fascistic at times and yet supportive of his men, too. He hides a secret that reveals him to be a deeply conflicted man. And in a particularly heartbreaking story thread, when one of the soldiers, Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), meets a woman after arriving in France, their brief but deep relationship is doomed by the French army's censoring their correspondence due to the "taboo" nature of their relationship.

The film is terrifying at times - the feeling of being isolated on the battlefield is expertly captured - and climaxes with a harrowing battle with German soldiers in a town in Alsace. By the end, you will be properly moved by their efforts fighting Nazism despite having understandable conflicts over the meaning of patriotism. At least we see the French people appreciating their heroism even if the commanders and government could give a damn.

An assured work.

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

It would appear, from much of the critical response to Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers, that one must either love it, while despising Bertolucci's The Dreamers--or vice versa. Forget this sort of either/or nonsense: There is no reason not to appreciate both films, the subject matter of which is the French student revolution of the late 1960s, and some of the young people involved. The Italian version is rich, colorful, highly sexual and perverse--concentrating on a sophisticated French siblings who seduce a somewhat naïve American student. Garrel's take is starker, realistic (if oddly chaste) and much longer. The Bertolucci comes in at just under two hours; Garrel's is two minutes short of three. Considering the many times the director holds his camera on a character--watching and waiting--for my money, the film could have dropped at least half an hour and suffered no great loss.

But Garrel's insistence on forcing the viewer to stay with his characters thru moments of intense sadness or meditation has a semi-pay-off. You sense more acutely how the person is suffering and thinking, but then somewhere along the way, you also realize that you have now seen, felt and learned all the possible lessons, and...can we move on, please? As director/co-writer, Garrel concentrates on the non-growing-up of student/would-be-poet/draft dodger (played by his son, Louis Garrel) and the romance that blooms between him and a young woman sculptor (a terrific performance by Clotilde Hesme).

Continue reading "Regular Lovers: "Dreamers" of a Different Sort" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Comedy of Power seems to me a departure for Claude Chabrol, and probably a welcome one, so far as he and his audience are concerned. He works this time not from any dark fictional Ruth Rendell-ish source but from a real case of corporate "sleazery" at the top of the French totem pole. (Watch the DVD extras for an interesting look into this subject and how the filmmaker addresses it.) He has also left behind his oft-used small-town bourgeoisie for those in national political, judicial and corporate control. Everything is fictionalized, of course, but the screenplay offers us a thoughtful look at haute bourgeois family life and work environment--in the process giving two of France's finest actors an opportunity to shine. Isabelle Huppert is superb, as usual, as the prosecuting judge (the French system certainly differs from ours) and François Berléand (The Chorus) is funny, nasty and finally sad as her initial prey. The rest of the spot-on cast includes a wonderful Robin Renucci as Huppert's lonely husband and the director's son Thomas (this may be Chabrol's most "family" movie) as the husband’s nephew who moves in with the couple temporarily and becomes a kind of sounding board for Huppert.

Continue reading "Comedy of Power: And the joke's on us" »

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Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***½

While it's certainly not a superb film, Xavier Beauvois's Le Petit Lieutenant got a rather scathing review in Variety and I feel compelled to defend it (after I saw it at the San Francisco International Film Fest last year). The policier stars Nathalie Baye - whom I remember most vividly from The Return of Martin Guerre ages ago, though she was also seen here in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can - and she's remarkable playing a recovering alcoholic police commandant who joins a precinct at the same time as the titular cop fresh out of the police academy (a pouty Jalil Lespert). Together they work to investigate a case involving clochards, illegal immigrants and the Russian Mafia, before things take a tragic turn. But while it may remind one a bit of Prime Suspect á la français, this is less about the mystery than it is about the characters. And even a borderline cliché turning point as Baye's temptation to return to drinking is rendered with such acute humanity by the actress that it is still profoundly moving. The film works as a procedural and as a rendering of the life of a cop. It's to the film's benefit that it is presented so matter-of-factly and acted so earnestly, and I found myself forgiving it's occasional flatness.

Beauvois has been more prolific in France as an actor than as a director - this is his fourth film, with the previous efforts well-reviewed but little seen in the States, and it's likely Le Petit Lieutenant won't break that streak. But it's well worth seeking out, because of Nathalie Baye - who won a César for Best Actress for this - and the rest of the cast, and as an example of making something fresh and authentic out of relatively common material.

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Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): *** ½

Directed with verve by Jean-Marc Vallée, the French-Canadian dramedy C.R.A.Z.Y. is a fairly engaging coming of age story that mines some familiar territory but does it with a freshness and an inspired cast to raise it to a higher level. It may remind a bit of another French Canadian coming of age film, Leolo - though that one pushed the surrealism much, much further and trode in darker territory. Oddly enough, after winning 10(!) Genie Awards in Canada, C.R.A.Z.Y. never received a theatrical release here in the States. It's possible the lack of a central plot was its undoing for American distributors; the story is essentially that of father and son. The son, Zac, despite feeling like an oddball in a family with three often cruel older brothers and a put-upon mother, wants desperately to be loved by his religiously traditionally father - though the latter, played compassionately by Michael Cote, is thankfully depicted with shades of complexity that keep his character from becoming a standard patriarch.

Continue reading "C.R.A.Z.Y. is s.w.e.e.t." »

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Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

Set in a lakeside campground in the hot, still air of summer, Wild Camp was supposedly based on a true story, for what that's worth, and if the film's plot - an odd mix of creepy horror and romance seems fairly straightforward and predictable, it does a better job of creating the atmosphere of pending doom under the surface while leading up to a fairly shocking resolution.

Denis Lavant (Lovers on the Bridge, Very Long Engagement), who looks like a French Robert Davi, with a face that's been around the block - or smack into it - a few times, or as more than one critic noted, with a little Billy Bob Thornton mixed in, plays an ex-con trying to start a new life as a sailing instructor. He quickly falls under the spell of Isild Le Besco's Camille, a sultry, sulky teen bored by her surroundings and troubled by her family in ways the film never attempts to fully explain.

Continue reading "Wild Camp: Not So Wild or Campy" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Older women who pay for their sex is a tricky topic for film (think the original version of "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" for one not-so-shining example) but French filmmaker Laurent Cantet does it justice by weaving his story as much with sociological, economic and political strands as with the sexual. Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young and Louise Portal are the women, and Methony Cesar is the young man for whom two of them lust in the unusually thoughtful Heading South. The film is set in Haiti in the 1970s, a country that’s been consistently looted by its rulers, decade after decade, and the loot here is both money and flesh, yet among the major characters there are no easy heroes or villains. Cantet (Human Resources, Time Out) appreciates the needs of these women, as well as those of the men who service them. He begins the movie with a scene of such quietly devastating desperation that the feelings engendered--frightening and queasy-making in the extreme because they combine fear, sex, money and love—will guide your understanding throughout the entire film.

Continue reading "Heading South: French film set in Haiti" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

War is not a subtle subject nor is Joyeux Noel ("Merry Christmas" to us non-Frenchies) a particularly subtle film. But it's a beautiful one: intelligent, heartfelt and perhaps as pure as a relatively mainstream movie on this subject can manage. Writer/director Christian Carion (The Girl from Paris) begins with a shock: nothing bloody, mind you, but something I have not previously encountered in a film. This sets us up nicely for what follows: a worthy addition to the canon of films that are anti-war, anti-government and anti-organized religion. This story of an impromptu "truce" that occurred between battling armies (Germans, French and Scots) on a Christmas Eve during World War I is full of joy, beauty, sadness, irony - and only a little carnage (but what's there does indeed make its point).

Continue reading "Joyeux Noel" »

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Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

A woman's film that men who appreciate the subtleties of women (and the clash of cultures) may particularly enjoy, Fear and Trembling is a remarkably quiet, disciplined French film via writer/director Alain Corneau (Serie Noir, Tous Les Matins du Monde). He has collaborated here with Amelie Nothomb, who wrote the original novel based upon her experiences as a young Belgian woman working in Japan. From the first frame, beauty via composition and minimal color is foremost. As the film proceeds, this beauty remains present, abetting splendid performances from the entire cast, who, with the exception of the fine lead actress Sylvie Testud, are all Japanese. Ms. Testud - who has brought her playful charm and odd gravitas to many other films (Murderous Maids, The Chateau, I'm Going Home) has here perhaps her best role as the cowed but un-conquered foreign worker at the very bottom of the Nippon corporate food chain.

Continue reading "Fear and Trembling" »

Posted by at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Marc Barrite
Rating (out of 5): ****

In his first feature, French director Louis Malle struck cinematic gold with this film noir, an adaptation of a novel by Noel Calef. There are many faces appearing here who would become fixtures in French cinema but it's the lovely Jeanne Moreau who leaves the most indellible impression; she gives a stand-out performance as the bourgeois Florence Carala helplessly wandering the streets of Paris at night in search of her lover. Moreau's travels are masterfully captured by cinematographer Henri Decae, who employs many of the groundbreaking, budget-conscious techniques that would be used more overtly in the subsequent French new wave movement, including the sole use of available light, which in this film results in a beautiful array of natural shadows cast about in each scene.

Elevator's success and timelessness was further sealed by having jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis perform the unforgettable soundtrack. The improvised score is a shining example of the cool and seductive sound Davis purveyed during the rise of his career. The spare instrumentation and smoky atmosphere of the recordings are hypnotic, complementing the film perfectly.

Though nearing its 50th birthday, Elevator holds up with the best of its contemporaries. The pacing and plot complexities will keep today's less-than-patient viewer attentive, there's enough isolation and paranoia to satiate even the most hardened Hitchcock and noir fans, and the screenplay (by Malle and Roger Nimier) is at once sharp, romantic and political. The Criterion bonus disc offers interviews with Malle and Moreau from 1975 and 2005 respectively, rare footage of Miles Davis performing the soundtrack, and Malle's rarely seen film school short, Crazeologie, to boot.

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