french

Any Number Can Win [Melodie en Sous-Sol]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(France 1963)

I approach “heist” movies with hesitation—they tend to be silly, formulaic affairs. As a fan of midcentury Italian and French film, though, Any Number Can Win caught my eye. The promotional blurb I read persuaded me to give it a shot. I’m glad I did.

Charles (Jean Cabin) is a gruff career criminal who just got out of the joint. His wife (Viviane Romance) wants to retire and play it straight, but he insists on one last job: knocking off a casino in Cannes. He recruits Francis (Alain Delon), a petty thief he met in prison, and Francis’s brother-in-law, Louis (Maurice Biraud), a simple mechanic who really has no business participating in a scheme like this. The plan calls for Francis, posing as a high-rolling playboy, to stay at the casino for a week; his job is to scope out an entrance to the elevator shaft backstage that leads to the vault where the money is kept.

Once Francis arrives, he’s immediately smitten with Cannes: hanging out at the pool, driving a cool car, chatting up beautiful girls over cocktails, hitting night clubs, ordering room service. He hooks up with a dancer, Brigitte (Carla Marlier), as a means to an end—but he gets caught up in the melodrama of their fling and the glamorous life he’s gotten himself into. His dalliance threatens to derail the entire operation.

Any Number Can Win gets off to a shaky start—it’s so slow that I began to doze off. Director Henri Vernuil picks up the pace once Francis gets to Cannes and steadily builds momentum and suspense as the story progresses. I got more and more anxious watching the plan come to fruition, excited to see what happens next. A great jazz score orchestrated by Jean Gitton punctuates the action nicely. The early Sixties French Riviera setting—palm trees, lights, and nouveau-meets-modern architecture—is dazzling in black and white. Delon fits perfectly with his smoldering, polished looks. The ending is one of the most memorable I’ve ever seen: floating cash, that’s all I’ll say.

118 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

We Won’t Grow Old Together [Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble]

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(France 1972)

Maurice Pialat’s semiautobiographical second film, We Won’t Grow Old Together, is a dark love story marked by contempt and emotional cruelty. Jean (Jean Yanne) is an established middle-aged filmmaker carrying on an extramarital liaison with his much younger mistress, Catherine (Marlène Jobert). It isn’t clear how they met, how much time they spend with each other, or why they’re together. What’s clear is that their relationship is quickly coming to an end. Oh, but it’s sad when a love affair dies.

The relationship—an entanglement, really—is dysfunctional, to say the least. The two always seem to meet on the go (even though Jean’s wife and Catherine’s parents know about the affair). Their affection surfaces here and there, like when they go to the beach or take a dip in the Mediterranean. It never lasts long; whatever good time they have soon sours. Jean is arrogant, condescending, and mean. He tells Catherine she’s ugly, he shoves her away from him and publicly berates her for not holding a mic correctly while he’s filming a street scene, and he literally throws (OK, pushes) her and her things out of their motel room. He makes no attempt to hide the fact that Catherine’s visiting parents are an inconvenience. He’s a prick. The following is my favorite quote from the film, and it shows how mean Jean is to Catherine:

“You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will. And do you know why? Because you are vulgar; irremediably vulgar. And not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.”

Catherine is absolutely beautiful with a fabulous early ’70’s flair. However, she’s unambitious, ambivalent, and kind of crazy. She’s flighty. Jean seems to be the only thing she can see through to the end. Their personalities—indeed, their very identities—bring out the worst in each other.

Even though it was a hit in France during its original run, We Won’t Grow Old Together is not a film I imagine many people appreciating. It’s probably too blunt and ugly for mainstream tastes, especially today. Neither character has any redeeming qualities. In the French New Wave tradition, there isn’t much of a narrative here; the “story” is told through a collection scenes strung together that build a sense of doom. The action is repetitive: Catherine arrives, Jean eventually gets pissed and flies off the handle, they sort of reconcile, and Catherine takes off. Pialat is more interested in getting at a feeling or an experience than telling a story. He succeeds at cutting to the emotional core of an ugly breakup; his depiction is vivid and realistic even if it is extreme, and you feel Jean’s ultimate devastation. The final shot of Jean’s idealized memory of Catherine—beautiful, happy, and peacefully frolicking in the water—is a nice touch.

We Won’t Grow Old Together is hard to watch because it’s frankly brutal; but it’s precisely Pialat’s frank brutality that makes it brilliant.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) A-

Samba

Video posted on by moviebloke

(France 2014)

I missed Samba when it played in Chicago last summer—for literally one week in a single theater—before it disappeared. Fortunately, it’s readily available to rent online. Samba was worth the wait even if it isn’t quite what I expected.

Samba (Omar Sy) is an undocumented alien from Senegal who has been living with his uncle and working illegally in Paris for a decade. He washes dishes at a swanky restaurant; the opening scene that leads us through the posh white crowd at the front of the house through the working class staff in the hectic kitchen to the three African dishwashers pushed far to the back in a tiny room says all we need to know before the story even starts. When authorities discover that Samba’s paperwork has expired, he’s held in a detention center for illegal immigrants, where he meets his case worker, Alice (Charlotte Gainesbourg), a sheepish, inept, and we later learn angry woman with a purse full of sleeping pills and a chip on her shoulder. A spark develops into something a little more as the two work on Samba’s case.

Generally speaking, French films tend be more cerebral than action-packed; Samba is no exception. While certainly not an emotional film, it still has a warmth that saves it from getting dull. Samba is an affable though imperfect guy working toward fulfilling his dream to be a chef—he’s just doing it in a country he illegally inhabits. He tracks down a fellow detainee’s woman (Liya Kebede) to relay a message and ends up in bed with her. He gets into a fight or two. He screws up day jobs—my favorite scenes are the ones in which he works with a Brazilian immigrant named Wilson (Tahar Rahim), in particular a reenactment of an old Coke commercial on a scaffold washing windows. Don’t be misled by the trailer: the relationship with Alice is more clumsy than hot and heavy or sexy. Through it all, Samba resorts to humor to get past the many rough spots he encounters.

Samba is a strange romantic comedy/adventure film with an underlying statement that the immigration process—chaotic, pedantic, inefficient, dehumanizing—is absurd. What struck me was that the story has nothing to do with the States, yet its point applies all the same to the American system. Samba also shows that immigration issues are not confined to any one country. The story itself is pretty ordinary, but Sy and Rahim’s performances elevate it to something interesting. 

(Home via iTunes) B-

http://www.sambamovie.com

Tom at the Farm [Tom à la ferme]

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(Canada 2015)

As psychological thrillers go, Tom at the Farm is a notch above average. It’s got a plot I haven’t seen before: Tom (Xavier Dolan, also the director) schleps from Montreal to rural Quebec for the funeral of his dead boyfriend, Guillaume, who grew up in the French Canadian equivalent of a hick town. Big shock: Guillaume didn’t tell his mother (Lise Roy) he was gay, a secret his dark and sexy but tres psycho older brother, Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), aggressively guards. After the funeral and some mixed signals from Francis, Tom is pulled into farm life with his new “family”– and a bizarre sexless S&M relationship with Francis that creates a major sense of foreboding danger.

Tom at the Farm does a nice job building up suspense, and the homoerotic overtones add to the tension. The problem is, the story isn’t believable, even for a thriller. Maybe that’s because the characters’ motivations aren’t adequately explained; it feels like something was left out. Worse, the slow and steady buildup between Tom and Francis doesn’t lead anywhere; despite all the tension– sexual and otherwise– it fizzles like a dud firecracker. We leave with no sense of what either character is about or what makes him tick, and only a vague notion of what their whole thing is about. A film with such potential that ultimately fails to deliver leaves one with the frustrating and disappointing cinematic equivalent of blue balls.

(Home via iTunes) C

http://tomatthefarm.com

A Childhood [Une enfance]

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(France 2015)

Jimmy (Alexi Mathieu) is about 12 years old and has it rough: he’s already flunked a grade twice and is older than everyone in his class; socially awkward, he calls very few of his peers friends; he lives in a shitty state row house in a shitty neighborhood in a small industrial town in France; and he’s forced into the role of caretaker of his younger half-brother, Kevin (Jules Gauzelin), because his party girl mother, ironically named Pris (Angelica Sarre), is way too caught up in her no-good junkie drug-dealing douchebag boyfriend, Duke (Pierre Deladonchamps). Duke, who lives with them, is the antithesis of a positive role model: he throws parties all the time (even on school nights), sends the boys on a drug run, makes Jimmy stand guard on a copper heist, and literally pimps out Pris. Jimmy, already wise beyond his years, is growing up– he’s hitting puberty for fuck’s sake– and his growing assertiveness riles Duke. A series of events and a change in circumstances takes Jimmy to a crossroads where he may be rid of the asshole for good.

I recall reading somewhere that this screening of A Childhood was its American premiere. As a story, I liked this one. A lot. Both boys play their parts excellently, injecting pathos with every little episode they endure; I defy anyone not to smile at their hijinks or frown at their disdain for the distracting ever-present entourage of losers parading in and out of their home. Their bond is evident even in their bickering. Mathieu is especially tender when he portrays Jimmy caring for what he loves– letting Kevin sleep with him after a nightmare, holding his mother’s hand through heroin withdrawal, tending to a stray cat he hides from Duke in the back yard. More a character study of Jimmy than a true statement, some minor characters seemed superfluous and about 20 minutes could have been cut. The music was lame: some pseudo folky guy with an acoustic guitar singing blase sensitive English songs suitable for a douche commercial. Nonetheless, A Childhood is engrossing and satisfying despite its flaws.

(AMC River East) B-

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.filmsdulosange.fr/fr/film/210/une-enfance

A Married Woman [Une femme mariee]

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(France 1964)

The original show about nothing, A Married Woman walks us through fragments of a day in the life of Charlotte (Macha Méril), a young wife torn between two lovers: her practical husband (Philippe Leroy) and her passionate, intellectual paramour (Bernard Noël). Apparently not in a hurry to choose one over the other, she’s thrown into a pickle when her doctor informs her she’s pregnant and she realizes that she doesn’t know which one is the father.

Heavy on closeups and dialogue, A Married Woman is thoroughly Modernist: more a treatise than a story, it delves into subjects like relationships, love, sex, morality, and the differences bewteen men and women through conversations that are practically interviews. Jean-Luc Godard stated that this film “attacks a certain mode of life; that of air conditioning, of the prefabricated, of advertising.” His sentiment is evident in all three yuppiesque main characters: they seem detached and adrift, oblivious to the impact their actions have on those around them. A Married Woman is sensual but not sexy, intimate but not warm, critical but not exactly moralistic, and clever but not always interesting.

It’s not all dour, though. Rita Maiden as the couple’s chatty housekeeper adds a priceless air of levity. A scene revealing Charlotte’s thoughts as she eavesdrops on two girls discussing sex at a cafe is hilarious if kinda mean. Gorgeous shots of midcentury Paris play like moving postcards. The little stuff here kept me engaged. I appreciate what Godard was getting at, but I found his execution ultimately underwhelming.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C+

http://en.unifrance.org/movie/5416/a-married-woman

Saint Laurent

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(France 2015)

Ah, the dark side of genius. Saint Laurent is packed with eye candy and has an awful going on visually—but sadly, that’s all it has going for it. A line from Saint Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel) himself sums up the problem concisely: “I like bodies without souls”—the soul of Saint Laurent being somewhere else. Not here in this film.

I was bored, which is a crime considering the real-life material director Bertrand Bonelli had to work with. Some of his choices are puzzling—the temporal chopping effect going back and forth through time is more an annoyance than anything, and I’m at a loss as to why he devotes so much time to seemingly trivial events like a board meeting in New York and a drug trip in an apartment. Who gives a shit, and why would they? Ulliel as young Saint Laurent is charming, full frontal and otherwise; but not even he can elevate this pedestrian slice of an interesting life.

(AMC River East) D

http://www.sonyclassics.com/saintlaurent/mobile/index.html

Dior and I

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Frédéric Tchang’s peek behind closed doors at the preparation of designer Raf Simons’ debut for Dior. Oh yeah, and he only has eight weeks to create his collection. Will he pull it off?

Though Dior and I (thankfully) lacks the craziness of Project Runway, we still get to see the inner workings, stress, and low key drama surrounding Simons as he strives to maintain the integrity of the brand while adding his own individual point of view to it. Tchang juxtaposes archival footage of Mr. Dior himself, effectively serving as an homage without coming off as cheesy. And that flower mansion is fucking awesome!

(AMC River East) B-

http://www.diorandimovie.com

3 Hearts [3 coeurs]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(France 2014)

Chiara Mastroianni and Charlotte Gainsbourg are sisters who fall for the same man, Marc (Benoit Poelvoorde), unbeknownst to all three of them, in this very French melodrama directed by Benoît Jacquot. One sister gets the guy, the other does not. The reality of their bizarre love triangle slowly emerges, causing plot twists and character turns.

A few things made no sense to me. I didn’t see the attraction to Marc. I found very little chemistry between him and either sister. Catherine Deneuve is the sisters’ mother, a curiously inconsequential role–I’m not sure why she took it. I preferred her covered in horse shit in Belle du jour, anyway.

Thanks to a schedule change, I had to leave this one right before the end so I could get to my next screening. If 3 Hearts had a point to make, it was lost on me. Still, I would have liked to see how this wrapped up.

(St. Anthony Main) B-

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

http://cohenmedia.net/films/three-hearts

 

Hand Made with Love in France [Le temps suspendu]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(France 2014)

Interviews with Parisian craftsmen working for big names in haute couture—Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent—and their view on the future of fashion. Hand Made with Love in France was interesting and even amusing at points. It shows the massive amount of work and attention to detail that goes into making fine clothing. However, it did not deliver on what it promised, exactly.

The craftsmen discussed the impending death of their craft. While not in itself a bad thing, I expected the focus to be somewhere else—specifically, the cheap quality of today’s so-called “luxury” goods. Faux pas! I thought this would be more fun and less handwringing about tomorrow.

(St. Anthony Main) C-

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

http://www.handmadewithloveinfrance.com