Rendez-Vous With French Cinema

Every year, fewer and fewer foreign film get screened in the U.S. This sad state of affairs makes the 12th annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema a special treat -- if one that only New Yorkers can take advantage of. During the next twelve days, the Film Society at Lincoln Center will be screening sixteen French films, with a distinguished list of stars and directors in attendance, including Olivier Dahan, Marion Cotillard, Guillaume Canet, Benoît Jacquot, and the always fascinating Isild Le Besco.

Opening night starts off with Olivier Dahan's La Vie En Rose (La Môme), a portrait of Edith Piaf, France's most famous singer, featuring a bravado performance by the diminutive but impressively abrasive Marion Cotillard (pictured to the right). The rags to riches story begins with Piaf's dreadful beginnings as an abandoned and sickly child who grows up in a whorehouse, to her inevitable discovery on the streets (by Gerard Depardieu, no less), the subsequent triumphant rise to fame, and the disturbing downward progression through drugs and misery. But oh, she regrets nothing.

Closing the festival is Francis Veber's (The Closet) star studded comedy of manners, The Valet, featuring Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas, Alice Taglioni and comedian Gad Elmaleh as a pair of mismatched couples.

We also had a chance to see some of the films shown in between.

Murderers (Meurtrières)
Nina and Lizzy meet in a mental asylum in Patrick Grandperret's Murderers. The title gives away plenty: the two girls strike up an easy friendship and decide to escape for a Saturday night of fun. Instead, they find themselves on the road, hungry and tired, without food or money. They hitch through small French seaside towns seeking shelter. As one trucker astutely notes, Nina (Hande Kodja) is a sex bomb and Lizzie (Celine Sallette) a bundle of charms; their combined teenage sex appeal attracts plenty of attention. The girls' adventure is slowly paced, appealing from one idle moment to the next, but the bloody resolution is a foregone conclusion.

I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single (Prête-moi ta main)
In Eric Largiau's romantic comedy I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single, a confirmed bachelor schemes to stay that way. His adoring family -- which includes an overbearing mother and a trio of doting sisters -- desperately want him married. To keep them at bay, Luis (Alain Chabat) comes up with a ludicrous plan. He presents them with a suitable bride (hired and paid for) who will woo his family and then jilt Luis at the altar, leaving the man so bereft that he'll never be able consider marriage again. The obvious flaw to this fool proof plan is that phony bride is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg (The Science of Sleep, Lemming). The machinations of this romantic comedy are so predictable as to elicit the occasional disgusted groan, but nevertheless, the oh-so-amorous conclusion -- that necessary zinger of a perfect kiss -- still pleases.

The Page Turner (La tourneuse de page)
Forget love. Dennis Decourt's subtle drama about a concert pianist (Catherine Frot) and her quiet, sexy young page turner (Deborah Francois, pictured above) is all about revenge. But revenge is not that simple, and love also comes into play. In a typical genre film, the revenge seeker requires a final monologue: I hate you, I am destroying your life because..., a speech that often gives the victim time to escape. But the storytelling in The Page Turner is so tightly controlled that the delicate pianist (Frot) never comprehends that the charming young woman at her side is out to get her. Only the audience is in the know -- which makes for a thrilling and disturbing sense of participation.

The Untouchable (L'intouchable)
Three years ago, Isild le Besco and Benoît Jacquot made the brilliant, if sometimes inscrutable A Tout de Suite, about a young woman whose life drastically changes when her boyfriend robs a bank. Their second collaboration, The Untouchable, sets le Besco off on a new, equally profound journey. Le Besco stars as Jeanne, a working actress who learns that her real father is an Indian man, an Untouchable, who met her mother long ago on the banks of the Ganges river. Like the young woman in A Tout de Suite, Jeanne's life is instantly and irrevocably changed as she sets off to discover her identity.

Benoit's film goes from moment to moment without ever explicitly exploring the causality of Jeanne's actions, using the camera as a roving witness, a shadow. Le Besco has a complicated face: she can appear astonishingly beautiful in one scene and mousy in the next. Her toothy wide smile is like an explosion of happiness. Benoit seems to make movies just to explore the range of her face.

[posted by Marcy]