Rendez-Vous ’18: See You Up There

There is nothing fake about the WWI military service of Albert Maillard and Edouard Péricourt—they have the scars and disfigurement to prove it. However, the war memorials they peddle are as phony as a three-Franc note. As far as Péricourt, the disillusioned artist is concerned, it is exactly what the public deserves for their fake sympathy. Maillard is less convinced, but he will be passively carried along with the scheme in Albert Dupontel’s See You Up There (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

As Maillard explains to the interrogating Algerian police officer, nobody wanted to die when they knew armistice was imminent, but their commanding officer, Lt. Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle was a truly evil jerk, who had to get in one last battle, in blatant defiance of his orders. In fact, Maillard sees the incriminating evidence—two French scouts shot in the back—before d’Aulnay-Pradelle blew their bodies apart. Péricourt rescues Maillard from a premature burial, but loses the better part of his jaw for his efforts.

At Péricourt’s behest, Maillard switches his identity with that of a former ward of the state killed in action, sparing him a presumably painful reunion with his severely judgmental father. Péricourt remains in a morphine-laced depression, until a friendship with the neighboring orphan girl and his dodgy war memorial plan rejuvenate his spirits. As fate would have it, his father will unwittingly help fund the con and become its biggest sucker.

In terms of visual style, SYUT is so grandly baroque, it could pass for the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The narrative itself is a grubby tale of swindles and payback, but Dupontel gives it epic sweep. There are even gothic elements, such as the flamboyant masks Péricourt crafts for himself that evoke the Phantom of the Opera.

Dupontel is his own best collaborator, playing Maillard as a poignantly nebbish everyman. He is also rather touching when courting the Péricourt family’s maid, Pauline, who should be well out of his league, since she is played by Mélanie Thierry, but whatever. As the masked Péricourt, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart impressively expresses much through body language and his eyes. Niels Arestrup is as reliable as ever gruffly but sensitively portraying Old Man Péricourt, while Laurent Lafitte (of the Comédie Française) chews the scenery with relish as the irredeemable Lieutenant. Yet, the film wouldn’t be the same without André Marcon biding his time as the sly colonial gendarme.

See You Up There is a richly realized period production, but it is also a wickedly effective anti-war movie. Hollow platitudes sound especially disingenuous in French. It is a bold film best seen on the big screen, but it certainly never romanticizes Jazz Age Paris. Very highly recommended, See You Up There screens this Tuesday (3/13) and the following Sunday (3/18) , as part of French Rendez-Vous ’18, at the Walter Reade.

Diplomacy: Will Paris Burn?

During WWII, Sweden’s official neutrality was not always pretty. Yet, despite the calculated concessions granted by their government, some Swedish diplomats became heroes for their courage and compassion. For his efforts rescuing tens of thousands of Jewish Hungarians, Raoul Wallenberg vanished to the world while in the custody of the Red Army. However, Raoul Nordling was awarded the Croix de Guerre for convincing Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz not to raze the city of Paris as he withdrew his forces. Some historians question that narrative, but Cyril Gely chose to print the legend in the stage play he and Volker Schlöndorff have now adapted for the screen. A very French drama plays out between the Swedish diplomat and the German officer in Schlöndorff’s Diplomacy (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Choltitz was one of the few old school Prussian officers not fatally embroiled in the Valkyrie Plot against Hitler. Although he often had profound misgivings, he always followed his orders, at least thus far. With the Allies rapidly approaching, Choltitiz is supposed to blow up key points of infrastructure, leaving the city in smoking wreckage. All the charges are set, but Swedish Consul Nordling has furtively slipped into Choltitz’s converted headquarters in a luxury hotel, using a secret passageway designed for Royal assignations. Before morning breaks, Nordling will try to convince and cajole Choltitz to disregard his orders, allowing Paris’s great cultural and architectural treasures to survive the war.

Essentially, Diplomacy is a one-set two-hander (with a few subordinate offers and a shanghaied engineer walking through from time to time), but the stakes could not be higher. It is a great chess match premise, but even though the narrative is completely stacked in Nordling’s favor it is Choltitz who emerges as the far more compelling dramatic figure.

As played by the ever reliable André Dussollier, Nordling is the suave diplomat arguing on the side of the angels. In contrast, Choltitz is a pricklier individual. Although he remains an inspirational figure for his rank-and-file, he is clearly troubled by the atrocities he duly participated in. Redemption always makes good movie fodder, but there are pressing reasons for Choltitz to acquiesce to madness dictated from above, which he will eventually reveal to Nordling.

Dussollier plays the diplomat with instantly credible intelligence and sophistication. Nonetheless, Niels Arestrup does all the heavy lifting and should earn the majority of critical laurels for his work as Choltitz. While he is a rough bull of a man, he conveys the multitude of internal conflicts roiling inside him.

The maybe-not-quite-as-leftwing-as-he-used-to-be-Merkel-supporting Schlöndorff opens up the film up as best he can, but certain amount of staginess is unavoidable—and perhaps even desirable for such a claustrophobic one-on-one. He maintains a good deal of tension, treating both the concerns of history and his main characters quite fairly. It is a good, solid film that makes one wonder why his thematically related Calm at Sea has yet to land an American distributor. Recommended for patrons of French cinema, Diplomacy opens this Wednesday (10/15) at New York’s Film Forum.

You Will be My Son: Fermented Families

Nobody understands estate law like old French vintners, who feel duty-bound to maintain their chateaus and vineyards as an undivided whole.  It is gravely serious business for Paul de Merseul to even consider cutting out his only son and presumed heir, but de Merseul has always been more interested in his next vintage than his flesh and blood.  The scenery is lovely, but the paternal relations get ugly in Gilles Legrand’s You Will by My Son (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Driven to maintain his elite reputation, Paul de Merseul has always been a shameless manipulator.  Learning of his cellar-master François Amelot’s terminal cancer, he wastes no time finding someone to replace him during the harvest.  It will not be his son Martin.  While de Merseul trusts his presumed successor with sales and marketing responsibilities, at least to an extent, he has no confidence in his son’s nose.  He briefly allows the approval-craving Martin to audition for the gig, but it is only a cruel formality.  It is clear de Merseul père had already set his sights on Amelot’s son Philippe, who has recently resigned from Coppola’s vineyards to be near his ailing father.

When it comes to the harvest, the junior de Mersel can do no right and his childhood chum-turned-rival can do no wrong.  However, old de Merseul’s unsubtle campaign to co-opt and perhaps even adopt his potential protégé deeply wounds the dying Amelot. Martin de Merseul is not very happy about it either.

There is absolutely no cheap sentiment on-tap in YWBMS.  Sugar-coating nothing, Legrand stages one wince-inducing scene after another, almost to the point of emotional exhaustion.  He stacks the deck so thoroughly against the pitiable Martin, viewers have to feel for the poor guy.  Niels Arestrup is a fine actor, perfectly cast as the senior de Merseul, but the character’s casual spitefulness is often rather jarring. 

The first rate ensemble will pull audiences in nonetheless, vividly conveying decades old resentments and insecurities that toxically metastasize as a result of de Merseul’s plotting.  Loránt Deutsch convincingly combines pathos and petulance as the spurned son, while Anne Marivin is a surprisingly strong presence as Alice, his fiercely loyal wife.  Yet as old Amelot, the veteran Patrick Chesnais stakes a claim to all the film’s quietly heavy moments.

An unusually elegant package, YWBMS is further distinguished by Armand Amar’s elegiac classical soundtrack and Yves Angelo’s sweeping cinematography, which absolutely basks in the glorious Bordeaux vistas.  Sensitively helmed by Legrand, the film’s tragedy approaches legitimately Shakespearean dimensions.  Recommended for connoisseurs of French cinema, You Will be My Son opens this Friday (8/16) in New York at the Paris Theatre.

NYFF ’12: Our Children

An unlikely character to build a film around, she is based on Belgium’s Susan Smith.  Following the story of a woman who killed her children in the press, director-co-writer Joachim Lafosse was disturbed by the way she was inevitably demonized.  In response, the filmmaker finds sympathy for the desperate housewife in his fictionalized Our Children (trailer here), Belgium’s official submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which screens during the 50^th New York Film Festival.

Mounir’s relationship with Dr. André Pinget is hard to define.  His boss and surrogate father technically really is his father, by marriage.  Years ago, Pinget married Mounir’s mother for immigration purposes, but she subsequently moved back to Morocco.  Pinget kept Mounir, as a son/sidekick.  When Mounir marries the Belgian Murielle against his advice, he welcomes her into the “family” and his home, but maintains his influence over Mounir.

For a while everything is great, especially with the doctor paying all the bills.  However, the combination of several young children in short succession and Mounir’s traditional notions of gender roles around the house (not exactly discouraged by Pinget) take a frightful toll on the woman.  Reduced to a pill-popping wreck, suddenly everything is her fault.

Lafosse succeeds in humanizing Murielle despite tip-toeing around the elephant in the room, Mounir’s Muslim perspective on home and hearth.  Strangely, she rather idealizes life in Morocco, prompting rebukes from both her husband and Pinget.  That would be no life for your daughters they warn her.  In effect, Lafosse presents her completely stressed-out without the benefit of adequate emotional support, rather than suggest she were the victim of a clash of cultures in her own family.

That gives Émilie Dequenne a steeper hill to climb, yet she still portrays Murielle’s slide into madness with remarkable power. The degree to which she physically manifests her mental disintegration is downright harrowing.  Even though the audience knows full well what unspeakable acts she will commit (eventually handled quite chillingly by Lafosse), one cannot help feel some measure of sympathy for her.

The film would not click together nearly so well without Niels Arestrup’s work as Pinget either.  Warm and jowly on the outside, he clearly projects something rather more unsettling underneath.  Many have likening his paternalism to colonialism and perhaps there is a kernel of truth to that, but he is also very much the controlling social worker or manipulative mother, who is always quick to bemoan “this is how you repay me after everything I’ve done for you” at the first sign of independent decision-making.  Yet, it is often hard to fathom the mindset of Tahar Rahim’s Mounir during all this, beyond his conspicuous self-centeredness.

Our Children is obviously a tough film to watch, but Lafosse keeps viewers locked in, masterfully using classical music and pop tunes to heighten the emotional angst.   While declining to address certain issues head-on, it is quite a showcase for Dequenne and Arestrup’s chops.  Recommended for those who appreciate challenging drama, Our Children screens this Friday (10/12) and Saturday (10/13) as a main slate selection of the 2012 NYFF.

The Big Picture: French-Montenegrin Noir

The French seem to have an affinity for the work of American novelist Douglas Kennedy.  Following the relatively recent art house release for Polish filmmaker’s Pawel Pawlikowski’s stylish French co-production of Woman in the Fifth, American audiences now get a look at Eric Lartigau’s Francophied The Big Picture (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Paul Exben seems to have it all.  Married with two young children, he has a thriving private practice and a well equipped dark room to enjoy his photography hobby.  However, cracks are appearing in the façade.  Something is definitely not right with his wife Sarah.  All signs point towards an affair with his neighbor, a professional photographer Exben already resents, as a symbol of his own creative failure.  When Anne, his partner and de-facto mother-figure, reveals her terminal illness, Exben’s stable existence is rocked again. However, it is a confrontation with the cuckolding neighbor that truly throws Exben’s life upside-down.

Big Picture could be thought of as a big twist film, but it takes two sudden game-changing turns, rather than just springing one surprise gotcha down the stretch.  For reasons that are well developed within the film, Exben finds himself reinventing himself in Montenegro, under an assumed identity.  Indeed, Big Picture is all about questions of identity, both self-perceived and as assumed by others.  It is also a wickedly clever thriller.

As nifty as twists and turns might be, Big Picture is entirely dependent on Romain Duris to make it tick, but fortunately, he knocks it out of the park as Exben.  Duris creates a memorable portrait of a truly complex noir protagonist.  Somehow, we can always understand his often rash decision making and never pass judgment.  It is his movie, but he has some wickedly wry support from French character actor Niels Arestrup as the boozy expatriate newspaperman, Batholomé.  Viewers will appreciate the gleam in his eye as tucks into the tasty Montenegrin scenery.  Francophiles will also appreciate Catherine Deneuve, who is also characteristically engaging in the less showy role of Exben’s soon to be late partner.

Someone ought to make Lee Daniels sit in the corner a watch Big Picture over and over.  Although Kennedy’s story, co-adapted by the director, takes viewers on a far wilder ride, Lartigau’s skillful execution sells it to all but the most annoyingly pedantic viewer.  In contrast, the recent train-wreck of The Paperboy is considerably more credible on paper, but not one second is remotely believable.

The rocky coastal landscape of Montenegro adds immeasurably to the moody atmosphere, giving the film a truly distinctive character.  One of the more successful films following in the tradition of Hitchcock and Chabrol, it is tricky to discuss without dropping spoilers, but very satisfying to watch unfold.  Highly recommended for fans of moody, literate thrillers, The Big Picture opens this Friday (10/12) in New York at the IFC Center downtown and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema uptown.