French Rendezvous ’12: Last Screening

Sylvain is like a little Hugo Cabret who grew up to be a serial killer. Raised on classic films and angst by his overbearing mother, he now manages a revival cinema, but not for long. As one might expect, Sylvain does not handle its imminent closure well in Laurent Achard’s Last Screening (trailer here), a selection of the 2012 Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York.

Sylvain has a thing for Renoir’s French Cancan and dangling earrings. Both can be traced back to his mother, as is so often the case with psycho killers. Though he is supposed to be shutting down the theater, Sylvain seems to be operating in a state of denial, which somewhat annoys his boss. On the upside, Sylvain actually talks to a girl: Manon, a young actress who lost her earrings during French Cancan. Despite showing the classic signs of an anti-social loner, she seems sort of-kind of interested in him. Likewise, Sylvain is interested enough not to kill her.

He kills plenty of other women though, but not in an especially tightly scripted way. Rather, he just seems to drift into killings, after closing up the theater for the night. Indeed, Screening is aces when it comes to atmosphere and set-up, but it does not have much of a third act. Lacking a clear-cut antagonist for Sylvain, the film essentially invites viewers to watch him press his luck.

Still, there is something appealing subversive about Screening’s premise, particularly when it screens at a festival like French Rendezvous for an audience full of hardcore cineastes. As Sylvain, Pascal Cervo sells it quite well, with all the appropriate twitchy awkwardness. Charlotte van Kemmel is also quite solid as the innocent Manon. For French audiences though, the presence of film critic-actor-director Noël Simsolo as a loyal patron adds a bit of sophisticated irony.

In a film like Screening, the madness ought to accelerate, but instead it essentially plateaus. Nicely realized by its game cast, but not exactly fulfilling its promise, Screening is still the closest thing to a midnight movie at Rendezvous 2012. For intrigued genre fans, it screens today (3/8) at the IFC Center and Saturday (3/10) at the Walter Reade Theater.

French Rendezvous ’12: Headwinds

Paul Anderen is a writer, so he must be impossible to live with. His wife Sarah seemed to think so. After a particularly spiteful argument, she might have walked out on him and their two children. While her fate remains a mystery, Anderen will have to become the responsible parent he never was in Jalil Lespert’s Headwinds (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York.

Though initially a suspect, Anderen was eventually cleared of any involvement in her disappearance. That provides him little closure, but allows him to move on with his life, at least to extent. Returning to the old family cottage in the coastal city of Saint Malo, Anderen accepts a job with his more dutiful brother Alex. He still has issues, but he begins to make the odd human connection here and there. However, when he befriends one of the laborers who helped move him in, he finds himself once again under police suspicion when the man kidnaps his own son as part of a custody dispute.

Headwinds is sort of like a French version of The Descendants without the entitled sense of Noblesse oblige. It also has the hint of a crime drama sprinkled in here and there, but the focus falls squarely on Anderen and his steadily developing parental chops.

The biggest star in Headwinds disappears after the first ten minutes, but one can easily believe a guy like Anderen would have a hard time getting over the apparent loss of Audrey Tautou. As the bereft husband who will not allow himself to grieve, Benoît Magimel is convincingly human in a myriad of insecure and self-defeating ways. Yet, he also has some rather brutally honest confrontations with Antoine Duléry, quite nicely nuanced as his resentful older brother. The kids are just alright. Descendants probably has the advantage over Headwinds on that score. However, Isabelle Carré adds an intriguingly compassionate note as Josée Combe, the local copper.

Arguably, Headwinds does not hold a lot of surprises in store for viewers, except its willingness to face every difficult scene head-on, without copping out. It is melodrama, but pretty good melodrama. Again, if Alexander Payne’s film had the perfect level of sentimentality for you, then by all means check out Headwinds. It screens as a selection of Rendezvous with French Cinema tomorrow and Friday (3/8 & 3/9) at the Walter Reade Theater.

French Rendezvous ’12: Guilty

It would become the French equivalent of the McMartin Preschool case, except arguably more tragic. Fourteen people were unjustly accused of participating in the notorious Outreau pedophile network, serving years behind bars awaiting their dubious day in court. One of them was Alain Marécaux, a former bailiff. Adapting his own memoirs for the screen, the former court officer tells his story in Vincent Garenq’s Guilty (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York.

As Guilty opens, Marécaux works hard at his writ serving practice, perhaps too hard to see as much of his family as he might like. Unfortunately, he is about to get an extended period of time off. When the cops arrive in the dead of night, he has no idea why. Eventually, it becomes clear Marécaux and his wife stand accused of participating in pedophilic orgies by the very same parents who sold their children to the ring.

The first two acts of Guilty are more Kafka than Grisham, as the case against Marécaux gets ever more lurid and incredible. It takes a physical and mental toll on the man, eventually rupturing his marriage and sowing emotional discord amongst his children. It is not until the third act that viewers finally see a proper courtroom, but it hardly redeems the French justice system when they do.

Guilty is a very well executed film, but it is not an easy watch. Indeed, it is genuinely harrowing to witness the injustices and humiliations meted out on Marécaux by the reckless prosecuting magistrate, Fabrice Burgaud, a villainous bureaucrat if ever there was one. As the screenwriter, he spares us nothing he endured (or so it feels). Fearlessly throwing himself into the role, Philippe Torreton portrays Marécaux’s disintegration in starkly intimate terms.

At least he had a good lawyer. In fact, Wladimir Yordanoff’s work as Hubert Delarue goes a long way towards cementing the film’s credibility. Rather than a crusading advocate, he comes across as a competent, relatively well-heeled attorney, who becomes increasingly aghast at the systematic injustice perpetrated throughout the Outreau case. On the flip side, Raphaël Ferret’s Burgaud is the personification of clammy weaselness.

Sure, wrongly accused docudramas are a dime a dozen and often play it rather fast and loose with the truth. However, Guilty withstands a reasonably earnest internet vetting and should hold viewers riveted throughout. Garenq keeps the outrage mounting exponentially, forcing the audience to confront the reality of Marécaux’s plight, up close and personal. It is often manipulative, but it works.

After preening across the world stage as one of Saddam Hussein’s erstwhile apologists, Jacques Chirac would personally apologize for the Outreau case, which he called a “judicial disaster.” Actually, apologies were what he did best. At any rate, Marécaux will get the final word with scores of readers and viewers through his memoirs and Garenq’s film. They certainly have a lot to say. Recommended for sophisticated true crime audiences, Guilty screens again tomorrow (3/8) at the IFC Center as part of 2012’s Rendezvous with French Cinema.

French Rendezvous ’12: Paris By Night

Simon Weiss knows a side of Paris few tourists see. Well, some do. In fact, the clubs the vice captain polices might be the ultimate purpose of many visits. Whether high-end or low-rent, there is definitely something brewing in the city’s nightspots during the fateful night chronicled in Philippe Lefebvre’s wickedly stylish Paris By Night (trailer here), which screens tonight as part of the 2012 Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York.

The ambiguously corrupt Weiss knows someone is trying to jam him up with internal affairs. He intends to find out whom as he makes his nocturnal rounds. As he explains to Officer Laurence Deray, he must engage in a different sort of policing. She will be his driver tonight. It is considered a difficult assignment no cop wants to do twice. She will soon learn why. Indeed, it will be an eye-opening night for them both.

Granted, much of the film consists of Zem’s Weiss strutting through the red light district like a shark, smacking around punks as if they are little girls. Of course, that is also why it so seductively entertaining. Yet, Lefebvre steadily raises the stakes, slyly revealing details of the frame-up job Weiss is trying to slip out of.

Frankly, Weiss is the sort of role Roschdy Zem was born to play. Easily the baddest hard-nose making films today, Zem already has mucho street cred for his manly turns in films like Point Blank, 36th Precinct, and Outside the Law, but he kicks it up to a whole new level in PBN. This is not Eastwood coolness, this is McQueen coolness. While he could carry the film on his own, Zem still gets a head-turning assist from Sara Forestier as the somewhat incredulous but impressively poised Deray. Together, they are quite a dynamic pair.

True to its title, PBN gives viewers a memorable tour of after-hours Paris, whilst unfolding its surprisingly cerebral crime story. Cinematographer Jérôme Alméras vividly captures the glitz and grime, conveying the late night vibe in spades.

While the French-Moroccan Zem is already a major star in France, he is overdue for widespread acclaim in America. PBN is the sort of vehicle that could get the job done. It is a perfect showcase for his stone cold flintiness. Slick, taut, and brooding, PBN is one of the clear highlights of this year’s French Rendezvous. Highly recommended, it screens again tonight (3/6) at the IFC Center.

French Rendezvous ’12: The Screen Illusion

Hotel concierges pride themselves on their resourcefulness. However, one rather dodgy operator promises to show an estranged father the life of the son he disowned. Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique (a.k.a. The Theatrical Illusion) is reset in the present day rather shrewdly and faithfully in Mathieu Almaric’s The Screen Illusion, which screens today as part of the 2012 Rendezvous with French Cinema.

In the original Corneille, Alcandre is a magician who shows Pridamant images of his son on the wall of his Platonic grotto. Alcandre the concierge takes the remorseful parent to the nerve center of the hotel’s closed circuit television network. He has quite a story cued up for the man.

Clindor (as his father knew him) is now the hired muscle for Matamore, a blow hard special ops video game developer. Matamore is in love with Isabelle, whose mobbed up father has promised her to the well heeled Adraste. Finding them both sorry excuses for masculinity, Isabelle has been having an affair with Clindor. Unfortunately, their secret really isn’t one. Lyse, Adraste’s ambiguous security consultant, knows all about them. She also loved Clindor, but her ardor has soured into resentment.

Corneille’s Illusion is surprisingly hip for its time, self-consciously toying with distinctions between comedy and tragedy before ending with a fifth act twist that is still widely ripped off in contemporary film and television. While the rhyming couplets proved a bridge too far for the subtitlers (and fair enough), English speaking audiences still get a sense of the rhythms and cadences of Almaric’s adaptation, apparently simplifying Corneille’s language, but keeping its character.

His cast certainly enjoys chewing on it, especially Julie Sicard, who is a scene-stealing standout as the sort of scorned Lyse. Loïc Corbery’s Clindor might seem a bit bland, but that is just how it is with young prodigal stage heroes. However, Suliane Brahim shows considerable dramatic presence and chops, holding her own with Sicard in a key scene. As Alcandre, Hervé Pierre’s knowing roguishness holds it all together quite nicely.

Conceived as part of a series of Comedie Française television movies updating classic French stage dramas, Almaric’s Illusion is definitely worthy of the big screen. The modernizations are quite clever, yet Almaric maintains a romantic fable-like atmosphere throughout. Smart and completely satisfying, it is one of the highlights of this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema. Enthusiastically recommended, it screens today (3/4) and Tuesday (3/6) at the Walter Reade, at BAM also today, and at the IFC Center tomorrow (3/5).

French Rendezvous ’12: Pater

The French president and his prospective prime minister are moonlighting as their own videographers. They will probably be the only French workers who still have jobs if their ideologically-driven economic plans are passed. At least they enjoy talking about it in Alain Cavalier’s Pater (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema.

Alain Cavalier and Vincent Lindon play themselves playing a crafty old president and the socialist industrialist he recruits as his heir apparent. The president is about to announce a major initiative to cap salaries nationally at fifteen times the minimum wage. His new PM is the perfect man to sell it, because he voluntarily set a ten-fold ceiling at his own factory. In fact, the preference for ten versus fifteen will become a major source of tension between the soon to become rivals. Yet, they can still find time to discuss clothes and savor some truffles together.

Evidently, the best case the leading lights of French cinema can make for socialism is the perceived appeal of symmetry. We have a minimum wage, so why not a maximum they frequently argue. The potential impact on French capital formation worries them not. Still, they might as well put their economy on ice. With Germany bailing out every EU country that comes calling, there is no sense in any European working a real job.

The elegant luxury of Lindon and Cavalier’s world might be interpreted as an ironic commentary on their limousine socialism, but it is not clear Pater is that self-aware. Rather, it appears more interested in playing “are-we-in-character-or-are-we-not” games with viewers. Still, Lindon and Cavalier are clearly comfortable playing off each other, showing flashes of wit here and there.

While their story of the protégé challenging his political mentor should have great dramatic potential, the film’s largely two-handed improvisational format is unable to flesh out the meat on its bare bones. Indeed, Pater is more like a theater piece in need of a rigorous work-shopping than a fully conceived and realized film.

In a way, Pater is like the French arthouse version of the movies Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise made together, in which everyone works very hard trying to show the audience what a good time everyone had making the picture. Rather slight but quite self-satisfied, Pater can be safely skipped at this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema. For those looking for a quick fix of smug French in-jokes, it screens tonight (3/3) at BAM and tomorrow (3/4) at the Walter Reade Theater.