Rendez-Vous ’17: Right Here Right Now

It is never just business at AB Finance. Sure, the partners want to make pots of money, but it is also always personal for them (and often rather petty). It is an intimidating office culture, but Nora Sator’s elbows might be sharp enough for her to survive in Pascal Bonitzer’s Right Here Right Now (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York.

Sator has no problem with cutthroat business practices, per se. It is the revelation AB’s partners once knew her failed academic father that disturbs her. Neither the slimy Arnaud Barsac or the eccentrically muddled Prévot-Parédès (PP) want to elaborate, but it is clear their dubious friendship with Serge Sator ended in a manner that caused her father great embarrassment. Barsac’s boozy wife Solveig understands what happened better than anyone, much to her bitter regret.

The notion she might have been hired out of guilt concerns Sator, but it will not stop her from making an ambitious power play, straight out of the gate. She will try to broker a blockbuster merger for a skeptical new “show me” client, with the reluctant help of Xavier, the colleague she just leap-frogged. Of course, an attraction will grow between him and Sator during those long nights pouring over financials, making him regret passive-aggressively putting the moves on her hipster sister, Maya.

As critiques of capitalism go, RHRN is about as effective as the old Dynasty TV show. Bonitzer probably couldn’t explain what a P/E ratio measures, but he gives us plenty of scenes featuring well-manicured characters verbally sawing each other off at the knees, while swilling top-shelf liquor. In other words, it is a lot of fun.

Nobody imbibes more than Solveig Barsac, but the great Isabelle Huppert makes her the most complex, multi-dimensional figure in the entire film. She is a hot mess with killer attitude and an acute conscience. Whenever she is on-screen, she kicks the film up a notch or two, as you wouls probably expect.

Lambert Wilson is no slouch either as the unrepentant Barsac, while Pascal Greggory brings a completely unpredictable element of WTF-ness as PP (he’s obsessed with Banyan trees, just so you know). Julia Faure helps humanize the ruthless melodrama as Maya, the artistic sister, whereas Agathe Bonitzer’s analytical sister is an ice queen with intelligent presence (adding a meta element in this pseudo-Freudian tale, helmed by her father). On the downside, Vincent Lacoste’s Xavier, the caddish co-worker is so shallow and boring, it is impossible to see how either sister could be attracted to him (and his working-class insecurity is the sort of cliché you would find in a 1970s Harold Robbins novel).

So, both Robbins and Dynasty get name-checked in a review of a French Rendez-Vous selection—then you know it must be good. Bonitzer’s dialogue is razor sharp and his ensemble clearly savors every cutting word. Recommended for those who enjoy scandal and naked ambition, Right Here Right Now screens this Friday (3/10) and Sunday (3/12) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Rendez-Vous ’17: Daydreams

It is a heck of an artist’s residency.  Those selected by the French Academy in Rome spend a year living and working in the Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill. It also comes with money. Given the French Academy’s long, prestigious history, it rather follows when some resident come to suspect there are ghosts haunting the villa’s manicured grounds in Caroline Deruas’s Daydreams (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York.

Camille has a few well-received short stories to her credit, but deep down she suspects she was chosen due to the fame of her celebrated novelist husband Marc (who of course, is only too willing to take credit for his “networking” on her behalf). Axèle is pretty sure she was only admitted after she pulled a gun on the director, but hey, whatever works.

Despite their radically different temperaments and circumstances, they develop a rather odd friendship soon after their arrival in Rome. Camille is definitely the more confiding one, but Axèle immediately shares her interest in Lucienne Heuvelmans, the first woman admitted to the Academy in Rome. In fact, Axèle soon starts to see ghostly visions of Heuvelmans and the other randy cardinals and empresses who infamously spent time at the Villa. It is a bit disturbing in the moment, but at least it inspires some eerie new directions in her work.

The villa setting is so amazing, viewers would still stay there if they had the chance, even if it is haunted. As it happens, the spectral sequences are rather awkwardly executed and therefore generally unconvincing (especially when compared to Assayas’s ultra-spooky non-horror movie, Personal Shopper, opening this week in theaters). However, Daydreams is fascinating as a meditation on the artist’s life and for its potentially messy biographical implications. Deruas is indeed a former Academy in Rome resident. It is also worth noting she has been credited as Caroline Deruas-Garrel when co-writing screenplays with her husband, French auteur Philippe Garrel.

Jenna Thiam is basically a revelation as the defiantly unpredictable, borderline unstable Axèle. She is an absolute force, but one that attracts (and credibly so). On the other end of the spectrum, Tchéky Karyo gives an unusually subtle and finely shaded performance as Marc, the husband who maybe does not fully realize the manipulative nature of his behavior. That sort of leaves Clotilde Hesme’s Camille stuck in the middle, in more ways than one. Yet for both grace and grit, nobody can touch Renato Carpentieri’s portrayal of Carlo, the veteran groundskeeper Axèle befriends.

Deruas mordantly skewers the jealousies and pretensions of the cloistered artists, but her pointedly critical depiction of the Academy’s budget cutting and revenue-raising efforts only merits embarrassed eye-rolls. Keeping up a Seventeenth Century institution like the Academy in Rome costs serious Twenty-First Century money. Perhaps Deruas would care to donate her stipend if she believes booking weddings at the villa is so tacky. Regardless, the taste she provides of this rarified world is admittedly intoxicating. Recommended for those who are fascinated by the setting and milieu, Daydreams screens this Wednesday (3/8) and Friday (3/10) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 Rendezvous with French Cinema.

Rendezvous ’17: In the Forest of Siberia

The Taiga snow forest is an excellent place to avoid people. It is so remote, even Putin leaves it be. The forbidding frozen terrain attracts a disillusioned Frenchman in the midst of an early midlife crisis and a Russian poacher wanted for more serious crimes in Safy Nebbou’s In the Forest of Siberia (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema in New York.

Teddy had visited Lake Baikal years before and it apparently made quite an impression. Sick of the rat race and his soulless social life, he has chucked it all in and purchased a hovel-cabin on its shores. Winter is fast approaching, but he is convinced the resulting silence and solitude will be spiritually cleansing. Maybe so, but it will also be cold and harsh. Mere survival will be much harder than Teddy ever expected, but a mysterious Russian outlaw will provide some key assistance at crucial moments. Aleksei is not exactly the trusting sort—partly due to the murder conviction hanging over his head—but a friendship will slowly develop between them. After all, they are the only out there, except for the occasional unwanted visitor.

Forest looks and sounds terrific thanks to cinematographer Gilles Porte, who just soaks up the icy vistas, and composer Ibrahim Maalouf, whose eerie ECM-ish score evokes a powerful feeling of desolation. His sound follows in the tradition of Tomasz Stanko and Enrico Rava, but the Beirut-born, Paris-based trumpeter also incorporates Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences, which are rather apt for the northern Eurasian setting.

Raphaël Personnaz always looks like he is weak from hunger and suffering chills, so casting him in the lead makes a certain degree of sense. He is totally convincing when Teddy is in over his head, but somewhat less so as he starts to acclimate to the extreme environment. However, Evgeniy Sidikhin is an immediately credible and intriguing presence as the rugged but haunted Aleksei.

Nebbou & David Oelhoffen (who helmed and adapted Far from Men) keep the narrative business simple with their adaptation of Sylvain Tesson’s autobiographical novel, privileging sense of place and its effect on the psyche above all else. It is impressive in the moment, but the spell quickly breaks once the screening ends. Recommended for fans of Maalouf and those intrigued by its harsh, exotic setting, In the Forest of Siberia screens this Sunday (3/5) and the following Thursday (3/9) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 Rendezvous with French Cinema.