Fred Cavaye’s Farewell, Mr. Haffmann

A crisis can bring out either the best or worst in people. Joseph Haffmann sees both from his employee Francois Mercier and Mercier’s wife, Blanche. As a Jewish French citizen born in Poland, Haffmann witnessed violent Jew-hatred before, so insists on sending his wife and children to safer territory before it is too late. Unfortunately, he stays behind just a little too long, leaving himself at the mercy of the Merciers in Fred Cavaye’s Farewell, Mr. Haffmann, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Haffmann was not Coco Chanel, but he developed a loyal and discerning clientele for his elegant jewelry designs. His longtime shop assistant Francois Mercier has a solid grasp of business side of things, but he lacks Haffmann’s talent. Nevertheless, Haffmann trusts Mercier to legally assume ownership while he and his family are exile. Unfortunately, the Germans choke off all transit out of Paris before Haffmann can depart.

Despite their understandable fears, the Merciers agree to shelter Haffmann in the basement, but they are skittish about sending letters to the former boss’s family. Nevertheless, Blanche warms to Haffmann as they all settle into the new reality, at least until Francois decides to make it weird. For years, the Merciers have struggled to conceive, but to no avail. Blanche has been certified fertile. Presumably, Francois is shooting blanks, but Haffmann has three children.

Obviously, the bargain Mercier proposes is an extraordinarily bad idea. It freaks out his wife and leads to long-term angst and misunderstandings. Ironically, Haffmann and Blanche will fake it rather than make it, but it still jeopardizes his position over the long-term.

Thematically, Farewell is sort of like a cross-between the Czech Holocaust-era drama The Protektor and the Steinbeck novel Burning Bright (admittedly not a major work). Given the confined setting, it is easy to see the film’s stage roots. It is indeed based on Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s play, but Cavaye’s direction helps open it up a little, so it never feels conspicuously stagey. In fact, his experience helming thrillers like Point Blank paid dividends for Farewell, during the near misses and narrow escapes.

Cavaye also has a terrific cast, starting with the great Daniel Auteuil, as Haffmann, who is neither a passive victim or a caricature of neediness. He is a family man, who does what he must, which makes him so easy to identify with. Sara Giraudeau is quite extraordinary portraying Blanche as she processes her moral/ethical confusion and disappointment in her increasingly opportunistic husband.

Fanny: Without Marius

For sailors, it is an age old question—which is stronger, the love of a woman or the call of the sea? It is an issue that preoccupies the first two plays of Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy. In the opening installment, Marius has apparently answered in favor of the latter. Abandoned and secretly pregnant, the woman he once loved must now carry on in Daniel Auteuil’s adaptation of Fanny, which opens this Friday in New York.

Although they long carried torches for each other, Marius decided he had to ship out when he finally had the opportunity and Fanny believed she had to let him go. Unfortunately, her unwed pregnancy promises to ruin her standing around the Old Port of Marseilles. Marius’s gregarious father César is still under the illusion his son will soon return to marry Fanny, but the lack of letters from her former lover speaks volumes.

Much to her surprise, Fanny’s old suitor, Panisse the sail merchant renews his marriage offer, even after she fully explains her condition. Initially, César bitterly resents their union, but when they fully take the tavern-keeper into their confidence, he accepts the pragmatism of the arrangement. He will be the godfather to his absent son’s baby, while Panisse’s wealth will secure his future. Of course, the big uncertainty looming over their arrangement is Marius, should he ever return.

As both actor and director, Auteuil has an assured command of Pagnol’s work. While there are a few strikingly cinematic sequences in Fanny, he intimately focuses on the personal drama, eschewing flash and dazzle. He also delivers the most memorable performance, defining the sacrifices of parenthood in exquisitely sensitive terms. Jean-Pierre Darroussin is not far behind Auteuil, playing old Panisse with painful dignity and earnestness. Victoire Bélézy looks lovely and deeply tragic as Fanny, whereas Raphaël Personnaz largely underwhelms as the titular prodigal son.

Fanny has an evocative old world vibe, heightened by the best score over-rated film composer Alexandre Desplat has penned in years. Cinematographer Jean-François Robin gives it all a warm, nostalgic (in the best sense) look. A quality period literary adaptation, Fanny satisfactorily stands alone for viewers who have not seen the preceding Marius. Recommended for patrons of French cinema, Fanny opens this Friday (7/18) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Patrice Chereau’s Restored Queen Margot

Think of it as a Sixteenth Century Game of Thrones without the fantasy elements. For first act starters, viewers will meet a queen engaging in truly eyebrow-raising affairs and witness a bloody wedding massacre. France’s religious wars vividly rage in a new 4K restoration of Patrice Chéreau’s Queen Margot director’s cut (trailer here), which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Marguerite de Valois is Catholic, but you would hardly know it from her behavior. Notorious for her indiscretions, Margot is less than thrilled with her arranged marriage to the Protestant Henry de Navarre. Supposedly, their union will bring peace in their time, but nobody really believes that—least of all Navarre. Although he has tacitly agrees not to pursue consummation, he visits her on their wedding night anyway, hoping to forge an alliance. Frustrated by the encounter, Margot secretly leaves the palace, seeking a masked distraction. She finds it with La Môle, a destitute young Huguenot with a distant family connection to King Charles IX’s Protestant military advisor.

A mere six days after the ceremony, as Paris sleeps off its revelries, a sudden crisis culminates in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Ostensibly ordered by the submissive King, the deadly business is planned by Margot’s mother, Catherine de Medici, and executed by her ambitious brothers. More out of defiance than principle, Margot manages to save both her husband and her lover, but becomes a de facto prisoner of the palace as a result. Much intrigue will follow.

Queen Margot is one of the great modern historicals. This is not a polite drawing-room story of men in tights and women in ruffled collars. While boldly operatic in sweep, Chéreau has an eye for grimy naturalistic details. He also serves up generous helpings of blood and sex. Twenty years later, his St. Bartholomew’s Day sequence remains an overwhelming example of bravura filmmaking. As sheer spectacle, it is an orgiastic maelstrom of confusion and violence that has yet to be equaled on-screen.

Although a good twenty years older than the young Margot, Isabelle Adjani still looks the part, rocking the low cut wardrobe and scorching up the screen during her love scenes. Ironically, she has better screen chemistry with Daniel Auteuil as her (mostly) platonic husband Navarre than Vincent Pérez’s La Môle. Similarly, Pérez comes across somewhat boy-toyish when playing opposite her, but his scenes with Claudio Amedola as Coconnas, his sworn Catholic rival, crackle with heat and archetypal significance.

When Queen Margot was originally released, the shockingly serpentine-looking Virna Lisi received the lion’s share of the film’s award attention—and she is rather chilling. Yet, in retrospect, the young Asia Argento often steals the show as Charlotte de Sauve, one of de Medici’s spies, who falls in love with her target: Navarre.

As is sometimes the case, Queen Margot is better cinema than a French history lesson. When adapting Dumas père’s fictionalized novel, Chéreau and co-writer Danièle Thompson frequently chose to print the legend rather than the fact. If you want dry dates and details, google the characters. For those who prefer to sink their teeth into a big, lusty, pungent costume drama, the restored director’s cut of Queen Margot opens this Friday (5/9) in New York at Film Forum.

IFWES ’12: The Lookout

One of the hazards of a career in crime is the proximity to criminals.  Initially, the sniper-mastermind of a small gang of bank robbers is only concerned with keeping the cops at bay.  However, he soon must contend with a shadowy figure outside the law in Michele Placido’s The Lookout (trailer here), which screened last night as the closing selection of the 2012 In French with English Subtitles Film Festival in New York.

Parisian police Captain Mattei thinks he has the drop on Vincent Kaminski’s gang, but it is the sniper-lookout who has the drop on the cops.  Kaminski does his job, but it is not a clean getaway.  The married Nico has been badly wounded.  Their only option is the disgraced suburban Dr. Feelgood, who periodically supplies morphine to gang’s secret addict, Éric.  Keep your eye on him.

Given the hail of bullets Kaminski rained down on Mattei’s men, the armed robber could not be hotter.  Nico and his brother try to lay low and recuperate.  However, Kaminski is pinched due to a suspicious anonymous tip.  Of course, no prison will hold the marksmen, especially when he feels slightly betrayed.

Placido certainly is not afraid of generating a body count in The Lookout.  The first act shoot-out is just a massive spectacle of flying ammunition.  Yet, sensitive viewers should be warned, the film takes a dark detour into rather shocking territory, much to the surprise of both cops and robbers.  It is not for the delicate, but The Lookout has some real jolts in store.  Indeed, Placido pivots into left field relatively agilely, pulling viewers along with his ultra-slick Michael Mann style.

As Kaminski, Mathieu Kassovitz broods like a monster and comes across convincingly hardnosed, in a wiry kind of way.  Daniel Auteuil certainly knows how to play a civil servant under pressure, also acquitting himself rather well for a middle-aged guy in the believably staged action scenes.  Olivier Gourmet is simply chilling as the underground sawbones, in ways that would be spoilery to explain.  In fact, the large ensemble cast of dozens all look pretty credible as either cops or robbers.

The Lookout is exactly the sort of French film that exports well, with a story that could easily be transferred to an American city like New York without jeopardizing its dramatic integrity.  Gritty in tone but super cool visually (thanks to cinematographer Arnaldo Catinari), The Lookout delivers for fans of Mann’s Heat and Affleck’s The Town.  It ought to have a plenty of action on the festival circuit, driven by its star power.  A strong closer, it capped three days of entertaining French Cinema programmed by the In French with English Subtitles Film Festival, who donated all their proceeds to the Metro New York Make-a-Wish Foundation, Entraide Française, and Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

Auteuil Remakes Pagnol: The Well-Digger’s Daughter

Class, social convention, and World War I are powerful forces aligned against a young woman’s happiness.  Yet, she may eventually find her place in a world changing faster than she realizes in lead actor-director-screen adaptor Daniel Auteuil’s respectful remake of Marcel Pagnol’s The Well-Digger’s Daughter (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Pascal Amoretti digs and repairs wells.  It is hard but honest work, still quite necessary in the early Twentieth Century southern French provinces.  The widower was blessed and cursed with a brood of six girls.  Old Amoretti has come to rely on the eldest, Patricia, to manage his household, but she has reached marriageable age.  A match with his smitten older employee Felipe Rambert would suit the working class patriarch nicely, but Patricia’s has eyes only for Jacques Mazel, the dashing young officer son of the town’s well-to-do hardware merchant.

Despite knowing the impossibility of their affair, the young woman loses her head with the military aviator the night before he ships out to the front.  When Mazel is reported missing-in-action not long after, the pregnant Amoretti must face her shame alone.  Mazel’s parents certainly are not interested in acknowledging the girl and her traditional father is at loss, unable to see around society’s constraints.

The thing about Digger though is that the fallen Amoretti’s fortunes are not set in stone.  People will rise to the occasion and redeem themselves.  Though the village gossips would hardly put it in such terms, hers really is a story of virtue rewarded.  How she gets there will be quite the trick.  Chocked full of tearful confrontations and convenient revelations, Digger could have easily descended into sentimental treacle, but first-time helmer Auteuil keeps it all concretely grounded in the characters’ natural and social environments.

Already a favorite of the Pagnol estate after his career-making performances in Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, Auteuil is reportedly already developing more Pagnol projects.  As the painfully dignified and conflicted father, he sets the tone for the deeply empathetic Digger.  Likewise, Kad Merad’s Rambert is more than just a likable lug, but a profoundly understanding old soul.  Astrid Berges-Frisbey is genuinely moving in her scenes with Auteuil, while also developing convincing chemistry with Nicolas Devauchelle’s not as caddish as he sounds Mazel.  An unusually forgiving film, it pardons the transgressions of everyone, even the severe Mme. Mazel.

The old-fashionedness of Digger is truly its virtue.  Perhaps, some of its rigid class-consciousness will be lost on some perpetually social-climbing Americans, but most viewers will be lulled by Jean-François Robin’s lush pastoral cinematography and Alexandre Desplat’s nostalgic score.  A handsome period production with several worthy screen turns, The Well-Digger’s Daughter is easily recommended for Francophiles and patrons of literary dramas when it opens this Friday (7/20) in New York at the Quad Cinema.