Night Call, Co-Starring Romain Duris as a Bad Guy

The right to protest must always be preserved, but its always best to take a break and start fresh in the morning. All-night demonstrations are dangerous because both protesters and cops get tired, making it harder for cool heads to prevail. Indeed, an all-night BLM protest in Brussels further complicates a locksmith’s night-from-heck in director-screenwriter Michiel Blanchart’s Night Call, which opens today in theaters.

Mady Bala is not an idiot. He requires proper ID and cash payment for his late-night house-calls, but for some reason, he trusts “Claire.” After all, she perfectly describes the apartment’s interior. However, she scoots out with a package of something just before the real tenant, a white supremacist drug dealer, returns home.

Somehow, Bala kills the raging thug in self-defense, but the long-running protests convince the misguided locksmith to clean-up the crime scene instead of calling the cops. So, there he is, looking extremely guilty when druglord Yannick’s men arrive for their money, finding him instead. After some enhanced interrogation, Yannick starts to suspect Bala might be telling the truth, so he sends the poor patsy off to the dead man’s favorite sex-worker club in search of the mystery woman. Inconveniently, one of the henchmen minding him is aggressively ill-tempered and the other was in on the theft.

It seems pretty clear Blanchart sympathizes with the movement, judging from Bala’s anxieties regarding the police. Yet, ironically, the demonstrators constantly make his situation worse. In fact, the protest—which is really more of a contained riot—precipitate several of the darned things in Blanchart’s one-darned-thing-after-another storyline. There are also a handful of violent eruptions that are not exceptionally graphic, but are still shocking within the dramatic context.

The Three Musketeers Part II: Milady

Technically, Twenty Years After was the sequel to The Three Musketeers. However, the previous film only told half the story of Dumas’s first D’Artagnan novel, even though both parts of the story were shot together, Lord of the Rings-style. War has broken out, but fighting is what the King’s Musketeers do best. For them, spycraft and courtly treason are more dangerous in Martin Bourboulon’s The Three Musketeers Part II: Milady, which opens today in theaters.

The Three Musketeers saved the King at the end of Part I: D’Artagnan, but Athos awkwardly suspects his Protestant brother was involved. More ominously, they conclude there must be a traitor in court, very near the King. D’Artagnan’s lover Constance Bonacieux discovered the conspirator’s identity, which is why she was kidnapped at the end of the first film.

Much to his shock, D’Artagnan is also abducted by the Comte de Chalais, whose position as the leader of the Catholic League had placed above reproach. His henchmen cannot hold a good Musketeer for long, but when D’Artagnan rescues the Comte’s other captive, he is shocked to find Milady instead of Bonacieux. Of course, he is disappointed, but maybe not as disappointed as he should be.

Even though Part I seemed to be headed in a Queen Margot direction, when seen in its entirety, Bourboulon’s Three Musketeers is surprisingly faithful to the Dumas novel. Part II delivers more rousing swordplay and musketry action, while Bourboulon and cinematographer Nicholas Bolduc make spectacular use of the Bordeaux scenery. The second film is even more dynamic than the first, so it would be preferable to see it on a bigger screen.

French Rendez-Vous ’24: The Animal Kingdom

Fantasy often tells us mankind is the most dangerous animal. If you think that changes when a mysterious phenomenon starts mutating the afflicted into physically powerful human-animal hybrids, you could not be more wrong. Homo-sapiens are still the most dangerous creatures, due to our aggression, fear, and prejudice, a point that is repeatedly emphasized in Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom, the opening night film of this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, in New York.

As the film opens, Emile Marindaze is distressed by the sight of a bird-man struggling with paramedics amid cars stuck in traffic. His alarm seems natural, but viewers soon learn his reaction is more personal and visceral. It turns out his mother has also been stricken with the strange animal mutating disease, which carries a severe stigma among the uninfected.

His father François has arranged for them to temporarily relocate to a resort village, so they can be close to her in the newly constructed high-security treatment center. Of course, they want to keep her condition on the down-low, so they pretend they are simply in town for dad’s new job as a chef at a waterfront bistro. It becomes harder when the initial shipment of patient/inmates (including Madame Marindaze) escapes in a traffic accident. Emile regularly drags Emile out to the forest to search for his mother, while the surly teen is trying to hide his own early onset of animal mutation symptoms.

So, deep down, we’re all animals. The end. There is a legit point in there, which someone like Rod Serling could have made brilliantly in just under thirty minutes. In contrast, Cailley drags out this morality play—but to his credit, he reportedly cut an epilogue after Animal Kingdom premiered at Cannes.

That is the storytelling. On the other hand, the filmmaking that went into Animal Kingdom is often pretty impressive. Cailley’s brand of contemporary fantasy is eerily realistic looking. In some ways, Animal Kingdom almost functions as Cronenbergian body-horror, but the mutations are vividly lifelike and painful looking.

The Three Musketeers—Part I: D’Artagnan

The King's Musketeers and Cardinal Richelieu’s guards are all French, but they spent a lot time fighting and killing each other. That was the early 17^th Century for you. Life was cheap, but honor was dear. The Musketeers must scramble to save the reputation of the Queen in Martin Bourboulon’s The Three Musketeers-Part I: D’Artagnan, the first film in his two-part adaptation of Dumas, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

As in the novel, this is really the story of how the three musketeers became four. Initially, the provincial Charles de Batz de Castelmore D’Artagnan can only secure entry into the King’s military academy, making him a cadet. While pursuing one of the ruffians who attacked him on the road to Paris, D’Artagnan manages to offend Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, all of whom schedule duels with him. Of course, the trio all agree to be each other’s seconds, so all four are together when Richelieu’s guards try to arrest them for dueling. That will be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Soon after D’Artagnan buries the hatchet with the Musketeers (in several of Richelieu’s men), he finds himself racing to save his noble-born new friend from a murder frame-up. It turns out he is the perfect man to do it, because it involves the gang that left him for dead. Of course, their ringleader is literature’s greatest femme fatale, “Milady,” whose boss happens to be the Cardinal.

Her next assignment will be stealing the jeweled necklace Queen Anne gave as a keepsake to her secret English lover, the Duke of Buckingham. To quell the Cardinal’s malicious rumors, the Queen must wear it at the upcoming state wedding of the King’s brother. Fortunately, her servant, Constance Bonacieux, has D’Artagnan’s ear (and his heart), so she can recruit the Musketeers’ assistance.

Screenwriters Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere stay reasonably faithful to Dumas pere, but they add a big climatic battle that looks like it could have been inspired by the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre scene in Queen Margot (also based on a Dumas pere novel). Regardless, they recreate lots of the fighting and scheming that still makes the book fun to read over 150 years after its initial serialization. The swordplay and musketry all look legit, which makes sense, considering French Olympic epee fencer Yannick Borel helped train the cast. (A sabre fencer might have been more appropriate for the props on hand, but Borel’s techniques are surely sound with even a basic foil.)

The casting is also terrific, starting with Vincent Cassel as the steely, righteous-in-a-hardboiled-kind-of-way Athos. Romain Duris is physically perfect as the devout ladies’ man, Aramis, but he has the least screen time out of the four heroes. Pio Marmai is appropriately bear-like as Porthos, without the clownishness shtick the character is often depicted with.

Of course, Eva Green seductive and just generally fab as Milady. Louis Garrel makes Louis XIII surprisingly thoughtful and complex, while Lyna Khoudri’s screen-illuminating charisma is also a real bonus as Bonacieux. Frankly, Francois Civil has his work cut out for him keeping up with his co-stars, but that rather fits his role as the naïve D’Artagnan. Arguably, the only real shortcoming among the ensemble is Eric Ruf not being sufficiently sinister as the dastardly Richelieu.

Final Cut: Michel Hazanavicius Remakes One Cut of the Dead

Ironically, a zombie apocalypse breaks out while a film crew is shooting a zombie movie. But wait, there’s more—as those who have seen Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead already know. However, this is sort of a remake and also sort of a sequel. Apparently, it all transpires in a universe where One Cut exists, but the production is plagued (so to speak) by similar problems. It isn’t easy directing zombies in Michel Hazanavicius’s Final Cut, which opens today in New York.

This time around Higurashi doesn’t look like a Higurashi, but he is just as deranged. Quite irresponsibly, he has invoked a WWII-era zombie curse to illicit more convincing performances from his beleaguered cast. They too have distinctly Japanese names, despite speaking French. All will be explained eventually.

It is interesting to watch Final Cut, for the “first time,” while knowing the big twists. It allows fans of One Cut to appreciate the ways Hazanavicius tweaked the material and how he stayed faithful to the spirit of the original film. Reviewing three similar takes on Invisible Guest was probably one too many, but Hazanavicius’s clever in-film references to One Cut help differentiate Final Cut. In some ways, they also make the French remake/sequel/side-film even nuttier.

Romain Duris and Berenice Bejo are terrific as the Higurashi the director and Natsumi the make-up artist. They sort of play against type—and then they don’t—but they both use their winning screen charismas to full effect. Lyes Salem and Jean-Pascal Zadi are also very funny as the producer and composer-sound designer.

NYFF ’17: Mrs. Hyde

Despite her titular surname, the nocturnal alter-ego of Marie Géquil (sound it out) is more like an impersonal, fiery monster in the tradition of the H-Man than a down-and-dirty Victorian ripper. She doesn’t get a lot of breaks, but her mutation still has transformative effects for her Jekyll persona in Serge Bozon’s Mrs. Hyde, which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 55^th New York Film Festival.

For most festival patrons, the casting of Isabelle Huppert as Madame Géquil is all they need to know. The fact that it is also a loose reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson is hopefully a bonus, but we are really talking loose here—like those pants need a belt and suspenders, plus some gathers round the cuffs.

Despite thirty years of experience, Madame Géquil finds herself on probation due to her ineffectual classroom manner. Teaching physics in a distressed urban technical school is not an easy task—and her openly hostile students do not make it any easier. Unlike the hypocritically unctuous principal, she has no truck with the soft bigotry of low expectations, but her refusal to dumb it down only increases her class’s antipathy. Than one fateful day, while Madame Géquil is performing an experiment, a lightning bolt from out of the blue strikes the school’s laboratory (a refurbished shipping container).

Suddenly, Madame Géquil has more confidence and appetite by day, but she sleepwalks by night. Eventually, she starts transforming into a Human Torch like figure that preys on the thugs running wild in the nearby projects. This two-pronged attack will help her finally reach Malik, her worst tormentor in class, who turns out to have an unsuspected aptitude for electrical engineering.

Although there is a thimble full of genre business in Mrs. Hyde, it is more an educator’s trials and tribulations, much in the tradition of The Class or Dangerous Minds, but it is darker and more fatalistic. It also has Huppert, who is terrific. Everyone seems to think she is playing against type here, but the truth is, you can see all the too-quiet intensity and barely contained resentment she has always conveyed so vividly. If you tipped her Géquil over, she might shatter.

As Malik, Adda Senani is a natural who looks like he really attends Arthur Rimbaud Technical School and hates every minute of it. He is a genuine discovery, but Romain Duris’s outrageously flamboyant, bang-flipping turn as the serpentine principal will really burn itself onto your corneas. Unfortunately, José Garcia’s Pierre Géquil is rather lightweight and inconsequential.

Mrs. Hyde is probably just good enough to satisfy Huppert’s admirers, but not chaotic enough to satiate Jekyll and Hyde buffs. Huppert and Duris certainly strut their stuff, even while pointedly critiquing French public education. It is an interesting, sometimes ironically amusing film, but not a knock-out punch. Recommended for fans of Huppert and patrons of French cinema, Mrs. Hyde screens this Friday (9/29) at Alice Tully Hall and Sunday (10/1) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYFF.

Klapisch’s Chinese Dolls

The interconnected group of friends and lovers from Cédric Klapisch’s L’Auberge Espagnole and Russian Dolls represent a European microcosm, but to pursue their second chances at life and love they appropriately congregate in Lower Manhattan. Chinatown will see an influx of Francophone expats in Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Novelist Xavier Rousseau is way behind on his latest deadline. He has been a bit distracted by the dissolution of his marriage to the British Wendy. Following his soon to be ex-wife to New York for the sake of his kids, Rousseau kind of-sort of experiences fatherhood again as the sperm-donator for his best pal Isabelle and her Chinese-American partner Ju. With little money and fewer prospects, Rousseau crashes in Ju’s hipster-friendly Chinatown apartment. It will become quite homey when he hosts his former lover Martine and her two children during their New York vacation.

Will sudden proximity rekindle their relationship? Fortunately she is rather understanding of his green card marriage to a second generation Chinatown New Yorker, but keeping up appearances for immigration will lead to a lot of door slamming and mad dashing about. Yet, somehow it all still represents the mature phase of his life.

Although Puzzle is the concluding film of what Klapisch calls “The Trilogy of Xavier’s Travels” (picture that on the DVD boxed set), it easily stands alone. However, those who are emotionally invested in the prior two installments will take great satisfaction from the nontraditional familial bonds that develop between the characters. In fact, it might be the most unabashedly optimistic and upbeat film for all concerned, propelled along by Loïk Dury and Christophe “Disco” Minck’s infectiously peppy Cesar Award nominated score.

Like a comfortable old shoe, Romain Duris exudes loser likability as Rousseau. He also shares some pleasant (if not exactly scorching) screen chemistry with Audrey Tautou’s Martine. In a nice change of pace following films like The Kid with the Bike and Hereafter, Cécile de France shows a keen facility for slightly naughty physical comedy as the Belgian Isabelle. Strangely, the American marketing campaign is not playing up House of Cards’ Sandrine Holt as Ju, but she adds some class and dignity to the proceedings.

Puzzle is a breezy and buoyant film, but it is not utterly vacuous. It clearly celebrates family and friendship, suggesting playing the cards one has been dealt might just turn out to be a blessing. That it is an unusually attractive cast of characters grappling with impending middle age just makes it all the more cinematic. A can’t miss for fans of Xavier’s previous travels, Chinese Puzzle is recommended for Francophiles and international rom-com audiences when it opens this Friday (5/16) in New York at the Angelika Film Center downtown and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema uptown.

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.

French Rom-Com: Heartbreaker

Even in France, any man who tells a woman he also digs George Michael’s Wham! and the movie Dirty Dancing has to be lying. At least Alex Lippi is not doing it for amorous reasons. It is strictly business for him. Hired by clients to break-up the dysfunctional relationships of their loved ones, Lippi’s business is seduction. Yet, he will face his greatest professional and personal challenge in Pascal Chaumeil’s Heartbreaker (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Lippi has one hard-and-fast rule: he never breaks up genuinely happy couples. However, his impatient loan shark provides sufficient incentive to break that rule in the case of Juliette Van Der Beqc and her apparently perfect do-gooder fiancé. Working undercover as her bodyguard, he gains access to the betrothed wine expert, but even with the inside information assembled by his sister Mélanie and her loving doofus husband Marc, the break-up specialist has trouble closing the deal. Instead, it is Van Der Becq who inspires Lippi to break his other unstated but clearly implied rule when he starts falling for her himself. Obviously, complications ensue.

There is a fair amount of broad farcical humor in Heartbreaker, much of it supplied by Lippi’s sister and brother-in-law. However, Chaumeil's film is an unapologetically sentimental rom-com at heart. Fortunately, it all more or less works thanks to the strong chemistry between the two leads. Romain Duris (Juliette Binoche’s brother in Cédric Klapisch's Paris and the focus of a BAM retrospective ending this Wednesday 9/8), is a thoroughly likable cad who proves surprisingly adept at physical comedy. Not just a striking beauty, Vanessa Paradis (the French recording artist and Johnny Depp’s significant other), is indeed charismatic in a realistically mature and sophisticated way as Lippi’s betrothed target. They look good and even dance well together, as when they recreate the climatic Dirty Dancing number during one of Lippi’s more ambitious seduction attempts.

Chaumeil cut his teeth with AD and unit work on Luc Besson productions like The Fifth Element and The Professional. Despite radical differences in genre and subject matter, he seems to have picked up a good sense of pacing through those gigs, because Heartbreaker never loses momentum. Its light and frothy atmosphere is further heightened by the beautiful Monte Carlo settings, which glisten through the lens of cinematographer Thierry Arbogast. Indeed, the film makes the most of its exclusive locale, even throwing in a cameo by model Victoria Silvstedt for added glamour.

Heartbreaker is like a French film trying to be a Hollywood movie, but doing a better job of it. It has an engaging charm that might not offer many surprises, but delivers plenty of satisfaction. A pleasing little film to spend time with, Heartbreaker opens this Friday (9/10) at the IFC Center.