With the return of the French Film Festival to cinemas this week, Dan Slevin has previewed a few of the titles.
Hèléne Lambert and Juliette Binoche bond on a Normandy beach in Between Two Worlds. Photo: TAMALET CHRISTINE
The French Film Festival is back. It’s always been a highlight of the cinematic calendar but hasn’t always had the organisational heft for the programming to really pay off. Now, under the direction of Fergus Grady (also responsible for the recent fun Scandi Film Festival) and the management support of Limelight Distribution, it should be getting the attention nationwide that it deserves.
As is my habit, I picked three films from the 21 on offer (pretty much a random sample) to look at in advance. Are they representative? Who can know (except, probably, Fergus himself)?
Juliette Binoche as Marianne in the film Between Two Worlds. Photo: Tamalet Christine
The best of the three – and the one that I find myself still contemplating several days later – is Between Two Worlds (aka Ouistreham). The English title is bland but I know why it’s needed. Ouistreham is the port for the city of Caen, home to a busy ferry terminal which becomes the centre of the story but requires more explanation to non-French people than is ideal.
At the beginning of the film a slightly dishevelled Juliette Binoche presents at what we used to call the Labour Exchange to find out how to re-enter the workforce after decades as a pampered (and unqualified) housewife. A recent – surprise – divorce has left her without means in a new town and only the parade of zero-hour, casual, mostly cleaning jobs that are available seem to be the only way to get back on her feet. But there’s something a bit off about her story and her voiceover adds to the mystery.
It turns out that she is a famous author going undercover among the local precariat, mining material for a new book of social and political comment. She has an agenda and the story she has concocted at least explains why she is so useless at the kind of back breaking commercial cleaning she has to do.
As a good journalist she cultivates her sources and – like a good central character in any French film – she finds meaningful relationships among those sources, especially hard-working single mom Chrystèle (Hélène Lambert, like everyone in the film apart from Ms. Binoche, a first time performer).
For much of the film I was worried that it was falling victim to the same flaws as its protagonist – patronising the working class, the “real people”, while taking advantage of them at the same time. But after a while I realised that Emmanuel Carrère’s film (based on a real piece of journalism) is aware of that risk and is, in fact, about that risk. The ending – unresolved and emotionally unsatisfying – is dramatically perfect and that bland English title might be more appropriate than I gave it credit for.
Jean Dujardin (OSS 117) and Pierre Niney (OSS 1001) defend themselves in their own unique ways in OSS 117: From Africa with Love. Photo: French Film Festival
Another film that sometimes doesn’t know whether it is critiquing or celebrating its subject matter – to the extent that it can get uncomfortable – is the latest in the long running spy franchise OSS 117. The original films (from 1956 to 1971) were action entertainments inspired by a colossal series of novels (Wikipedia suggests over 250 by Jean Bruce and later his wife and children).
In 2006, the films were revived by the director/actor pair who would become responsible for the surprise Oscar winner The Artist: Michel Hazanavicius and Jean Dujardin. They chose parody, in the style of Mike Myers’ smash Austin Powers, and they were big domestic hits.
Now, almost 12 years on from the last installment, Agent OSS 117 (Dujardin) is back in action but with a new director, Nicolas Bedos, and a new era. Instead of the stylish 60s Cold War, we are now in the early 80s version. The Russians are struggling in Afghanistan and the French are attempting to maintain influence over their former African colonies while paying lip service to their “independence”. The last thing that French powers-that-be want are communist takeovers abroad – or at home (where a running gag is how nobody in the secret service wants or expects the communist Mitterrand to win their own presidential election).
117 is dispatched to a fictional African republic to a) ensure the preferred dictator wins the forthcoming election, b) the communist rebels don’t get the weapons they need from the Soviets to conduct their coup, and c) find the whereabouts of OSS 1001 (Pierre Niney), a young recruit who in 1980s fashion is much more in touch with his feminine side than the old dinosaur he is replacing.
Cue lots of homophobic jokes, some dodgy racist jokes and plenty of old fashioned sexism. I think the film intends that we see these jokes as examples of 117’s outdated political incorrectness but – for the most part – these are the only jokes in the film and it is like those comedians who say “uh-oh, edgy!” after every off-colour remark.
“Off-colour” could be my entire review: the original French title for the OSS 117: From Africa with Love translates as OSS 117: Red Alert in Black Africa, a title that would be tin-eared in most territories these days. Still, Dujardin is great – thoroughly watchable. I wish he had become a bigger star.
Gérard Depardieu and Kev Adams bond over PlayStation in The Villa. Photo: French Film Festival
While most of the pleasures of OSS 117: From Africa with Love are front loaded, the opposite is true of The Villa, a film which starts off unpromisingly but eventually insinuates itself into your good books.
It’s a crowd pleasing comedy of the kind that is extremely common these days: oldies behaving badly. Kev Adams (a young actor/comedian of whom I was previously unaware) plays a young layabout forced to do community service at a Parisian rest home, despite (or perhaps for the sake of the plot) because of his dislike of senior citizens. The home is run like a prison camp – the retirees contained within receive no visitors and are not allowed out.
After an initial trial by bedpan, Adams’ character eventually finds himself winning over – and being won over by – the residents and he becomes determined to improve their lives, eventually discovering the scandal behind their conditions and organising a breakout.
Once the film calms down, and lets Adams play second fiddle to the great older actors involved, The Villa becomes quite watchable, even though the jokes are as broad as Gérard Depardieu’s considerable beam. The veteran actor – and now Russian citizen and Putin apologist – shows off all his experience in an unchallenging role but the film needs his star power.
Adams co-wrote and co-produced the picture and he appears to be a young man on ‘the up’ as they say. I hope he broadens his range as he achieves more success.
The L’OR French Film Festival opens in Auckland today (Thursday 2 June), Wellington on 9 June and also plays in Matakana, Tauranga, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Napier, Havelock North, Palmerston North, Masterton, Nelson, Christchurch, Wanaka, Arrowtown and Dunedin.
