Rendez-Vous with French Cinema
If you don't have the time to travel to France this week, do the next best thing and check out the films in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series happening in New York City. With 15 US premieres being presented through March 9, you're bound to find a bonbon that will please your palate as well as your eyes. Though my train from Philadelphia arrived in the city a half hour late, the subway trains ran like clockwork taking me cross-town to get tickets and to screenings at the IFC Center in the Village and uptown to Lincoln Center.
The IFC Center, with its exposed brick walls and cushy seats, is a comfortable environment for indie and foreign films. My first screening of the day was the involving Those Who Remain, which warranted more than its half-filled audience. Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos, who previously costarred in the psychological drama La Moustache, play Bertrand and Lorraine who meet in the cancer ward of the hospital when visiting their bedridden significant others and come to fill an emotional void in each other. Though there is a backdrop of impending death, this drama is rarely bleak or maudlin. Those Who Remain has the feel of an American independent film yet retains a feeling that is distinctly French, taking a simple situation and focusing on the behavior of the characters. Devos (Kings and Queen) lends a lightness to Lorraine that plays well against the concern and guilt of Lindon's Bertrand. Writer-director Anne Le Ny takes a novel approach blurring the lines of love and comfort in a time of need.
Heading to the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center the subway proved to be the best mode of transportation over a cab, as the train pulled into the station just as I arrived and delivered me uptown with a six-minute travel time.
Probably one of the best films shown in the series is A Secret, which deservedly garnered multiple César-award nominations and Best Film at the 2007 Montreal World Film Festival. Adapting the novel by Philippe Grimbert (published as Memory in the US) writer-director Claude Miller casts Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) as François, the story of a man looking back on his childhood during the outbreak of World War II. As a boy, taking an imaginary playmate has deeper meaning when François considers the secret in his family's history and how it continues to affect his life in 1985. Miller conducts the flashback structure with ease, using multiple visual tones for the different time periods. As he stated in a Q&A afterwards, things in the past are recounted in the present and the things recounted in the past are happening now. It's this attention to storytelling that elevates A Secret to its cinematic heights.
Director Cédric Klapisch (L’Auberge Espagnole, Russian Dolls) was on hand to speak about his latest film Paris, which uses a large cast to tell multiple stories from differing neighborhoods in the City of Lights. One of his stars in the ensemble, Romain Duris, makes his sixth collaboration with Klapisch. Playing a young man with a potentially fatal heart condition, Duris easily fluctuates from the sadness of his character Pierre's mortality to incredible glee shown during the happy days as a chorus dancer in a pink and white suit. Juliette Binoche displays a comfortable and natural quality as Elise, Pierre's sister who comes to live with him while awaiting word on a heart transplant. Fabrice Luchini is also captivating as a historian who attempts to woo a much younger woman by sending her anonymous cheezy text messages. Though love is in the air not a lot of new terrritory is covered in this fanciful tale. Yet Paris creates smiles and has enough charm to make any misanthrope say oui oui.
There are a dozen other titles playing at the two salles de cinema during the upcoming week. Be sure to rendezvous with popular young actor Louis Garrel (The Dreamers), director Christophe Honoré (Ma mere, Dans Paris) and other filmmakers scheduled to appear at screenings. Though I'd rather have been in Paris this past weekend, viewing French films in New York proved to be a très pleasant alternative.
My FLICK Scores: Those Who Remain = 8; A Secret = 9; Paris = 7.5
