I've been promising this post for the last six months--but now is the perfect time to blog about French Cinema! Mas oui! My brother tried to boost the stature of Latin cinema by denigrating the recent contributions of the French. To that I answer: Le cinema francais--c'est magnifique!
[This post is dedicated to the two best French speakers currently residing in the great state of Oklahoma: my nephew, Blaine Palmer, and Marie-Luce!!]
True, I will be the first to admit that the French entry into the Academy Award sweepstakes was a disappointment: Daniele Thompson's Fauteuils d'orchestre (that's Avenue Montaigne to us Americans -- because the distributor apparently doesn't trust us to want to see a movie called "Orchestra seats"). When the best attributes of a movie are the street scenes of Paris--well, then it's simply a travelogue. The charming lead performance by the slightly androgynous (I mean that in a good way!) gamine Cecile de France cannot save this far-fetched, too-cute snapshot of Parisian life. Are we supposed to care about the scary-looking theater usher who listens to bad French pop music (is there any other kind?) on her iPod during classical music concerts? I sure didn't! And what is Sydney Pollack doing in this movie!?!? He looks more uncomfortable here than he did in Eyes Wide Shut!
But this movie is The Sorrow and the Pity compared to Francis Veber's latest French 'comedy' La Doublure ("The Valet.") In spite of its clever opening credits and a great cast -- with a cameo by Karl Lagerfeld hisownself-- this movie has all the weightlessness of Pret-A-Porter, which also tried to slide by on its mise-en-scene (might as well use all my French expressions while I have the chance). It reminded me of the cute Fifties-throwback "Down with Love", only I don't think Veber was aiming for nostalgia here. Veber is clearly running out of ideas, as this movie limps to a conclusion without ever mining its comic potential, in spite of the star-studded contributions of Daniel Auteuil ("Cache"), Virginie Ledoyen, and Kristin-Scott Thomas ("The English Patient"). I say comic, yet I only got one of its in-jokes: a mistaken identification of a young hot model of today to the Eighties model Ines de-la-Fressange (I remember her!) by a clueless middle-aged character. And the contribution of that same pianist-(not model)-turned-actress, Alice Taglioni, proves once and for all that the most beautiful French model can have all the personality of your typical American model; i.e, none! Sacre bleu!
Even the latest French import to generate a buzz -- the lamely-titled "The Page Turner" -- is a major disappointment: all set-up, without a satisfying payoff! I'm not wishing the creepy young girl go all 'Fatal Attraction' on her nemesis (even though the filmmaker practically leaves a breadcrumb trail for that scenario) but to have it end with such an unsatisfying, wimpy conclusion is such a sucker-punch to the audience, you have to think the director deliberately set you up for a Hollywood ending, then pulled the rug out from under you, you silly Americans!
But I am here to praise French cinema -- not bury it! This past year we saw the triumphant return to US screens of both the restored Rules of the Game and Army of Shadows: two supreme classics by Jean Renoir and Jean-Pierre Melville, respectively. Sure, forty years is a long time between classics, but the list of promising French directors with the potential to create a classic is long: Francois Ozon, Cedric Klapisch, Andre Techine, Lucas Belvaux, Laurent Cantet, Bruno Dumont, Claire Denis, Cedric Kahn, Claude Miller, Patrice Leconte, Arnaud Desplechin, even enfant terrible Gaspar Noe. I won't deny that the most-compelling movies in French of late are not by Frenchmen: Micheal Haneke's Cache and La pianiste; Indigenes; the Dardennes brothers of Belgium. But the old timers still have some life in them: Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer (all admittedly past their prime), and my favorite, Patrice Chereau.
So I stick by my conclusion: The State of French Cinema? C'est si bon!
Well said.
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