French Film Festival

We returned to Wellington to find the French Film Festival in full swing. We made our selections from the programme and set about going to see some of them. They’re mostly shown at the smaller cinemas in the city – the three Lighthouses and Penthouse, with some at The Embassy. For some reason our local, the Roxy, doesn’t participate. Anyway, here’s what we saw:

The Stranger (L’Étranger): based on the novel by Albert Camus. I say “based on” (I‘ve never read it), but according to Nicola, it was a pretty faithful transliteration of the novel. Filmed entirely in black and white, it’s the kind of film that wins plaudits and awards in France (it did) and is roundly ignored by the rest of the world. Coming in at over two hours, the length of the film reflects the main character’s ennui and disengagement from the world. By the end, I knew how he felt.

The Musicians (Les Musiciens): A wealthy heiress, Astrid, has tracked down the final instrument of a quartet made by Stradivarius. She already owns the two violins and the viola, and acquires the cello at auction for £10.5 million (plus taxes). She then assembles a quartet of renowned musicians to play a previously-unheard piece which her late father had commissioned from a contemporary composer, specifically to be played when the last instrument was found. Naturally, all the musicians and the composer hate each other, or have unresolved past issues with each other and the piece itself. Astrid attempts to bring all this together with a looming deadline for the one, live, performance and recording of the piece. Quietly comedic in places, it comes to a predictably heartwarming end.

Leave One Day (Partir Un Jour): The winner of TV’s Top Chef has 14 days until her restaurant opens in Paris. She finds out she’s pregnant, and that her father has had a heart attack (his third) so goes to visit her parents in the rural truck-stop town where she grew up. Cue unresolved past boyfriends, family arguments, all the usual “city girl returns to country town” stuff. Inexplicably, everyone bursts into song at regular intervals. Most of the people in it are annoying.

De Gaulle: Tilting Iron (L’Âge De Fer): A big-budget, 2½ hour monstrosity about De Gaulle. And this is only Part 1! It follows De Gaulle’s early career, setbacks and triumphs, his adventures in Africa and difficulties being taken seriously by the British establishment during the Second Word War. The main set-piece is the battle of Bir Hakeim, which, according to the film was “won” exclusively by the Free French (it wasn’t). Simon Russell Beale is typecast as Winston Churchill for the third time in his career – presumably the money’s good. Look out for Part 2 later this year!

A Nun In the City (Doux Jésus): A nun from an enclosed nunnery has her health check-up and incurs a bang to the head, setting off a chain reaction which leads her to abandon the nunnery and go in search of a long-lost love, currently wanted for armed robbery. Along the way she discovers what’s been going on in the outside world for the last 20 years, talks to God, and gets involved in a police raid and a car chase. Yes, it’s a comedy.

Side note: Why change the name of the film? “Sweet Jesus!” is a perfectly good name for a film, and is uttered many times throughout by different characters.

Maigret And The Dead Lover (Maigret Et Le Mort Amoureux): Maigret is one of those subjects which must be approached with hushed reverence, lest you incur the wrath of the French nation. Whilst this has been updated to the 21^st century, very little of it impinges on the plot – there’s one mobile phone (2001 vintage) and a laptop used by a policeman, but the main characters don’t use them; they dress in old clothes, smoke pipes and cigars etc. At the end of the film Maigret comes up with a completely different explanation of events to the official version, but no evidence is offered, nor is his thought process to arrive there shown. Not sure what the point of that is.

The Richest Woman In The World (La Femme La Plus Riche Du Monde): This is a lightly fictionalised telling of the true story, the Bettencourt Affair, involving the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune. The names have been changed (Égoïste magazine becomes “Selfish” magazine), presumably due to lawyers etc. It’s largely about rich people behaving badly. There’s some French politics which extend back to WW2, who said what about Jewish people at the time. Meanwhile, the heiress is making very chaste whoopee with a flamboyant photographer, and spending the kids’ inheritance, much to everyone’s displeasure. According to the blurb it has “several twists too good to spoil”. Spoiler alert: no it doesn’t. It all gets settled out of court, and ends not with a bang but a whimper.

So that’s all the French films for the year. Some of them held my attention for a short while, but there wasn’t anything outstanding that I’d recommend from this year’s selections. One I wanted to see but missed was Redress– maybe it’ll come out on general release later. OK, when does the New Zealand International Film Festival start?