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Paris Je T’aime

Every now and then, someone has another go: a portmanteau film featuring shorts from different directors. One memorably feeble attempt was the London-set Tube Tales – produced by Richard Jobson and others – which suggested that in 1999, at any rate, the likes of Ewan McGregor and Jude Law were not yet set for flourishing careers as filmmakers. Memory may be playing tricks, but I recall that quality was invariably in inverse proportion to the fame of the participants; contributors that were not so well-known were more likely to have earned their place on merit.

Since then, we’ve had compilation films relating to the events of 9/11 (11’9”01 – September 11), and Tickets, which depicted different groups of travellers on a European train journey. Eros featured just three short films (from Steven Soderbergh, Wong Kar Wai and Michelangelo Antonioni) addressing the theme of love and sex. Arty assemblage Destricted pushed erotic boundaries further with contributions from the likes of Matthew Barney and Larry Clark.

Which takes us to Paris Je T’aime, a collection of 18 love stories, each taking place in a different arrondissement. It is, of course, a mixed bag – how could it be otherwise? – but there are plenty of gems.

Alexander Payne (Sideways) delivers a corker, with a hilariously unsophisticated American tourist (Margo Martindale) writing a letter home. Fellow countrymen the Coen brothers also show characteristic flair with a nicely judged short featuring Steve Buscemi as a tourist who gets caught up in the dramas of a French couple on the opposite platform of the Metro. But the Americans drop the ball with Wes Craven’s Pere Lachaise cemetery-set tale featuring British thesps Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell discussing Oscar Wilde.

My favourite of the shorts is by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), which was filmed a year or two before the others, presumably as a lure to finance and an inspiration to subsequent contributors. It’s a highly stylised encapsulation of a love affair between two characters played by Natalie Portman and Melchior Beslon.

There were actually meant to be 20 films altogether, but two didn’t make the grade. Uncharitable observers might ponder exactly how bad those two rejects were if they were worse than the incoherent effort from Chris Doyle (the genius cinematographer who shot many of Wong Kar-wai’s films). Others might agree that Paris Je T’aime might have been even stronger had there been a little less Paris to aime. Whichever way you slice it, 18 films feel a lot in one sitting.

The compilation premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and may have been the inspiration for yet another collection – this time on the subject of cinema itself – which was unveiled this year to commemorate the 60th edition. With contributions from the likes of Lars Von Trier, Roman Polanski, Gus Van Sant (again), the Coens (again) and Ken Loach, Chacun Son Cinema (To Each His Cinema) may yet show the light of day in theatres over here – in festivals, at least. I believe it is already available on DVD in France.

Paris Je T’aime is out now in UK cinemas.

[Reviewed and Posted by CG]

See earlier blog review

Tell No One

French releases at UK cinemas so far this year have tended to fall firmly into the arthouse camp, with the likes of Not Here to Be Loved playing on a modest number of screens to a traditional upscale audience. French thriller Tell No One is taking an entirely different tack, with a wide release supported by a high-profile marketing campaign.

If it does succeed in attracting a broad cross-section of cinemagoers, then that audience is highly likely to be satisfied by a thoroughly entertaining thriller. Francois Cluzet plays paediatrician Dr Alex Beck, whose wife was murdered eight years ago. When he suddenly receives what appears to be an email from her, it triggers a chain of events that sees him once again becoming the prime suspect for her killing. With Alex also seemingly implicated in another murder, he must go on the run to try to clear his name before the police close in.

Tell No One is tightly plotted, full of clever twists and reversals, and contains plenty of action – especially after Alex turns to a thuggish gang member (one of his patients who is in his debt) for help. In other words, it’s more the kind of film you’d expect from the US than France, although that perspective may be a skewed one. In other words, this might not be so untypical for a French film, just untypical for the (arty) ones that usually arrive on our shores. It may be pertinent that Tell No One is actually based on a US-set novel by American crime writer Harlan Coben.

With our cinemas clogged with big-budget, effects-driven summer blockbusters like the latest in the Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic Four series, plus glossy soufflé Ocean’s Thirteen, there may be a gap for a classy, intelligent but ultimately populist thriller like this one. Either way, Tell No One is well worth checking out. Directed by Guillaume Canet, best known here as Leo DiCaprio’s rival for Virginie Ledoyen’s affections in The Beach, the film suggests the 34-year-old actor will have a promising future behind the camera. The French cinema establishment certainly seems to think so: Tell No One recently won four Cesars, including for director and lead actor, and was nominated for five more.

See earlier review from February: http://www.myfilmsblog.co.uk/blog/2007/02/tell_no_one.html

See trailer: http://www.myfilms.com/film.asp?id=21998

What others are saying:

http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/tell-no-one-review

Water

Whilst I was looking forward to seeing Water on the day of the screening, I did wonder whether its difficult subject matter would make it a bleak film and whether my mood would be left begging to be uplifted. But I am glad to say that my reservations were totally unjustified.

Set in 1930s India, Water tells the story of the 33 million widows who were forced to live in special ‘charitable’ institutions following the death of their husbands.  Rejected by mainstream society and bound by a belief system that forbade remarriage, these women were compelled to spend the rest of their lives in poverty.  They often resorted to begging and prostitution, were vulnerable to abuse and at risk of premature death.

Water is an incredibly brave film.  By that I don’t mean to patronise in the way that people sometimes do when, for example, they tell you you’re ‘brave’ for changing career direction mid-way through your working life.  This really is a brave film.  Brave because it has dared to bring the plight of so many Indian women and girls to the hearts and minds of so many people in the west.  Bravery is also due to the film’s director Deepa Mehta whose tenacity saw her through a number of death threats, and to the cast and crew who were subject to riots in protest against the shoot.  They then faced total upheaval following by the total destruction of the film set by local Hindu fundamentalists but overcame this too by eventually completing the production in Sri Lanka five years later.

Water deals with several themes including social and economic deprivation, religious exclusion and sexual exploitation.  However, they are cleverly contrasted with stunning cinematography, strong characterisation and the promise of change.

It is the charismatic Chuyia, newly widowed at eight years old, who captivates the audience.  This cute, bright spark brings charm and moments of cheer to the film that help to lighten it while retaining the realism of the story.  As Chuyia slowly begins to realise that her new home might not be as temporary as she thought, she still refuses to conform to the rules.  Her view of the world is through the eyes of a child, but that innocence is both warming and saddening because you, the viewer, fear and know, that her growth into adulthood will be a rapid and premature one.

There were a couple of minor irritating aspects about the film surrounding its love interests.  Narayan is the idealistic law graduate and Ghandi follower who falls for Kalyani.  I really wanted to like him but instead found his scenes unconvincing and rather wooden.  When tragedy strikes towards the end of the film, instead of feeling empathy for him, it was the other characters who actually moved me.  Similarly, while the striking Kalyani’s is meant to be child-like because she is after all, only in her late teens, and this contrasts with the very adult ‘work’ she is forced to do, I felt her character was a little under-developed and too accepting.  But perhaps I am being unfair and her behaviour was more representative of the way women actually were.

In any case, Water is a must-see film.  Too often, we shy away from issues of injustice that test our social conscience, especially when they are historical.  Gandhi’s movement did much to address the treatment of women and helped to bring about the changes that exist today.  However, even in modern Indian society, certain Hindus are still disapproving of remarriage.  So the struggles of the past still have some life in the present.

[Reviewed and posted by HC]

Water is out in UK cinemas on 1 June.

What others are saying:

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=161622

http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=548

Longing

Longing tells the tale of a simple man, Markus, and his life in a dreary village on the outskirts of Berlin. He  is a metalworker and volunteer fireman. His Auxiliary job takes him away for a training weekend, from his loving wife Ella and ultimately into the bed of a waitress, Rose, who works where he and his fellow fire fighters spend the evening. Though not much is revealed about that night’s mischief, even to Markus, his desire to truly comprehend becomes lost in his growing interest in this other woman.

Marcus eventually drifts away from his wife Ella and into the arms of Rose. What happens after that is not always easy to comprehend, due to the film’s restrained tone and performances. I was hoping for a good old-fashioned bit of repression to break through but perhaps the complexity of the love triangle rendered that difficult.

Dialogue, admittedly, can be over-valued in many films but in this wandering tale it would have been great to see the characters betray their inner thoughts. Symbolism is used subtlety in the film, for example, while Markus is contemplating suicide, his stroking of the equally sad-looking rabbit, lulls us before there is a sharp return to his inevitable attempt to end things. There were also clever editing effects, cutting from silence to the sound of drilling metal or the gathering of large piles of twigs. This was great for creating tension and making the audience feel ill at ease, however they were brief glimpses of life in an unexciting adventure.

Longing is certainly up there in terms of realism. Hollywood might suggest that real life can be quite boring and that’s not what most people desire from films. But what realism can do, and what Longing achieved to good affect, is to make us believe in the truth of what we are seeing.   

However, every film, be it the most thought provoking art-house production or mind-blowing escapist blockbuster, needs conflict. This is what I was truly yearning for, and felt such relief when we witness the fate that suddenly befalls Rose.

You might find it hard to bond with this film. But writer/director Valeska Grisebach’s idea to tag an interview with a group of kids on to the end, and get their thoughts on what they learnt from the film, was genuinely engaging. I later learnt that Longing is based on a true story. In this case, I imagine the real life event had more feeling than this fictional reality left me with.

Longing is out now in cinemas.

[Reviewed and posted by NH]

Control

The independent Directors’ Fortnight programme opened last night, with Anton Corbijn’s Control. It’s the Dutch-born photographer and video maker’s debut feature film, and tells the story of Ian Curtis, who fronted Manchester post-punk band Joy Division until his suicide, 27 years ago today, May 18 1980. Control focuses more on Curtis’ travails and torments than his music, although the live segments raised the hairs on the neck of this particular Joy Division fan.

Newcomer Sam Riley, who previously had a tiny role playing Fall singer Mark E Smith in 24 Hour Party People (a film that covers some of the same ground, coincidentally), knocks the ball out of the park as Curtis, the increasingly disturbed epilepsy sufferer who was unable to effectively articulate the torment he felt over his infidelity to his devoted wife Debbie, when he fell deeply in love with Belgian embassy worker/fanzine writer Annik Honore. The script is based on Deborah Curtis’ published account of these times, Touching from a Distance, as well as extensive interviews with subjects including Honore and Curtis’ fellow band members, ie New Order.

Shot strikingly in black-and-white, the film, which begins in 1973 when Ian and Debbie first met, is authentically reminiscent of the Northern kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s. Macclesfield in the 1970s wasn’t so very different. The narrative is told simply and chronologically, giving space for the actors to play the parts and hook you in. This story doesn’t need any gimmicks or tricksy structure for impact. The often hit-and-miss Samantha Morton is achingly tender as the wife who gets left behind – a subtle, finely judged performance. Toby Kebbell (Dead Man’s Shoes) is a standout as the band’s manager Rob Gretton. Alexandra Maria Lara (Downfall) is subdued in the under-written role of Honore.

A voiceover by Riley helps give the audience more access to the elusive, possibly evasive Curtis. A chat with one of the actors at the after-party last night confirmed my suspicions that this was added later during the edit – but it is a successful, unobtrusive device.

The Night of the Sunflowers

Spanish films have been getting lots of international attention lately with successes like Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.

In The Night of the Sunflowers a girl is found dead in a field of sunflowers; a cave is discovered and a scientist assesses its scientific value; an elderly man, the last inhabitant of an abandoned hill-top village, defends it against his perceived enemy; an unfaithful husband, in line to take over from his police chief father-in-law, longs to escape the village that holds him captive; and a brutal, attempted rape leads to a desperate and misguided act of vengeance.

The Night of the Sunflowers is a gripping thriller, with interlocking plots that spark off a string of events. Within one small village, life is at first constant, although its inhabitants are slowly dwindling in numbers. Invaded by travelling salesmen and city academics, the villagers’ peaceful existence is soon disrupted, and the stability that once existed is crushed as people do vile things to each other.

Mistaken identity, trapped lives, abandoned homes and old rivalries that aren’t as they seem add up to make one of the best films I have seen this year. Highly recommended.

The Night of the Sunflowers is out now in UK cinemas.

[Reviewed and posted by KC]

What others are saying:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/Film_Page/0,,2035091,00.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/film_reviews/article1776486.ece

Molière

In recent hit Becoming Jane, we see how (embellished) real events shaped a young Jane Austen to become arguably the greatest writer of romantic comedic fiction this country has ever produced. Upcoming film Molière pulls a similar trick; we see how an actor with brilliant comedic instincts, but a preference for serious tragedies that did not play to his natural strengths, went on to become France’s greatest playwright. Or at the very least we see the comedy of errors that inspired his play Tartuffe; exuberant romp Molière is much closer in tone to the playful Shakespeare In Love than the progressively more serious Becoming Jane. And all the better for it.

Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) stars as the eponymous thespian who is rescued from debtors‚ prison by Monsieur Jourdain, a rich benefactor who wishes to be coached to perform the one-act play he‚s written in the forlorn hope of wooing haughty beauty Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier, best known for her work with director François Ozon in such films as Swimming Pool and 8 Women). Since Jourdain is married, a pretext has to be invented to explain Molière’s presence in his household, and the unlikely cover selected is that he‚s a priest who‚s been hired to offer moral guidance to Jourdain’s daughters. Molière, of course, swiftly falls for Jourdain’s wife, and vice-versa.

The film, directed by Laurent Tirard, calls to mind Patrice Leconte’s popular 1996 costume romp Ridicule, and will appeal to a similar audience. If you are sufficiently familiar with Molière’s plays and can spot all the references in the frenetic on-screen activity, that’s a bonus. We couldn’t, but still enjoyed it. Molière opens in the UK on July 13, courtesy of Pathé.

La Vie En Rose

Presented in London on Thursday as the opening night of the just-wrapped mini film festival A Rendez-Vous With French Cinema, La Vie En Rose is Olivier Dahan’s biopic of legendary singer Edith Piaf. Following on from breakout US hits Ray and Walk The Line, the time might be judged propitious for a warts-and-all melodrama about the wrong-side-of-the-tracks singer who grew up in a brothel, suffered temporary blindness as a child, and went on to grow a dependency on the morphine that was prescribed to her after a car crash.

Anchoring the film is a truly impressive performance by Marion Cotillard (A Good Year), who plays Piaf from a teenager hustling for coins on the pavement to an arthritic grouch who died of cancer in 1963, evidently much more decrepit than her 48 years would suggest.

Supporting Cotillard is a large ensemble cast, including Gerard Depardieu as the nightclub owner who discovered her, Louis Leplée. So dominant is her personality, and so discursive Dahan’s narrative, few of the subsidiary characters make too strong an impression. Exceptions are Piaf’s one true love, boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), and prostitute Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner), who early on becomes Edith’s surrogate mother and is devastated when the child’s circus contortionist father shows up to reclaim her. Titine, however, is an invented character.

The film shuttles back and forth in time, without an abundance of date captions, thus commanding full engagement from audiences that want to keep up. Judging by reviews following the film’s Berlin Film Festival premiere in February (Variety gave it a rave), as well as healthy box-office receipts in territories where it’s already playing, the trick seems to have worked. La Vie en Rose opens in the UK on June 22, distributed by Icon Pictures.

Trailer on YouTube:

What others are saying:
http://www.cinemattraction.com/
http://www.cinematical.com/2007/02/08/berlinale-review-la-vie-en-rose/

Water

Of the five Foreign Language Oscar nominees, Pan’s Labyrinth and After The Wedding have already been released. The French-Algerian Days Of Glory follows next, at the end of this month, and then Germany’s The Lives Of Others (which won the Academy Award) in April. The fifth nominee, Water, will be the last to get a cinema release in the UK; it opens here June 1.

Water is Indian-born film-maker Deepa Mehta’s third instalment in her trilogy of the elements, following the award-winning Fire and Earth. Set in 1938, nine years before India won independence from British colonial rule, the film focuses on the treatment of widows in traditional Indian society: according to a strict interpretation of religious scripture, at that time they were not permitted to remarry, but were instead consigned to a life of redundant exile in special widows’ homes. And since some girls were married off at absurdly young ages – the chief widow protagonist of Water is just seven – the unlucky ones could have their whole lives thrown away by the untimely death of a husband.

In Mehta’s film, Gandhi is glimpsed as a then-rising harbinger of political and social change that would put human rights ahead of narrow religious teachings – and this portent of progress gives the film an inspirational ingredient that helps soften the bleaker, disturbing narrative elements. So too do Mehta’s pretty compositions and musical montages. Whether these factors will be enough to help Water reach a crossover UK audience – Monsoon Wedding it ain’t – remains to be seen.

What others are saying:
http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2006/05/water_review.html
http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/ddb5490109a79f598625623d0015f1e4/c25c7b82458bd64b8825715e0011e59d?OpenDocument

Paris Je T’aime

It premiered in Cannes last May, but it won’t arrive in UK cinemas until June 2007: Paris, Je T’aime, the portmanteau film celebrating all 20 of the French capital’s arrondissements. Twenty directors have each made a short film, adding up to two hours of wildly contrasting takes on the city whose numbered districts spiral out from the centre. It is, of course, a hit-and-miss affair: the debate for audiences and critics being how many hits and misses, and which ones. The consensus has so far been thumbs aloft for the Coen Brothers’ segment, featuring Steve Buscemi as a paranoid American tourist on the platform of a Metro station, and Tom Tykwer’s (Perfume) rapidly edited love story starring Natalie Portman and Melchior Beslon (Tykwer’s earlier The Princess And The Warrior). Other directors include Gus Van Sant, Alexander Payne (Sideways), Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) and celebrated director of photography Chris Doyle (famous for his work with Kar Wai Wong).

The great thing about these projects is that if you’re not enjoying one of the films, you are only a few minutes away from the next one, which hopefully you will. Purists will argue that cinema is the only environment to enjoy Paris Je T’aime as a truly immersive experience, while others will wonder if it wouldn’t hurt to watch the 10 best segments on DVD.