Wednesday, February 27, 2019
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA 2019
THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
AND UNIFRANCE
PRESENT
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA
FEBRUARY 28 – MARCH 10
Opening Night
Pierre Salvadori’s The Trouble with You,
nominated for nine César Awards
The RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA is always one of my favorite film events of the year.
Each year there seems to be some idea, theme, mood, or special emphasis. This year there appears to be an emphasis on women directors, and a certain unease about the state of the world.
Several actors and directors in this year's event have director or appeared in films seen here earlier. One returning director, Eva Husson, and one returning actor, Melvil Poupaud, visited New York in person two years ago, and I had the opportunity to speak with them. Here are my interviews with them from that visit. (See the links, below.)
Here is the Festival’s announcement of the RENDEZ-VOUS:
The 24th edition of the annual French cinema showcase features new work from Bruno Dumont, Mia Hansen-Løve, Quentin Dupieux, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, and more
The 2019 Opening Night selection is the New York premiere of The Trouble with You, the latest comic whirlwind from Rendez-Vous alum Pierre Salvadori (In the Courtyard), just nominated for nine César Awards including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and all four acting categories. A standout of the 2018 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, this hilarious yet tender film stars Adèle Haenel as a woman coping with the recent loss of her husband, and features supporting performances by Audrey Tautou, Vincent Elbaz, and Damien Bonnard.
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| THE TROUBLE WITH YOU |
Other highlight's of this year's lineup include...
- Louis-Julien Petit’s Invisibles, a spirited, character-driven social-realist drama about a daytime shelter for homeless women;
- Sophia Antipolis, Virgil Vernier’s richly textured and singularly political follow-up to his acclaimed debut feature Mercuriales;
- FIDMarseille Grand Prix winner The Time of the Pirates, the first fiction feature from director Gaël Lépingle;
- doctor-cum-director Thomas Lilti’s The Freshmen, an affectionate tale of two medical-school freshmen drawn from Lilti’s own experiences;
- Amanda, Mikhaël Hers’s poignant story of trauma and resilience;
- and Emmanuel Mouret’s historical costume drama The Art of Seduction, inspired by Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist.
- Actors Laurent Lafitte and Gilles Lellouche are each involved with two films in the festival; Lafitte (Elle) appears in Patricia Mazuy’s long-awaited fifth feature Paul Sanchez Is Back! and Sébastien Marnier’s sophomore thriller School’s Out,
- while Lellouche stars in Jeanne Herry’s adoption drama In Safe Hands and directs Guillaume Canet and Mathieu Amalric in the Full Monty–esque Sink or Swim.
This year’s lineup will showcase a number of films directed by women, including
- Mia Hansen-Løve’s enchanting character study Maya,
- Sophie Fillières’s charming and lightly fantastical When Margaux Meets Margaux,
- Rendez-Vous alum Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s The Summer House,
- and two stories of female soldiers: Hélène Fillières’s Raising Colors and Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun.
The festival will also feature new work from Rendez-Vous favorites, including
- Bruno Dumont’s absurdist L’il Quinquin sequel Coincoin and the Extra-Humans
- and the ever-unpredictable Quentin Dupieux’s Keep an Eye Out!.
Additionally, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema will feature several directorial debuts, including
- Meteorites, Romain Laguna’s atmospheric story of a teenager’s exploratory and momentous summer of self-discovery;
- Whatever Happened to My Revolution, directed by and starring Judith Davis as an idealistic urban planner struggling to reconcile her radical activist values with her bourgeois relatives;
- and Sarah Marx’s The Truk, which evokes the Dardennes in its stinging portrayal of the bitter casualties of class disparity.
This year, Russell Banks will be UniFrance’s American ambassador for Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. A writer and poet known for his novels The Sweet Hereafter, Cloudsplitter, and Continental Drift, Banks will present a special screening of François Truffaut’s seminal French New Wave film The 400 Blows and participate in a free talk on French cinema with writer and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier.
The 2019 festival will place a spotlight on young people, with educational screenings of The 400 Blows and Invisibles. In conjunction, the festival is holding a contest for cinephiles under 30: interested writers can submit a review of a Rendez-Vous film of their choice, and the best critique will win a round-trip flight to Paris and a free one-year subscription to TV5MONDE.
Visit filmlinc.org for more information in the coming weeks.
Tickets go on sale Friday, February 8, with early access for Film Society members beginning Monday, February 4. Tickets are $17; $12 for members, students, seniors, and persons with disabilities; Opening Night tickets are $25; $20 for members and students. Learn more at filmlinc.org.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films screen digitally in the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th St.) unless otherwise noted.
Opening Night
The Trouble with You / En liberté!
Pierre Salvadori, France, 2018, 108m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A heartfelt performance from Adèle Haenel anchors the latest comic whirlwind from Pierre Salvadori, whose In the Courtyard played at Rendez-Vous in 2015. Haenel’s Yvonne is coping with the recent loss of her husband (Vincent Elbaz), a fellow police investigator and something of a folk hero in their small Riviera town. After she discovers that her partner’s golden reputation is totally fabricated, with one faux heist resulting in the jailing of an innocent jeweler (Pio Marmaï), Yvonne strives to salvage this man’s fate—and in the process tumbles through slapsticky fisticuffs and romantic intrigue. With supporting turns from Audrey Tautou and Damien Bonnard (Staying Vertical), this brilliantly written Cannes Directors’ Fortnight standout serves up a hilarious yet tender story of integrity and redemption. Nominated for nine César Awards including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and all four acting categories.
Preceded by:
Les Indes galantes
Clément Cogitore, France, 2018, 5m
At the Paris Opera, members of three Krump street-dancing collectives collaborate to perform an excerpt from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ballet in this electrifying short documentary from director Clément Cogitore and The Trouble with You renowned producer Philippe Martin.
Thursday, February 28, 6:30pm (Introduction by Pierre Salvadori and Pio Marmaï)
Thursday, February 28, 9:00pm (Introduction by Pierre Salvadori and Pio Marmaï)
The 400 Blows / Les Quatre cents coups
François Truffaut, France, 1959, 99m
French with English subtitles
When film critic François Truffaut was challenged to put into practice what he’d been preaching, he chose to tell the story of a 13-year-old wild child in Paris whose adventures were based on his own adolescence. Rejected or rebuffed by school, family, and community, young Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) sets out on his own, propelled toward one of the most famous of all movie endings: the legendary snapshot of a childhood on the brink. The 400 Blows marked the birth of Jean-Pierre Léaud as crown prince of the French New Wave, and of Truffaut as its runaway auteur.
Saturday, March 2, 1:00pm (Introduction by Russell Banks and Serge Toubiana)
Amanda
Mikhaël Hers, France, 2018, 107m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Vincent Lacoste leads Mikhaël Hers’s poignant new feature about trauma and its aftershocks. At first, David (Lacoste) is just beginning to figure out life in his early twenties, helping his sister (Ophélia Kolb) raise her 7-year-old daughter, Amanda (Isaure Multrier), and gently initiating a romance with a pianist (Stacy Martin, Nymphomaniac). This era of placidity is brutally ruptured, and a grief-stricken David must assume new responsibility for Amanda as a potential guardian. With an understated directorial touch, Hers creates a touching story of resilience deepened by delicately nuanced performances. Nominated for César Awards for Best Actor and Original Score.
Saturday, March 2, 6:00pm (Q&A with Mikhaël Hers)
Saturday, March 9, 1:30pm
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| THE ART OF SEDUCTION |
The Art of Seduction / Mademoiselle de Joncquières
Emmanuel Mouret, France, 2018, 110m
French with English subtitles
In Emmanuel Mouret's witty twist on Denis Diderot’s 18th-century novel Jacques the Fatalist, also the inspiration for Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, passion dissipates into jealousy and hardens into vengeance. The widowed Madame de La Pommeraye (Cécile de France) prides herself on maintaining a rational distance from matters of the heart, but against her better judgment, she gives in to a persistent and charming Marquis (Edouard Baer). When the affair loses its glow and the Marquis slips back into his libertine lifestyle, the Madame concocts an elaborate revenge plot, and finds two susceptible pawns in a mother and daughter duo (Alice Isaaz and Natalia Dontcheva) whose own social standing was sabotaged by a dishonest husband. Of a deliciously calculating piece with Dangerous Liaisons, The Art of Seduction weds a critique of privilege to an enthralling tale of deception. Nominated for six César Awards including Best Actress, Actor, Screenplay, Cinematography, and Costumes.
Friday, March 1, 9:00pm (Q&A with Emmanuel Mouret)
Monday, March 4, 4:00pm
Coincoin and the Extra-Humans
Bruno Dumont, France, 2018, 200m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Bruno Dumont’s sequel to 2014’s Li’l Quinquin, which signified his bold break from social realism into madcap experimentalism, revisits its ragtag characters in a new absurdist epic that reckons with xenophobia in northern France. As gobs of ectoplasmic gunk fall from the sky without warning, the now-teenaged Coincoin must again evade the spluttering police captain Van der Weyden and his deputy Carpentier as they zoom through sparse pastoral vistas, on the hunt for clues. Although they’re utterly ill-equipped to connect these splats to the sudden materialization of identical twins around town, their moments of prophetic lucidity are as surprising as they are revealing. Across this expansive canvas, Coincoin and the Extra-Humans channels Jacques Tati, Antonin Artaud, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers into a deadpan fever dream, wholly singular and undeniably Dumont.
Sunday, March 3, 1:00pm (Q&A with Bruno Dumont)
The Freshmen / Première année
Thomas Lilti, France, 2018, 92m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Thomas Lilti, whose hospital drama Hippocrates played Rendez-Vous in 2015, draws upon his experience as a doctor once again for this affectionate tale of two medical-school freshmen. Antoine (Vincent Lacoste) is beginning his third attempt at the first year, which culminates in a cutthroat entrance exam before one can even opt into the medical concentration. When classes commence, he meets Benjamin (William Lebghil), an endearingly aloof new student whose upbringing in a medical family helps him intuitively grasp course concepts. As the two become fast friends and study partners, they embark on a year that pits academic automatism against the emotional highs and lows of discovering one’s calling in life. Nominated for a Best New Actor César Award.
Thursday, March 7, 9:00pm
Saturday, March 9, 3:45pm
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| GIRLS OF THE SUN |
Girls of the Sun / Les Filles du soleil
Eva Husson, France/Belgium/Georgia/Switzerland, 2018, 111m
English, French, Kurdish, and Arabic with English subtitles
An unshakable Golshifteh Farahani, as Bahar, the commander of an all-female unit of resistance fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan, holds the center of Girls of the Sun. Bahar’s squadron is comprised entirely of former captives who survived a massacre in Corduene, and their rage to fight stems from the grief of witnessing the slaughter of their loved ones. A French war journalist (Emmanuelle Bercot) assigned to cover ISIS’s invasion of Mount Sinjar is struck by Bahar’s adamant rejections of her fellow male soldiers’ more cautious strategies; instead, she suggests working together to pull off a riskier, but total, infiltration of the enemy headquarters. Drawing from true events, Eva Husson takes an uncompromising, female-driven look at the collective and individual strength it takes to resist oppression.
Friday, March 1, 1:30pm
Sunday, March 3, 8:30pm (Q&A with Eva Husson)
In Safe Hands / Pupille
Jeanne Herry, France/Belgium, 2018, 109m
French with English subtitles
Jeanne Herry crafts a story stemming from a delicate two-and-a-half-month state of limbo for a newborn child, Théo, who becomes a ward of the state after his mother gives him up for adoption at birth. In Safe Hands choreographs parallel strands of action: the search for potential parents undertaken by the social workers managing Théo’s case (Sandrine Kiberlain and Clotilde Mollet), the care and vigilance required for Théo’s foster father (Gilles Lellouche) to properly nurture him in the interim, and the nine-year journey of adoption applications and fractured marriage embarked upon by a possible mother (Élodie Bouchez). Within this institutional balancing act, Henry’s characters swing between intense determination, uncertainty, and, ultimately, joy: all par for the course while seeking the proper equilibrium for a person’s life to begin. Nominated for seven César Awards including Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay.
Monday, March 4, 6:15pm (Q&A with Élodie Bouchez)
Invisibles / Les Invisibles
Louis-Julien Petit, France, 2018, 102m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
With pathos and institutional nuance, Louis-Julien Petit’s third social-realist drama transforms its source nonfiction text by Claire Lajeunie into a spirited ensemble piece about a daytime shelter for homeless women. Following the municipal government’s decision to shut down the institution, largely due to the optics of meager reintegration statistics, the shelter’s conscientious all-female staff launches into action to help secure employment for as many women as possible. However, their increasingly assertive coaching sessions compel the social workers to confront the ways in which they, too, might be focusing more on printed résumés than people. In this buoyant character-driven study indebted to Stephen Frears and Ken Loach, Petit lays bare the broken and oppressive systems plaguing Paris’s approach to homelessness, while also emphasizing the social element of social work.
Thursday, March 7, 6:15pm
Friday, March 8, 1:30pm
Keep an Eye Out! / Au poste!
Quentin Dupieux, France, 2018, 73m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Tires and TVs have come to life—and thirsted for blood—in two of Quentin Dupieux’s earlier features, Rubber and Reality (Rendez-Vous 2015) respectively. With Keep an Eye Out!, the ever-unpredictable filmmaker and Brainfeeder-signed electronic musician returns with a seemingly intimately scaled bottle narrative: a minutiae-obsessed police inspector (a perfectly cast Benoît Poelvoorde, Man Bites Dog) bumbles and doubles back through the most agonizing interrogation of all time, much to the chagrin of the interviewee (Grégoire Ludig), who stumbled upon a dead body in front of his apartment building. When Poelvoorde’s inspector momentarily steps outside and leaves an anxious one-eyed officer (Marc Fraize) in charge, the story morphs into something more off-kilter. As one might expect from Dupieux, this is but one of several surprises in a film that is constantly in mesmerizing and darkly comedic flux.
Tuesday, March 5, 8:15pm
Sunday, March 10, 7:45pm
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| MAYA |
Maya
Mia Hansen-Løve, France/Germany, 2018, 107m
English and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Across a remarkably contemplative range of work—including Goodbye First Love, Eden, and Things to Come—Mia Hansen-Løve has conjured visceral points of entry into philosophical themes; in Maya, she thoughtfully probes the private intricacies of rehabilitation. Four months after he was taken hostage in Syria, war journalist Gabriel (Roman Kolinka, Things to Come) returns home to France. Still coping internally with his trauma, Gabriel unmoors himself from now-alienating familiar faces and decamps to India, where he spent his childhood. While staying at his family’s old house in Goa, he strikes up a rapport with his godfather’s daughter, Maya (Aarshi Banerjee), who, feeling out of place, recently dropped out of school in London. As the two bond over their mutual restlessness, Hansen-Løve gently questions whether Gabriel’s self-imposed, ever-moving isolation truly constitutes healing. With Alex Descas and Johanna ter Steege.
Wednesday, March 6, 6:00pm (Q&A with Mia Hansen-Løve)
Thursday, March 7, 2:00pm
Meteorites / Les Méteorites
Romain Laguna, France, 2018, 85m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
After 16-year-old Nina (Zéa Duprez) sees a meteorite fall from the sky, she can’t find any physical evidence to prove what she witnessed. Instead, the mysterious event catalyzes an exploratory and quietly momentous summer, which sets the scene for Romain Laguna’s atmospheric first feature. Adrift after dropping out of school, Nina pursues love and lust with Morad (Billal Agab), her best friend’s older brother, who hails from an Algerian family in their otherwise culturally homogeneous village in the south of France. As their time passes, Nina senses a slight rift between the personal and shared stakes of their relationship, but the journey emerges as one of crucial self-discovery. Laguna crafts an evocative and tactile portrait of the hunger for experience that shapes our teenage years, and Duprez’s remarkably assured performance introduces a poised new talent.
Thursday, March 7, 4:15pm
Sunday, March 10, 3:30pm
Paul Sanchez Is Back! / Paul Sanchez est revenu!
Patricia Mazuy, France, 2018, 110m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The police are reticent to believe that the notorious murderer Paul Sanchez is, indeed, back 10 years after he vanished without a trace. Yet adventure-hungry junior-officer Marion (César-winner Zita Hanrot, Fatima) can’t help obsessing over bread crumbs of hearsay, especially once a local reporter (Idir Chender, Occidental) begins receiving mysterious e-mails supposedly sent by Sanchez himself. Also starring Elle’s Laurent Lafitte, this long-awaited fifth feature from Patricia Mazuy (The King’s Daughters) spins a gripping caper with ample commentary on sensationalistic media narratives—but far from prosaic, it’s also an adrenaline rush of the imagination propelled by a percussive original score from John Cale.
Friday, March 8, 8:30pm
Saturday, March 9, 5:45pm
Raising Colors / Volontaire
Hélène Fillières, France, 2018, 100m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Much to the chagrin of her pacifist family, Sorbonne-educated Laure Baer (Diane Rouxel) ends up taking the first job offer she receives: an administrative position in the French Navy. As training begins, Laure assumes her post supporting the austere and withdrawn Commander Rivière (Lambert Wilson), she is surprised by how resonant she finds the codes of honor and discipline that structure military life. When her curiosity is piqued by the possibility of trying out for special ops, she commits herself to the challenge despite sexist dismissals of her capabilities, and strives to prove herself to the Chief Training Officer (Alex Descas). The second feature-film outing by actress Hélène Fillières (Tied) as a director captures a palpable electricity within the formality of ceremony, inextricable from a search for self.
Friday, March 1, 4:00pm
Sunday, March 3, 5:45pm (Q&A with Hélène Fillières)
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| SCHOOL'S OUT |
School’s Out / L’Heure de la sortie
Sébastien Marnier, France, 2018, 103m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
In his Venice-selected sophomore thriller, Sébastien Marnier (Faultless, Rendez-Vous 2017) sets his sights on a chilly class of gifted and talented students in the French countryside. After their teacher commits suicide during an exam, Pierre Hoffman (Laurent Lafitte, Elle) is called in as a long-term substitute. Expecting a class collectively reeling from this traumatic shock, Pierre is surprised to encounter a group of seemingly affectless mid-teens, mostly concerned with accelerating at an appropriate pace through their advanced-level courses. His sense that something is askew only grows more acute when he notices a strange turn-the-other-cheek approach to physical violence—both from the students and his fellow faculty members. As Pierre spirals further into a wormhole that references both J.G. Ballard and Patti Smith, Marnier maintains a sense of creeping unease that expands into a chilling capitalist critique.
Friday, March 8, 3:45pm
Saturday, March 9, 8:30pm (Q&A with Sébastien Marnier)
Sink or Swim / Le grand bain
Gilles Lellouche, Belgium/France, 2018, 122m
French and Sinhalese with English subtitles
With buoyant energy, Gilles Lellouche choreographs and directs a stellar ensemble in pursuit of grace and discarded dreams—that is, a group of varyingly coordinated middle-aged men who find an outlet in synchronized swimming. Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric, soulful yet understated) is the newbie to the group, having signed up on a whim to take his mind off of his unemployment and depression. As he gets to know his fellow swimmers, played by Guillaume Canet, Benoît Poelvoorde, Jean-Hugues Anglade, and Philippe Katerine, he uncovers shared frustrations and disappointments, but also hope in a hobby that’s less about skill than teamwork. After a year of awkward and charmingly comedic practice sessions, Bertrand’s proposal that his motley crew train for the world championships fuels their conviction to prove that time has not passed them by. Nominated for 10 César Awards including Best Film, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Cinematography.
Saturday, March 2, 8:45pm
Monday, March 4, 9:00pm
Film Comment Presents:
Sophia Antipolis
Virgil Vernier, France, 2018, 98m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Virgil Vernier's follow-up to his acclaimed debut feature, Mercuriales (ND/NF 2015), takes stock of the state of the French socioeconomic order as embodied by the eponymous, dystopian business park and an eclectic ensemble of cult members, militiamen, and more. Once again working in richly textured Super 16mm, Vernier moves episodically from one character to another, tracking their movements, thoughts, and desires in the aftermath of the discovery of a young girl’s body, apparently burned alive, in one of the park's factories. A group portrait of disappointment, disillusionment, and disaffection in a veritable hothouse of late capitalism, Sophia Antipolisis a work as singularly political as it is sophisticatedly drawn.
Tuesday, March 5, 4:00pm
Sunday, March 10, 5:30pm
The Summer House / Les Estivants
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, France/Italy, 2018, 122m
French with English subtitles
U.S Premiere
The inherent slippage between reality and narrative becomes a power unto itself in Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s new feature. During an annual summer vacation to the family villa on the French Riviera, filmmaker Anna (Bruni Tedeschi) conceals a sudden split from her husband from her relatives and their spouses, all of whom are more volatile than usual while coping with the death of her brother. Palpably in her own head while interacting with her sister (Valeria Golino), her daughter (real-life daughter Oumy Bruni Garrel), and her screenwriting partner (real-life co-writer Noémie Lvovsky), Anna also prepares a film based on this recent loss, which is received coldly by her family. Meanwhile, the domestic staff (including Yolande Moreau and François Négret) negotiates for better pay and work conditions with a family they find increasingly self-absorbed. Like Bruni Tedeschi’s A Castle in Italy (2013), The Summer House invites autobiographical readings while also complicating the idea of art as personal exorcism.
Tuesday, March 5, 1:30pm
Friday, March 8, 6:00pm
The Time of the Pirates / Seuls les pirates
Gaël Lépingle, France, 2018, 89m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Winner of the Grand Prix in the French competition at FIDMarseille, The Time of the Pirates boasts a structure that is at first vignette-based and patchwork before it quickly settles on a focal thread: the story of Géro, the spunky owner of a community theater troupe in the Loire Valley. As the local government threatens to demolish his house and theater to make way for public housing, the anarchy-loving actor, undeterred after losing his voice from his battle with cancer, plots an idiosyncratic defense against the forces that threaten to drain the life from both of his homes. Gaël Lépingle (Julien) rounds out this earnest and vibrant mosaic of quotidian resistance with Géro’s aspiring-playwright nephew Léo and a cohort of like-minded friends and refugees.
Tuesday, March 5, 6:15pm
Wednesday, March 6, 2:00pm
The Truk
Sarah Marx, France/Ukraine, 2018, 83m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
After being released early from prison, Ulysse (Sandor Funtek, Blue Is the Warmest Color) must take over as the primary caregiver for his mother (devastatingly fleshed out by Sandrine Bonnaire), who is undergoing treatment for severe depression. Confronted by overwhelming debts and health-care costs, Ulysse reconnects with an old friend who plans to covertly sell ketamine from a food truck at an EDM festival. As Sarah Marx widens the range of parties involved in this drug ring, she emphasizes the broader contexts that give rise to their increasingly cutthroat desperation, throwing Ulysse’s precarious solution into jeopardy. The film’s handheld camerawork grounds each scene in a fragile immediacy evoking the Dardennes in this stinging debut feature about the bitter casualties of class disparity.
Wednesday, March 6, 4:00pm
Sunday, March 10, 1:30p
When Margaux Meets Margaux / La Belle et la belle
Sophie Fillières, France, 2018, 97m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
This irresistible fantastical tale from Sophie Fillières (If You Don’t, I Will, Rendez-Vous 2014) centers on a chance meeting between an impulsive but aimless twentysomething named Margaux (Fillières’s daughter Agathe Bonitzer, Right Here Right Now) and a disenchanted fortysomething who’s not only coincidentally named Margaux (Sandrine Kiberlain, Tip Top)… but also is Margaux. Accurately pulling from her past self’s proclivities, social circles, and future life events, the wiser Margaux revisits her memories and regrets to give herself retroactive advice and, possibly, a way to start over, including a stirring romance with a handsome suitor (Melvil Poupaud). From this surreal premise, Fillières crafts a lovingly philosophical ode to our personal paths and stumbles through love and life.
Friday, March 1, 6:15pm (Q&A with Sophie Fillières)
Wednesday, March 6, 8:45pm
Whatever Happened to My Revolution / Tout ce qu'il me reste de la révolution
Judith Davis, France, 2018, 88m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Angèle’s parents first fell in love on the front lines of Maoist protests; now they are separated, and Angèle, an idealistic urban planner, struggles with the compromises her family has made in exchange for comfortable lives. Actress Judith Davis’s playful and passionate feature directorial debut follows Angèle, played by Davis herself, into a contemporary Paris that missed the revolutionary memo, long after the movements sparked by May ’68 have faded into history. Fueled by a bleeding activist heart that sometimes backs her into a corner, Angèle strives to reconcile her radical values with relatives who are trending more and more bourgeois. And faced with the opportunity to reconnect with her estranged mother (Mireille Perrier, J’entends plus la guitare), who has retreated from the dreams that Angèle is now pursuing, she locates the strength of her convictions in her dedication to meaningful interpersonal connection.
Saturday, March 2, 3:30pm (Q&A with Judith Davis)
Monday, March 4, 1:30pm
And here are the organizations that make this all possible!
UNIFRANCE
For 70 years, UniFrance has been using its experience of the international marketplace to support French cinema worldwide. UniFrance is based in Paris and also has representatives in New York, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo. Its membership brings together around 1,000 French producers, filmmaking talents, agents, and sales companies, which are working together to promote French film among foreign audiences, industry executives, and media.
UniFrance receives generous, year-round support from CNC, the French Ministry of Culture, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Institut français, PROCIREP, Alliance Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, Lacoste, Air France, and TitraFilm. The 24th edition of Rendez-vous with French Cinema benefits from the support of CNC, the French Ministry of Culture, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, PROCIREP, Alliance Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, Lacoste, TV5 Monde, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Sacem, and The ENGIE Foundation. For more information, visit en.unifrance.org
FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
The Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema. The only branch of the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center to shine a light on the everlasting yet evolving importance of the moving image, this nonprofit organization was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international film. Via year-round programming and discussions; its annual New York Film Festival; and its publications, including Film Comment, the U.S.’s premier magazine about films and film culture, the Film Society endeavors to make the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broader audience, as well as to ensure that it will remain an essential art form for years to come.
The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Shutterstock, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.
LINKS
EVA HUSSON
3D version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIP32CxGvyA
(Although these are essentially the same interview, the 3D version was marked for only age appropriate viewers – perhaps because of the subject matter of the film, THE BANG GANG.)
MELVIL POUPAUD
2D 360 VERSION - https://youtu.be/_7QQeAewdI8
Labels: Bertrand Tavernier, Eva Husson, FilmLinc, Melvil Poupaud, Mia Hansen-Love, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Trouble With You, Unifrance
Friday, March 11, 2016
Review and interview: BANG GANG - A Modern Love Story
BANG GANG
A MODERN LOVE STORY
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH FILMS 2016
FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
BANG GANG is is the name that a group of high school kids in a coastal resort town in France give themselves to mark their drug and sex parties.
Eva Husson, a French director making her first feature, tells this story dispassionately, neither casting aspersions on the students, nor celebrating them, but rather treating it as "a modern love story."
The film is well shot, nice looking, clearly told, and the acting by all the principals (see cast below) is terrific. You are sure to see much more of these actors in future films.
I talked with director Eva Husson about the film. Here is a part of our conversation.
The video can be watched as a "standard, normal" 2D video (left) or watched in 3D (right) using either Google Cardboard or Gear VR. (Other TV or VR systems capable of watching 3D YouTube videos may also be used.)
Lorenzo Lefebvre and Marilyn Lima
CAST
Alex - Finnegan Oldfield
George - Marilyn Lima
Laetitia - Daisy Broom
Gabriel - Lorenzo Lefebvre
Nikita - Fred Hotier
CREW
Director - Eva Husson
Screenwriter- Eva Husson
Cinematographer - Mattias Troelstrup
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH FILMS 2016
Complete Program
Labels: A Modern Love Story, Bang Gang, Eva Husson, film society of lincoln center, Lorenzo Lefebvre, Marilym Lima, QPORIT, Quick Previews Of Random Interesting Things, Rendez-Vous With French Films
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Preview/Recap: 21ST RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA - MARCH 3-13, 2016
THE FILM SOCIETY OF
LINCOLN CENTER
UNIFRANCE
21ST RENDEZ-VOUS WITH
FRENCH CINEMA
MARCH 3-13, 2016
Opening Night
The New York Premiere of Guillaume Nicloux’s
Valley of Love
starring Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu
Closing Night
Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Palme d’Or–winning
Dheepan
In person appearances include...
Isabelle Huppert, Nicloux,
Nabil Ayouch, Emmanuelle Bercot, Julie Delpy,
Emmanuel Finkiel, Louis
Garrel, Gregoire Hetzel,
Eva Husson, Maïwenn, Nicolas Pariser,
Melvil Poupaud,
Rudi Rosenberg, Alice Winocour,
and more
FILM DESCRIPTIONS & SCREENING
SCHEDULE
Valley of Love
Guillaume Nicloux, France/Belgium, 2015, DCP, 92m
English and French with English subtitles
Thursday, March 3, 6:00pm
Opening Night
(Intro only by Isabelle Huppert and Guillaume
Nicloux)
Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu
VALLEY OF LOVE
VALLEY OF LOVE
Guillaume Nicloux’s sui generis, elegiac road movie puts a meta twist on a familiar setup: titans Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert star as famous French actors Gérard and Isabelle, a long-divorced couple whose son Michael has committed suicide six months prior to their Californian rendezvous in Death Valley, occasioned by an enigmatic letter from Michael that seems to have been written some time after his death. The letter asks them to visit a series of sites in the area; at the end of this tour, Michael claims he will appear before them. What follows is an utterly singular trip of a film, by turns melancholic and funny, self-reflexive and surreal. In their first film together since Maurice Pialat’s Loulou in 1980, Depardieu and Huppert astound with their enthralling portrayal of grieving parents who, to an ambiguous degree, appear to be versions of themselves, making for a tour de force as moving as it is complex. A Strand Releasing release.
>>> QPORIT Review: VALLEY OF LOVE
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2016/03/review-valley-of-love.html
Dheepan
Jacques Audiard, France, 2015, DCP, 109m
French with English subtitles
Jacques Audiard, France, 2015, DCP, 109m
French with English subtitles
Closing Night
Sunday, March 13, 6:00pm and 8:30pm
Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this daring, genre-bending portrait of three Sri Lankan refugees—Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), and Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby)—who form a fake family unit to emigrate. When they find themselves living together in a violent, gang-dominated housing project outside Paris, they start to reevaluate the terms of their intimacy. Like his character, the actor and novelist Jesuthasan was a member of the militant nationalist army LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) before fleeing the country and settling into a series of odd jobs in Paris, while eventually renouncing all ties to the Tigers. When, in its bloody last act, his character has to fall back on his military training, Dheepan becomes something darker: a harrowing reckoning with the past. A Sundance Selects release.
21 Nights with Pattie / 21 nuits avec Pattie
Jean-Marie & Arnaud Larrieu, France, 2015, DCP, 115m
French with English subtitles
The Larrieu brothers make oddball, tonally mixed comedies unlike anything else in French cinema today. In their latest, a slightly prim woman Caroline (Isabelle Carré) arrives in a small village in the Pyrénées to bury her estranged mother. There, she befriends Pattie (Karin Viard), who offers tales of her sexual adventures with the local men, including a priapic half-man, half-beast creature (Denis Lavant). Caroline’s ongoing debate between pride and pleasure is just one link in a chain of increasingly wild events: the mysterious disappearance of her mother’s body, the ensuing surreal police investigation, and some shocking revelations about her mother’s former lover, who may or not be the writer J.M.G. Le Clézio—played to perfection by André Dussollier.
U.S. Premiere
Friday, March 11, 1:30pm
Saturday, March 12, 6:45pm
The Apaches / Des Apaches
Nassim Amaouche, France, 2015, DCP, 97m
French with English subtitles
Les Inrocks accounted for the six years it took Nassim Amaouche to release his second feature by calling him “a director with a temperament as patient, roving and reflective as his films.” He stars as Samir, a young French-Algerian man lured by a dubious “family” lawyer (André Dussollier) into making an occult business deal within a similarly marginalized setting: one of Paris’s largest and most diverse Kabyle communities. Having been drawn into the family bar business by his estranged father, Samir still agonizes over the memory of his late mother, while falling in love with a beautiful and mysterious single mom (Laetitia Casta). The Apaches is a delicate movie that doubles as a tense negotiation drama and a quiet, reflective memory play.
Friday, March 11, 1:30pm
Saturday, March 12, 6:45pm
The Apaches / Des Apaches
Nassim Amaouche, France, 2015, DCP, 97m
French with English subtitles
Les Inrocks accounted for the six years it took Nassim Amaouche to release his second feature by calling him “a director with a temperament as patient, roving and reflective as his films.” He stars as Samir, a young French-Algerian man lured by a dubious “family” lawyer (André Dussollier) into making an occult business deal within a similarly marginalized setting: one of Paris’s largest and most diverse Kabyle communities. Having been drawn into the family bar business by his estranged father, Samir still agonizes over the memory of his late mother, while falling in love with a beautiful and mysterious single mom (Laetitia Casta). The Apaches is a delicate movie that doubles as a tense negotiation drama and a quiet, reflective memory play.
U.S. Premiere
Friday, March 4, 4:00pm
Sunday, March 13, 1:30pm
Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)
Eva Husson, France, 2016, DCP, 98m
French with English subtitles
Eva Husson’s debut feature, shot and set in the wealthy coastal suburbs of Biarritz, is an unapologetically blissed-out, frankly explicit anthology of the sexual experiments a cluster of teenagers undertake over the course of one summer. Determined to keep the attentions of her favorite boy Alex (Finnegan Oldfield), George (Marilyn Lima) encourages her group of horny friends and acquaintances to start hosting elaborate, sunlight-drenched, EDM-filled swingers parties. Husson doesn’t ignore the students who abstain, but she’s utterly entranced by the excesses, risks, and temptations of George’s universe—a pulsating, slow-motion bacchanal pitched somewhere between the world of Spring Breakers and that of Larry Clark. A Samuel Goldwyn Films release.
Friday, March 4, 4:00pm
Sunday, March 13, 1:30pm
Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)
Eva Husson, France, 2016, DCP, 98m
French with English subtitles
Eva Husson’s debut feature, shot and set in the wealthy coastal suburbs of Biarritz, is an unapologetically blissed-out, frankly explicit anthology of the sexual experiments a cluster of teenagers undertake over the course of one summer. Determined to keep the attentions of her favorite boy Alex (Finnegan Oldfield), George (Marilyn Lima) encourages her group of horny friends and acquaintances to start hosting elaborate, sunlight-drenched, EDM-filled swingers parties. Husson doesn’t ignore the students who abstain, but she’s utterly entranced by the excesses, risks, and temptations of George’s universe—a pulsating, slow-motion bacchanal pitched somewhere between the world of Spring Breakers and that of Larry Clark. A Samuel Goldwyn Films release.
U.S. Premiere
Friday, March 4, 9:15pm (Q&A with Eva Husson)
Sunday, March 6, 1:00pm (Q&A with Eva Husson)
>>>QPORIT Review & interview with Eva Husson:
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2016/03/bang-gang.html
Dark Inclusion / Diamant noir
Arthur Harari, France/Belgium, 2016, DCP, 115m
French with English subtitles
Friday, March 4, 9:15pm (Q&A with Eva Husson)
Sunday, March 6, 1:00pm (Q&A with Eva Husson)
>>>QPORIT Review & interview with Eva Husson:
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2016/03/bang-gang.html
Dark Inclusion / Diamant noir
Arthur Harari, France/Belgium, 2016, DCP, 115m
French with English subtitles
"You want them to pay? You have to be
lucid, cool, precise. You go there, you see, and you take—that’s payback."
Arthur Harari’s first feature is a poised, stylish, and utterly assured revenge
thriller in which violence erupts suddenly amid tense, hushed stretches of
talk. Pier Ulmann (Niels Schneider) comes from a family of powerful diamond
dealers based in Anvers. After his estranged father’s death, he vows vengeance
against his relatives who had abandoned him and returns to the business with an
elaborate robbery in mind. Featuring menacing tracking shots; a cool, metallic
color palette; surprising third-act reversals; and a terrific ensemble cast, Dark
Inclusion is a movie precisely attuned to the logistical and moral
complexities that accompany lives of luxurious crime.
U.S. Premiere
Thursday, March 10, 1:30pm
Saturday, March 12, 9:15pm (Q&A with Arthur Harari)
Thursday, March 10, 1:30pm
Saturday, March 12, 9:15pm (Q&A with Arthur Harari)
A Decent Man / Je ne suis pas un salaud
Emmanuel Finkiel, France, 2015, DCP, 111m
French with English subtitles
“I am not a bastard!” The literal French translation of the title of Emmanuel Finkiel’s taut, intelligent morality play captures its tone perhaps better than its American name. In the film’s first act, Eddy (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is in a position of strength. Having just been injured in a mugging, he’s earned the sympathy and attention of his estranged family and gotten back on his feet. The same cannot be said for Ahmed (Driss Ramdi), whose life starts falling apart after he’s wrongly accused of the crime. When the case against Ahmed starts to unravel, Eddy has to go back on the defensive…
Emmanuel Finkiel, France, 2015, DCP, 111m
French with English subtitles
“I am not a bastard!” The literal French translation of the title of Emmanuel Finkiel’s taut, intelligent morality play captures its tone perhaps better than its American name. In the film’s first act, Eddy (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is in a position of strength. Having just been injured in a mugging, he’s earned the sympathy and attention of his estranged family and gotten back on his feet. The same cannot be said for Ahmed (Driss Ramdi), whose life starts falling apart after he’s wrongly accused of the crime. When the case against Ahmed starts to unravel, Eddy has to go back on the defensive…
U.S. Premiere
Saturday, March 5, 1:00pm
Monday, March 7, 1:45pm
Disorder
Alice Winocour, France/Belgium, 2015, DCP, 101m
French with English subtitles
Alice Winocour’s follow-up to Augustine (Rendez-Vous 2013)—her study of the 19th-century neurologist Jean-Marie Charcot’s fraught relationship with one of his hysteria patients—is another finely tuned drama of unstable intimacy and mental imbalance. Having just returned from Afghanistan, Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) suffers from night terrors, pummeling headaches, and bouts of paranoia. To distract himself, he gets a job working security at the extravagant chateau of a Lebanese financier, whose beautiful wife (Diane Kruger) he’s soon hired to protect after the husband goes away on business. Disorder evolves from an exercise in nervous, slow-burn suspense into a tense domestic thriller. A Sundance Selects release.
Saturday, March 5, 6:30pm (Q&A with Alice Winocour)
Monday, March 7, 4:00pm
Fatima
Philippe Faucon, France, 2015, DCP, 79m
French and Arabic with English subtitles
Middle-aged single mother Fatima (Soria Zeroual) lives with her two teenage daughters and works cleaning jobs to pay their way through school. Inspired by a true story and the poetry of the North African writer Fatima Elayoubi, who immigrated knowing very little French and slowly taught herself the language, Faucon’s eighth feature—winner of the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize for Best French Film—is a patient, reflective study of a woman pressured by her children and her neighbors alike to assimilate into a culture of which she’s wary. Despite the display of everyday racism, both veiled and overt; internal domestic disputes; and external gestures of inhospitality, Fatima offers an uplifting experience and one of recent French cinema’s most trenchant and moving portraits of immigrant experience.
Friday, March 4, 2:00pm
Sunday, March 13, 4:00pm
The Great Game / Le Grand jeu
Nicolas Pariser, France, 2015, DCP, 100m
French with English subtitles
Pierre (Melvil Poupaud), a onetime darling novelist disgusted with the publishing world, lets a duplicitous government insider (André Dussollier) tempt him into ghostwriting a manifesto designed to transform the landscape of French public opinion—a shift with risky consequences for the activist (Clémence Poésy) with whom he soon becomes involved. Nicolas Pariser’s debut feature is an elegant political thriller that makes much use of its stellar cast, particularly with the brittle, uneasy rapport between Poupaud—the soulful young man at the center of Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways—and Dussollier, a resourceful and protean actor who commits to his character’s malevolence with relish. U.S. Premiere
Friday, March 4, 6:30pm (Q&A with Nicolas Pariser and Melvil Poupaud)
Saturday, March 5, 1:00pm
Monday, March 7, 1:45pm
Disorder
Alice Winocour, France/Belgium, 2015, DCP, 101m
French with English subtitles
Alice Winocour’s follow-up to Augustine (Rendez-Vous 2013)—her study of the 19th-century neurologist Jean-Marie Charcot’s fraught relationship with one of his hysteria patients—is another finely tuned drama of unstable intimacy and mental imbalance. Having just returned from Afghanistan, Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) suffers from night terrors, pummeling headaches, and bouts of paranoia. To distract himself, he gets a job working security at the extravagant chateau of a Lebanese financier, whose beautiful wife (Diane Kruger) he’s soon hired to protect after the husband goes away on business. Disorder evolves from an exercise in nervous, slow-burn suspense into a tense domestic thriller. A Sundance Selects release.
Saturday, March 5, 6:30pm (Q&A with Alice Winocour)
Monday, March 7, 4:00pm
Fatima
Philippe Faucon, France, 2015, DCP, 79m
French and Arabic with English subtitles
Middle-aged single mother Fatima (Soria Zeroual) lives with her two teenage daughters and works cleaning jobs to pay their way through school. Inspired by a true story and the poetry of the North African writer Fatima Elayoubi, who immigrated knowing very little French and slowly taught herself the language, Faucon’s eighth feature—winner of the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize for Best French Film—is a patient, reflective study of a woman pressured by her children and her neighbors alike to assimilate into a culture of which she’s wary. Despite the display of everyday racism, both veiled and overt; internal domestic disputes; and external gestures of inhospitality, Fatima offers an uplifting experience and one of recent French cinema’s most trenchant and moving portraits of immigrant experience.
Friday, March 4, 2:00pm
Sunday, March 13, 4:00pm
The Great Game / Le Grand jeu
Nicolas Pariser, France, 2015, DCP, 100m
French with English subtitles
Pierre (Melvil Poupaud), a onetime darling novelist disgusted with the publishing world, lets a duplicitous government insider (André Dussollier) tempt him into ghostwriting a manifesto designed to transform the landscape of French public opinion—a shift with risky consequences for the activist (Clémence Poésy) with whom he soon becomes involved. Nicolas Pariser’s debut feature is an elegant political thriller that makes much use of its stellar cast, particularly with the brittle, uneasy rapport between Poupaud—the soulful young man at the center of Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways—and Dussollier, a resourceful and protean actor who commits to his character’s malevolence with relish. U.S. Premiere
Friday, March 4, 6:30pm (Q&A with Nicolas Pariser and Melvil Poupaud)
Saturday, March 5, 9:15pm (Q&A with Nicolas Pariser and
Melvil Poupaud)
Lolo
Julie Delpy, France, 2015, DCP, 99m
French with English subtitles
Writer, director, actor, composer: Julie Delpy is one of current French cinema’s great renaissance talents. In her new movie, a four-string black comedy that develops on the thinking at work in her recent 2 Days in New York, a world-weary fashionista (Delpy) finds her happy new relationship with a divorced, slightly unpolished computer programmer (Dany Boon) threatened by the machinations of her wheeling, malevolent son (Vincent Lacoste). Delpy is a filmmaker with a wise, prickly comic sensibility, and her movies often slide—like screwball comedies—from cerebral verbal banter to outright farce. Lolo is no exception, although it’s also her darkest, riskiest, and most startling movie to date. A FilmRise release.
U.S. Premiere
Tuesday, March 8, 6:30pm (Q&A with Julie Delpy and composer Mathieu Lamboley)
Wednesday, March 9, 9:30pm (Introduction by Julie Delpy)
>>> QPORIT Review: LOLO & Video (VR) interview with Julie Delpy
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2016/03/lolo-and-julie-delpy.html
Much Loved
Nabil Ayouch, France/Morocco, 2015, DCP, 104m
Arabic and French with English subtitles
“What do you know about men?” a voice asks over the opening credits of Nabil Ayouch’s provocative portrait of several female sex workers in Marrakech. “Men are like makes [of cars]: high-end, medium, and sons of bitches. All that matters is the cash.” Noha (Loubna Abidar), Randa (Asmaa Lazrak), and Soukaina (Halima Karaouane) are professional, thick-skinned, and practical about their line of work, which ferries them up and down the city’s class ladder and renders them vulnerable to a catalog of possible abuses. Controversially banned in Morocco for its “contempt for moral values,” Much Loved offers such a candid and unblinking picture of a subculture that it’s a perilous job to represent on screen.
Thursday, March 10, 7:00pm
Friday, March 11, 4:00pm
My King / Mon roi
Maïwenn, France, 2015, DCP, 128m
French with English subtitles
Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot, in a performance that won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes) and Georgio (Vincent Cassel) are an odd match—or so Tony’s brother Solal (Louis Garrel) thinks when she tells him that they’re falling quickly, recklessly in love. Actor-director Maïwenn’s fourth feature captures the couple’s tempestuous 10-year relationship in retrospect as a string of flash points, eruptions, betrayals, tender reconciliations, and life-altering decisions. At the center of My King’s wide, expansive frames are Bercot and Cassel for nearly every second of its runtime, and the movie stakes itself on their harrowingly committed, nerve-fraying performances. Maïwenn’s formidable new film is one of French cinema’s most memorable recent amour fous. U.S. Premiere
Wednesday, March 9, 6:30pm (Q&A with Maïwenn and Louis Garrel)
Thursday, March 10, 9:45pm (Introduction by Maïwenn)
The New Kid / Le Nouveau
Rudi Rosenberg, France, 2015, DCP, 81m
French with English subtitles
In this delectable and vivacious debut feature, shy 14-year-old Benoît (Réphaël Ghrenassia) moves to Paris and a new high school, where he’s rejected by his cooler classmates and reluctantly sidelined into a precarious friendship with the “freaks and geeks.” The New Kid is a rare case among coming-of-age movies: a portrait of allegiances made and broken among middle-schoolers that calls special attention to the uglier, less picturesque aspects of passing through puberty. The movie’s rhythm never stalls and its tone stays charmingly light partly thanks to its wonderful cast—a skilled and magnetic group of first-time young actors.
Tuesday, March 8, 6:30pm (Q&A with Julie Delpy and composer Mathieu Lamboley)
Wednesday, March 9, 9:30pm (Introduction by Julie Delpy)
>>> QPORIT Review: LOLO & Video (VR) interview with Julie Delpy
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2016/03/lolo-and-julie-delpy.html
Much Loved
Nabil Ayouch, France/Morocco, 2015, DCP, 104m
Arabic and French with English subtitles
“What do you know about men?” a voice asks over the opening credits of Nabil Ayouch’s provocative portrait of several female sex workers in Marrakech. “Men are like makes [of cars]: high-end, medium, and sons of bitches. All that matters is the cash.” Noha (Loubna Abidar), Randa (Asmaa Lazrak), and Soukaina (Halima Karaouane) are professional, thick-skinned, and practical about their line of work, which ferries them up and down the city’s class ladder and renders them vulnerable to a catalog of possible abuses. Controversially banned in Morocco for its “contempt for moral values,” Much Loved offers such a candid and unblinking picture of a subculture that it’s a perilous job to represent on screen.
Thursday, March 10, 7:00pm
Friday, March 11, 4:00pm
My King / Mon roi
Maïwenn, France, 2015, DCP, 128m
French with English subtitles
Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot, in a performance that won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes) and Georgio (Vincent Cassel) are an odd match—or so Tony’s brother Solal (Louis Garrel) thinks when she tells him that they’re falling quickly, recklessly in love. Actor-director Maïwenn’s fourth feature captures the couple’s tempestuous 10-year relationship in retrospect as a string of flash points, eruptions, betrayals, tender reconciliations, and life-altering decisions. At the center of My King’s wide, expansive frames are Bercot and Cassel for nearly every second of its runtime, and the movie stakes itself on their harrowingly committed, nerve-fraying performances. Maïwenn’s formidable new film is one of French cinema’s most memorable recent amour fous. U.S. Premiere
Wednesday, March 9, 6:30pm (Q&A with Maïwenn and Louis Garrel)
Thursday, March 10, 9:45pm (Introduction by Maïwenn)
The New Kid / Le Nouveau
Rudi Rosenberg, France, 2015, DCP, 81m
French with English subtitles
In this delectable and vivacious debut feature, shy 14-year-old Benoît (Réphaël Ghrenassia) moves to Paris and a new high school, where he’s rejected by his cooler classmates and reluctantly sidelined into a precarious friendship with the “freaks and geeks.” The New Kid is a rare case among coming-of-age movies: a portrait of allegiances made and broken among middle-schoolers that calls special attention to the uglier, less picturesque aspects of passing through puberty. The movie’s rhythm never stalls and its tone stays charmingly light partly thanks to its wonderful cast—a skilled and magnetic group of first-time young actors.
U.S. Premiere
Monday, March 7, 6:30pm (Q&A with Rudi Rosenberg)
Wednesday, March 9, 1:30pm
Parisienne / Peur de rien
Danielle Arbid, France, 2015, DCP, 120m
French with English subtitles
The French title of Danielle Arbid’s fourth feature, a luminous study of a young Lebanese woman restlessly accommodating herself to her new home in Paris during the mid-’90s, translates to “fear of nothing.” Lina might sometimes be afraid, but—as played by the great young actress Manal Issa—she’s also intrepid, adventurous, confident, independent, and breathtakingly self-possessed. Parisienne follows her as she flees the abusive uncle in whose care she’s been placed, flits from bed to bed, passes in and out of university classes, makes friends on both extreme sides of the political spectrum, takes a handful of lovers, and, in the movie’s climax, fights a legal battle to stay in the city that’s become hers.
Thursday, March 10, 4:00pm (Q&A with Danielle Arbid)
Saturday, March 12, 1:30pm (Q&A with Danielle Arbid)
Standing Tall / La Tête haute
Emmanuelle Bercot, France, 2015, DCP, 119m
French with English subtitles
Emmanuelle Bercot’s fourth feature, which opened last year’s Cannes, is a candid, sympathetic, impassioned study of a teenage delinquent surrounded by adults both callous and supportive. On the latter side is a warm-hearted juvenile court judge (Catherine Deneuve) and a devoted social worker (Benoît Magimel); on the other side stand, it can seem, most other authority figures. Sixteen-year-old Malony (Rod Paradot) is clearly a victim of his circumstances and poor parenting from his basket case of a mother (Sara Forestier), but he’s also a bully, a brute, and a sexually violent offender. Part of the strength of Standing Tall is that it refuses to entirely absolve its central character; instead, it counts on Paradot, a powerful new actor, to render him as a convincingly troubled, tempestuous soul. A Cohen Media release.
Sunday, March 6, 3:30pm (Q&A with Emmanuelle Bercot)
Sunday, March 6, 9:00pm (Introduction by Emmanuelle Bercot)
Story of Judas / Histoire de Judas
Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, France, 2015, DCP, 99m
French with English subtitles
French-Algerian director-actor Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche boldly renders the final days of Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of Judas Iscariot in this utterly novel reenvisioning of the key biblical tale. Ameur-Zaïmeche himself stars as Judas, Jesus’s closest disciple, as the two men find themselves swept up in political tumult amid tensions between the Jews and the Romans over the escalating popularity of the man who claims to be the Son of God. Story of Judas is both strikingly stylized (with shimmering, physical cinematography by Irina Lubtchansky, daughter of the late, legendary DP William) and compelling in its engagement with the myth of Judas, interweaving recent revelations about the role he may or may not have played in the real-life Passion story. The result is a ravishing and genuinely new addition to the Jesus film canon. Winner of a Jury Prize in the Forum section at last year’s Berlinale. U.S. Premiere
Saturday, March 5, 3:45pm
Tuesday, March 8, 1:45pm
Summertime / La Belle saison
Catherine Corsini, France/Belgium, 2015, DCP, 105m
French with English subtitles
Acclaimed director Catherine Corsini has made melodramas that range in tone from the bleak and violent to the tender and emotionally warm. At first glance, her Locarno prize-winning new film is one of her brightest and most bucolic. Soon after Delphine (Izïa Higelin) moves from her conservative parents’ farm near Limoges to Paris in 1971, she meets the older Carole (Cécile de France), a feminist organizer with whom she embarks on a passionate, mutually invigorating love affair. When a family sickness pulls Delphine back to the farm, Carole has to decide whether to follow her into hostile territory—and Summertime becomes something more complicated and fraught than its seductive, luminous visual palette initially suggests. A Strand Releasing release.
Monday, March 7, 6:30pm (Q&A with Rudi Rosenberg)
Wednesday, March 9, 1:30pm
Parisienne / Peur de rien
Danielle Arbid, France, 2015, DCP, 120m
French with English subtitles
The French title of Danielle Arbid’s fourth feature, a luminous study of a young Lebanese woman restlessly accommodating herself to her new home in Paris during the mid-’90s, translates to “fear of nothing.” Lina might sometimes be afraid, but—as played by the great young actress Manal Issa—she’s also intrepid, adventurous, confident, independent, and breathtakingly self-possessed. Parisienne follows her as she flees the abusive uncle in whose care she’s been placed, flits from bed to bed, passes in and out of university classes, makes friends on both extreme sides of the political spectrum, takes a handful of lovers, and, in the movie’s climax, fights a legal battle to stay in the city that’s become hers.
Thursday, March 10, 4:00pm (Q&A with Danielle Arbid)
Saturday, March 12, 1:30pm (Q&A with Danielle Arbid)
Standing Tall / La Tête haute
Emmanuelle Bercot, France, 2015, DCP, 119m
French with English subtitles
Emmanuelle Bercot’s fourth feature, which opened last year’s Cannes, is a candid, sympathetic, impassioned study of a teenage delinquent surrounded by adults both callous and supportive. On the latter side is a warm-hearted juvenile court judge (Catherine Deneuve) and a devoted social worker (Benoît Magimel); on the other side stand, it can seem, most other authority figures. Sixteen-year-old Malony (Rod Paradot) is clearly a victim of his circumstances and poor parenting from his basket case of a mother (Sara Forestier), but he’s also a bully, a brute, and a sexually violent offender. Part of the strength of Standing Tall is that it refuses to entirely absolve its central character; instead, it counts on Paradot, a powerful new actor, to render him as a convincingly troubled, tempestuous soul. A Cohen Media release.
Sunday, March 6, 3:30pm (Q&A with Emmanuelle Bercot)
Sunday, March 6, 9:00pm (Introduction by Emmanuelle Bercot)
Story of Judas / Histoire de Judas
Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, France, 2015, DCP, 99m
French with English subtitles
French-Algerian director-actor Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche boldly renders the final days of Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of Judas Iscariot in this utterly novel reenvisioning of the key biblical tale. Ameur-Zaïmeche himself stars as Judas, Jesus’s closest disciple, as the two men find themselves swept up in political tumult amid tensions between the Jews and the Romans over the escalating popularity of the man who claims to be the Son of God. Story of Judas is both strikingly stylized (with shimmering, physical cinematography by Irina Lubtchansky, daughter of the late, legendary DP William) and compelling in its engagement with the myth of Judas, interweaving recent revelations about the role he may or may not have played in the real-life Passion story. The result is a ravishing and genuinely new addition to the Jesus film canon. Winner of a Jury Prize in the Forum section at last year’s Berlinale. U.S. Premiere
Saturday, March 5, 3:45pm
Tuesday, March 8, 1:45pm
Summertime / La Belle saison
Catherine Corsini, France/Belgium, 2015, DCP, 105m
French with English subtitles
Acclaimed director Catherine Corsini has made melodramas that range in tone from the bleak and violent to the tender and emotionally warm. At first glance, her Locarno prize-winning new film is one of her brightest and most bucolic. Soon after Delphine (Izïa Higelin) moves from her conservative parents’ farm near Limoges to Paris in 1971, she meets the older Carole (Cécile de France), a feminist organizer with whom she embarks on a passionate, mutually invigorating love affair. When a family sickness pulls Delphine back to the farm, Carole has to decide whether to follow her into hostile territory—and Summertime becomes something more complicated and fraught than its seductive, luminous visual palette initially suggests. A Strand Releasing release.
U.S. Premiere
Tuesday, March 8, 9:15pm (Introduction by composer Gregoire Hetzel)
Saturday, March 12, 4:30pm
Three Sisters / Les Trois soeurs
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, France, 2015, DCP, 110m
French with English subtitles
“Life is hard. It seems to many of us dull and hopeless; but yet we must admit that it goes on getting clearer and easier, and it looks as though the time were not far off when it'll be full of happiness.” For her latest project, commissioned by Arte and starring members of the Comédie-Française, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi shot an idiosyncratic, half-modernized adaptation of one of Chekhov’s greatest, most expansively melancholy plays. The three sisters of the title—two unmarried, one unhappily married—congregate in their family’s ancestral house and, along with the additional soldiers, debtors, pensioners, and spouses who populate the play, struggle to give their futures a shape. From a translation by André Markowicz and Françoise Morvan.
Tuesday, March 8, 9:15pm (Introduction by composer Gregoire Hetzel)
Saturday, March 12, 4:30pm
Three Sisters / Les Trois soeurs
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, France, 2015, DCP, 110m
French with English subtitles
“Life is hard. It seems to many of us dull and hopeless; but yet we must admit that it goes on getting clearer and easier, and it looks as though the time were not far off when it'll be full of happiness.” For her latest project, commissioned by Arte and starring members of the Comédie-Française, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi shot an idiosyncratic, half-modernized adaptation of one of Chekhov’s greatest, most expansively melancholy plays. The three sisters of the title—two unmarried, one unhappily married—congregate in their family’s ancestral house and, along with the additional soldiers, debtors, pensioners, and spouses who populate the play, struggle to give their futures a shape. From a translation by André Markowicz and Françoise Morvan.
U.S. Premiere
Wednesday, March 9, 3:30pm (Q&A with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi)
Friday, March 11, 6:30pm (Q&A with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi)
Two Friends / Deux amis
Louis Garrel, France, 2015, DCP, 102m
French with English subtitles
One of France’s most distinguished and recognizable actors for over a decade now, Louis Garrel makes his much-anticipated feature-length directorial debut with this clever and moving twist on the ménage à trois. Garrel stars as Abel, a gas-station attendant with literary ambitions, an underage girlfriend, and an always-active libido. Abel is all too accustomed to seducing away the crushes of his best friend, movie-extra Vincent (Vincent Macaigne)—but when an incognito convict working at a pastry counter in the Gare du Nord (Golshifteh Farahani) enters Vincent’s orbit (and, by extension, Abel’s), a comic, manic, and eminently romantic love triangle soon unfolds. Co-written by his frequent collaborator Christophe Honoré, Two Friends marks an auspicious and heartfelt first feature for Garrel, striking a pitch-perfect balance between tragedy and charm.
Wednesday, March 9, 3:30pm (Q&A with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi)
Friday, March 11, 6:30pm (Q&A with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi)
Two Friends / Deux amis
Louis Garrel, France, 2015, DCP, 102m
French with English subtitles
One of France’s most distinguished and recognizable actors for over a decade now, Louis Garrel makes his much-anticipated feature-length directorial debut with this clever and moving twist on the ménage à trois. Garrel stars as Abel, a gas-station attendant with literary ambitions, an underage girlfriend, and an always-active libido. Abel is all too accustomed to seducing away the crushes of his best friend, movie-extra Vincent (Vincent Macaigne)—but when an incognito convict working at a pastry counter in the Gare du Nord (Golshifteh Farahani) enters Vincent’s orbit (and, by extension, Abel’s), a comic, manic, and eminently romantic love triangle soon unfolds. Co-written by his frequent collaborator Christophe Honoré, Two Friends marks an auspicious and heartfelt first feature for Garrel, striking a pitch-perfect balance between tragedy and charm.
U.S. Premiere
Sunday, March 6, 6:30pm (Q&A with Louis Garrel)
Monday, March 7, 9:00pm (Introduction by Louis Garrel)
Winter Song / Chant d’hiver
Otar Iosseliani, France, 2015, DCP, 117m
French with English subtitles
There’s no mistaking the tone and structure of a film by the 81-year-old Georgian director Otar Iosseliani: caustic, mordant, detached, extremely funny, and dizzyingly panoramic. Like several of his earlier films, Winter Song doesn’t center on a single figure so much as a dense cluster of interrelated characters, all united by objects (an executed aristocrat’s skull), places (the apartment building where most of them live), historical events (from the French Revolution to the Russo-Georgian War), and pure coincidence. An aging upper-crust patriarch burning his letters; a tramp hoping to avoid the advances of a steamroller; an 18th-century nobleman who insists on taking his pipe to the guillotine: Winter Song is a well-stocked encyclopedia of human variety, eccentricity, and folly, elevated by an exquisite cast that include Rufus, Pierre Étaix, and Mathieu Amalric.
Sunday, March 6, 6:30pm (Q&A with Louis Garrel)
Monday, March 7, 9:00pm (Introduction by Louis Garrel)
Winter Song / Chant d’hiver
Otar Iosseliani, France, 2015, DCP, 117m
French with English subtitles
There’s no mistaking the tone and structure of a film by the 81-year-old Georgian director Otar Iosseliani: caustic, mordant, detached, extremely funny, and dizzyingly panoramic. Like several of his earlier films, Winter Song doesn’t center on a single figure so much as a dense cluster of interrelated characters, all united by objects (an executed aristocrat’s skull), places (the apartment building where most of them live), historical events (from the French Revolution to the Russo-Georgian War), and pure coincidence. An aging upper-crust patriarch burning his letters; a tramp hoping to avoid the advances of a steamroller; an 18th-century nobleman who insists on taking his pipe to the guillotine: Winter Song is a well-stocked encyclopedia of human variety, eccentricity, and folly, elevated by an exquisite cast that include Rufus, Pierre Étaix, and Mathieu Amalric.
U.S. Premiere
Tuesday, March 8, 4:00pm
Friday, March 11, 9:15pm
Tuesday, March 8, 4:00pm
Friday, March 11, 9:15pm
Labels: André Dussollier, Dheepan, Eva Husson, Fatima, FSLC, Gerard Depardieu, Huppert, Isabelle, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, Rod Paradot, Sara Forestier, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Unifrance
