For the record, vinyl rules
This year’s French Film Festival Aotearoa features a sensational, barely fictionalised portrait of global singing star Celine Dion and showcases some French cinema greats, finds James Croot.
New Zealand’s annual celebration of Gallic cinema has been revamped. The French Film Festival Aotearoa will unspool in 11 towns and cities across the nation over the next five weeks. It features more than 20 carefully curated titles, hand-picked gems selected to ‘‘showcase the delight and diversity of French cinema to Kiwi audiences’’, says the Festival’s new director Fergus Grady.
‘‘We’re incredibly proud of our programme. From new releases, to 4k restorations of old classics, this year’s films showcase the best of the best of cinema francais.’’
After looking through the lineup and being lucky enough to preview a selection of titles, Stuff to Watch has picked out eight great movies we believe are well worth checking out.
Aline
A glitzy, sweeping biopic of a Quebec-born youngest child of 14 who became a global singing sensation. Valerie Lemercier’s soapy but sensationally compelling tale is billed as a work of fiction, but as its opening title card boldly states, it is clearly inspired by the life of Celine Dion. In Aline Dieu’s world, she wins the Dublin Singing Award (rather than Eurovision) and marries her much-older manager Guy-Claude Kamar (instead of Rene Angelil). But there are snatches of her singing All By Myself, I’m Alive and THAT boat movie song, and everything from her vocal troubles to her Vegas residency are present and correct. Gloriously bonkers, it features a stunning performance from writer-director Lemercier in the title role.
Appearances
A very adult Vienna-set marital thriller filled with twists and turns, writer-director Marc Fitoussi’s tale is a terrific showcase for the talented Karin Viard (The Belier Family). She plays Eve, a library executive and expat French socialite who becomes convinced that her famed conductor husband is having an affair with her son’s primary school teacher. As she attempts to unearth conclusive proof, and also not alert her social circle to her humiliation, she also has to deal with the unwanted attentions of a troubled young man she had a one-night stand with in drunken ‘‘retaliation’’. It all bubbles along nicely, until reaching boiling point in a wild finale.
The Big Hit
Inspired by a remarkable and bizarre real-life mid1980s scenario from Sweden, this delightful dramedy focuses on struggling, ageing actor Etienne (Kad Merad, who most recently starred alongside Bryan Cranston in the series Your Honor). After reluctantly accepting an arts rehabilitation position in a prison, he manages to inspire his motley troupe to come together to perform Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot .As word spreads of their amazing show, they receive offers to tour the country. However, the authorities aren’t quite so sure that Etienne will be able to ensure their safe return, despite the growing bond between him and his players. A deserved winner of the best comedy title at this year’s European Film Awards.
Breathless
A rare opportunity to see a French classic on the big screen. Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard from Francous Truffaut and Claude Chabrol’s conceit, this 1960 tale was inspired by Hollywood crime dramas, but it takes a very different path. After shooting a policeman, petty criminal Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) attempts to lay low with his American girlfriend, aspiring journalist Patricia (Jean Seberg), who is unaware of what he’s done. ‘‘This movie liberated the cinema – the stories you could tell and the ways you could tell them – as clearly and cleanly as Picasso freed painting and the Sex Pistols rebooted rock,’’ wrote Boston Globe’s Ty Burr.
Bye Bye Morons
A smash at the Covid-ravaged French box office last year, this crowdpleasing black comedy is dedicated to former Monty Python member Terry Jones, features a hilarious cameo from Terry Gilliam and is clearly inspired by the latter’s 1985 dystopian nightmare, Brazil. Facing up to her impending mortality, career hairdresser Suze Trappet (Virginie Efira) is determined to find the son she was forced to adopt out three decades earlier. Frustrated by bureaucracy, she finds two unlikely allies in the form of burnt-out IT specialist Jean-Baptiste Cuchas (Albert Dupontel) and blind archivist Serge Blin (Nicolas Marie). Together, they hilariously attempt to evade the authorities who are chasing them and solve the mystery before it is too late.
The Godmother
Isabelle Huppert (Elle, Greta) once again proves why she’s one of the most compelling actors on the planet with a magnificent turn in this crime caper about a police translator who suddenly finds herself working against her former colleagues. Adapted by Hannelore Cayre from her own European Crime Fiction Prize-winning 2019 novel, it sees Huppert’s Patience Portefeux transform herself into ‘‘Mama Weed’’ when the opportunity to take advantage of her inside knowledge becomes too tempting to resist. Needing money to pay for her ailing mother’s assisted living and desperate to keep her favourite caregiver’s son out of jail, she concocts a risky plan to sell a truck load of hash. But can she keep her secret from her boss, a man who is also her boyfriend?
How to Be a Good Wife
A kind of a cross between St Trinian’s and Call the Midwife, this 1967-set comedy takes place in and around Alsace’s prestigious Van der Beck’s School of Housekeeping and Good Manners. Training teenage girls to become perfect housewives for more than two decades, it has struggled to keep up with the changing times. However, when an accident reveals the parlous state of the school’s finances, matriarch Paulette (Juliette Binoche) is faced with some tough decisions, a situation not helped by her former beau, Andre (Edouard Baer), attempting to rekindle their romance from long ago. As well as more pitch-perfect French farce, much of the humour comes from Paulette and her fellow teachers’ ‘‘advice’’ to their young charges.
The Man in the Hat
If you’re a fan of French film-making giant Jacques Tati, then you’ll adore this near-silent homage. Northern Irish actor Ciaran Hinds is the eponymous l’homme au chapeau, who finds himself on the run when he witnesses a body being dumped. As he and his Fiat 500 are pursued across the countryside by a quartet in a Citroen Dyane, he encounters a range of eclectic and eccentric characters, some terrific food and beautiful music. Visual humour abounds, and the film-makers make the rare vignettes of dialogue count.
The 2021 edition of the French Film Festival Aotearoa is being held on various dates in Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga, Masterton, Havelock North, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin from now until July 14. See frenchfilmfestival.co.nz