More French Film Festival 2023

In the tradition of Costa Gavras and L'attentat, Cédric Jimenez' Novembre, an account of the French authorities' response to the Bataclan terrorist massacre, proves to be the most substantial film in the event. We never see the atrocities but focus on the security services.

 Location shooting in Athens shows a failed attempt to arrest their terrorist suspect.  Under a black Balaclava there's Department Head Jean Dujardin and pretty soon we are back in Paris at his headquarters, where calm of the night shift is shattered when the ‘phones go crazy with calls about the Stade de France & Bataclan attacks. Overwhelmed with information, his room full of operatives struggle to organise this into something useful and track down the ISIS agents responsible.

Sandrine Kiberlain is manning the ‘phones but doesn’t have much to do. Anaïs Demoustier gets more attention. When she makes a connection that everyone is too busy to follow up, she goes off on her own talking on her phone as she walks past the suspect home with her dog. The subsequent raid with body armored agents pouring through the smashed in door nets an undercover narc. whose boss is indignant and Dujardin chews her out for not following procedure. 

One of the convincing features of this film is the way that despite the best training and equipment, human errors keep on intruding. A raid has the team moving on the wrong floor of the target block. Dujardin loses it interrogating an arrogant arrested Arab suspect, whose confidence is only destroyed when a search of his wallet reveals a Shiite girlfriend photo which Jean threatens to post on social media destroying the pair’s lives. He flies off to talk to the uncle of one suspect and Belgian cash transfers add more information. 

Sorting through Metro surveillance camera data nets visuals of suspects jumping turnstiles in tell tale orange sneakers which leads the operators to believe young Lyna (The French Dispatch) Khoudri ’s account of having spotted the wanted men associates of her girl cousin Sophie Cattani among the homeless under a motorway. She’s brought in for questioning, starting a process that means the frightened cousin’s death and, despite the undetakings Anaïs has made her, lands Lyna in jail for acting responsibly.

For a big action finale, Dujardin leads the balaclava men attack on the flat where the suspects have been located. The valued element of surprise is lost, after their plastic explosive blast fails.  “The door is intact.” The cousin’s screams can be heard and a detonated blast takes out anyone close. The robot camera they send in to check among the debris reveals the scale of
the destruction.

The pacing and staging are superior, giving the piece both conviction and interest. There is a feeling that it would be more plausible without the recognisable faces but the stars are excellent and there’s the discovery that demonstrating that he can do John Wayne as well as L’artist, validates Dujardin’s star status. The poster is him in a flack jacket and the finale is his grave address to the troops. This one is getting an extended run.

 

Also an attempt to generate a film worthy of a significant event, Notre-Dame brûle / Notre-Dame on Fire comes logically from Jean-Jacques Annaud  (Quest for Fire).

The opening locating material, with historical charts, airials and the personnel going through their daily routine is really more involving than the real Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral tour used to be. The casual depiction of activity is made more plausible as we share it with a new security man being inducted for his first day. Workmen doing restoration, over age personnel struggling up ancient stairs, shonky emergency systems and performing a mass that is a tourist spectacle, all set up what will prove a historic event.

As the seriousness of what is happening filters through to Generals Sam Labarthe and Jean-Paul Bordes at Paris Fire HQ, calls from alarmed witnesses are spaced by ones from an anguished woman whose cat is sliding down the steep roof outside her window.  The speeding fire trucks are obstructed by road work and desperate priests demand the rescue of relics which literally cost a king's ransom. Meanwhile the holder of the only vault key is on a day trip to Versailles and has to dash to the scene via defective coin in the slot push bikes.

Absurdist events alternate with genuinely disturbing material, ratcheting up the tension impressively - the blazing roof crashes into seats in the familiar public space, drops of melting lead puncture fire hoses while out of date stand pipes fail and firemen risking their lives have to be withdrawn to safety. Emanuel Macron makes an appearance and needs attention while the fire crews are flat out. The "forest" roof with its timber supports blazes away and there is a genuine risk that the belfry may crash and bring down the famous facade. Crowds gather on the Seine banks. Some are photographing events with their phones while others are praying. Technicians and engineers mix with clerics. In the middle of blazing destruction, the Pompiers chaplain rescues The Host. Saving the Crown of Thorns (twice) gets to dominate events in an dramatically unsatisfactory way. However the scene of a devoted officer putting forward a possibly suicidal plan, to be joined by unhesitating volunteers, is genuinely irresistible.

Arnaud reproduces this, shooting in other Cathedral locations. He often splits the frame - sometimes between actuality and his own staging, without the difference being visible. He manages some extraordinary images - the gargoyle that seems to be emerging from it's own hellish environment and the virgin with the tear on it's face, which surprisingly makes more impact edited into the trailer.

He succeeds in putting up imposing layers of meaning but I've got to go with the critics who dismiss his last scene with the little girl as anti climactic. The girl firefighter, at the end of of her first day of duty saying her next fire won't be anywhere near as good, is a better last thought. What happened to the cat?

Clovis Cornillac's  Couleurs de l'incendie / The Colors of Fire is a big French period (between world wars) drama which show cases it’s design, camera and performances but doesn’t really deliver as drama, with it’s Count of Monte Christo structure predictable from the moment that heiress Lea  Drucker spurns manager of the family banking empire Benoît Poelvoorde, when he moves on her after her father-founder dies.

There's an impressive opening, where the camera weaves among the crowd in the courtyard of the banker’s manor, around his funeral cortege. It travels without edits up the stairs with masochist tutor Jérémy Lopez to the first floor and into the room where young Octave Bossuet  is hiding under the bed. Events are shaped when the boy high dives out of the window onto the coffin.

We get the conspiracy between Poelvoorde, the tutor and her failed banker-uncle Olivier Gourmet and their undoing at the hands of Drucker in alliance with ex-chaufeur cab driver Cornillac in a Lenin beard and cap (bit obvious) who gives her a talking-to for assuming that, because he is working class, he’s also criminally inclined. Benoît’s scheme of bringing Lea down by giving her reliable information on Rumanian and Iraqui oil shares (compare Les brigades du Tigre with both Cornillac and Gourmet) knowing she will be ruined by her distrust, is an nice piece of fiendish infamy, complete with the ego trip bronze bust he's had sculpted, and he is impressive in departing from type. The comic element of his characters here  is suppressed until the moment he finds himself deafened and wiped out.

The Atliers Aeronautiques background with the development and demonstration of the prototype turbo jet motor is possibly the film’s best and most original feature. On the other hand, the digression of the sub-plot with Fanny Ardent as the opera singer, who the son idolises (bravely first revealed caked with her stage make up) giving a command performance for Hitler is just weird but the the dissolved aging on the boy is a striking piece of effects work. 

With it's ambition and skill, it's a pity this finally isn't a better film.

 

Eric Lavaine's Plancha / Happy 50 is yet another French study of the group. Think Vincent, Paul, François et les Autres,  Les petits mouchoirs or Un éléphant ça trompe énormément. When their flight to sunny Greek weather in Paros to celebrate Guillaume de Tonquédec’s fiftieth birthday is cancelled (the travel agent will give back their deposit one forlornly observes) the couples, who holiday together, shift to his ancestral home in Brittany to be greeted by rain. The only wasp in Brittany stings Lambert Wilson’s testicle and and foot in mouth complications are mainly engineered by him while Frank Dubosc is strung out waiting to see if the reorganisation of his work place means that he’s been fired. A blissful Jérôme Commandeur back from business success in Spain with a winning wife & child only aggravates tensions. Wilson running a secret DNA test through an ancestry service creates serious problems. The host staring at a wheelbarrow is the film's best gag - you'll see.

Wilson is top billed with Dubosc (Tout le monde debout / Rolling to You). the pair are on top of their game and surrounded by appealing women and OK second bananas to go with the scenic detail. We even run to an open air dance in local costume.

Umani is the second Gerard Depardieu film in the event. In this one master chef Gerard (first seen in the steam room starkers - note a by-pass scar) has not found happiness despite his up-market M. Quelqu’un chateau restaurant getting three crystal stars. Second wife, a suitably harried Sandrine Bonnaire, is doing the food critic on whom Gerard’s reputation depends and his two sons are not meeting his standards. Sky diving doesn’t fill the void in his life. He’s still haunted by the fact that during his ascent to fame, his demo meal was beaten out by a Japanese competitor’s umami - which introduced him to a fifth taste. Meanwhile old friend fisherman hypnotherapist Pierre Richard has found his first ever pearl in the oysters he’s been harvesting since the Japanese fishermen saved his business by providing a new strain of the shell fish.

Umami - Depardieu & Richard

What does Gerard do, with the assessment by key Internet influencer elegant Assa Sylla looming, but fly off to Japan to seek out the chef who mastered him. Cue cultural dissonance like automatic taxi doors, sleeper lockers, sled dogs, kimona, three wheel bikes and shared volcanic pool baths.

Gerard’s old opponent Kyôzô Nagatsuka has problems of his own and is not interested. He now proves to be reduced to a hole in the wall noodle bar and has a pill popping daughter crushed by her old flame’s revenge porn. However the nips finally prove winningly prepared to open out the secrets of their cuisine to the frog visitors, including playing violin to the pork meat animals. 

 Director-producer-writer-editor-designer and drone pilot Slony Sow also comes on as a thoracic surgeon. His thing is making multiple stories run simultaneously. It’s not as difficult to follow as it might be but, after a while, we realise we are not all that interested in any of them.

The contrasted settings are convincing enough but the character conflicts and resolution are too sketchy and attention wanders. Cast are good and Depardieu is on top of his game once more - watch the unfamiliar flavor experiences reflect on his features in close shot. We are not going to have him all that much longer. French film should come up with vehicles closer to his over sized talent.

Dany Boon is everywhere at the moment - repeating his inspector character in another Adam Sandler - Jen Annison Murder Mystery feature, producing The Black Pharaoh and doing an uncharacteristically serious turn in Christian Carion's La belle course / Driving Madeleine.

He’s a taxi driver who is having trouble meeting the bills. His radio operator calls him out for a job on the far side of Paris, over his objections. This turns out to be ninety two year old Line Renaud whose career goes back to Erich Von Stroheim and La foire aux chimères. She's taking a last look at her house before she’s shuffled off to the old folks' home. Line cajoles Dany into driving her to the places that were important to her. Vincennes has changed beyond recognition prompting flashbacks where her character young is played by Alice Isaac (also in Colors of Fire) - her romance with a WW2 GI, alone raising their child who is all she has to remember the Yankee Soldier, until her new welder boy friend roughs up the kid and she goes all Lorena Bobbitt. Her facing le Palais du Justice becomes subject of very Twenty First Century protests.

As the leads bond, Line manages to save Dany’s license and he takes her to diner as a sentimental gesture. Roll on a suitable tear jerker finale. The film is a pleasant enough showcase for a couple of nice performances, which give the stars a chance to depart from type.

Some French film makers seem to have only one exceptional film in them. Vera Belmont and Rouge Baisir, Yves Boisset’s L’Attentat (though I will admit with some guilt to enjoying Le Taxi mauve) and Cristian Carion’s later work can’t shade his powerful Joyeuse Nöel.

Docteur / The Good Doctor is four years old and gives the impression of having been shoved into the event to make weight. Now-veteran Michel Blanc manages to merge his former knock about comic and commanding character actor personae into one here. He’s a failing doctor, the only one left on call over Xmas and his plea to dispatcher Chantal Lauby for a replacement is treated dismissively. With his back going out, Blanc finds Uber Eats delivery guy Hakim Jemili arriving simultaneously at one of his appointments, with the door code that Blanc has forgotten 

Stretching the imagination, we find one time trainee medic Jemili recruited into doing Blanc's rounds, getting instructions over the 'phone ear piece. Wearing Michel's leather jacket and smart shoes is enough to bluff one of his pizza customers on a return visit.  The duo even acquire unwelcome celebrity status when they avert a mass carbon monoxide poisoning but their limits are tested when Jemeli has to piggy back the good doctor in to perform an unscheduled birth delivery.

The sodium lamp lit streets at Xmas are a plausible setting and the agreeable leads are on top of their game but I can't help feeling that French studios must have rolled out something more impressive during four years.

 

... and far from least we get animator Michel Ocelot's new Le pharaon, le sauvage et la princesse / The Black Pharaoh.

At first, with the instructor voiced by  Aïssa Maïga (in films by Michael Haneke and Michel Gondry) telling her stories to her silhouette class ( a familiar Michel Ocelot device) and then going to the no perspective, subdued colour Egyptian material, this one looked like it would be a cut price effort.

Black Pharoah - Ep. 3

Big mistake! Ocelot’s reproduction of hieroglyphic wall painting is setting us up for spectacular moments like our first view of the galley with its banks of rowers or his traveling sideways through the ranks of the massed army.

Egypt is ruled by a queen mother regent whose strategy to retain power is to insist that only a Pharaoh will be good enough for her Princess daughter. Young Sudanese suitor Tanwekamani is rejected out of hand, so he sets out with his followers, beseeching the giant animal heqded regional Gods of the country to grant him victory. Scarlet Osiris is particularly imposing. Tanwekamani unites the country bloodlessly, when the old rulers flee at his approach. There’s no question but that he’s the match for the princess and he promises his new mother in law a suitable retirement.

The second part of the familiar Ocelot episode format is set in medieval France and makes use of his Lotte Reinger like silhouettes, here adding shadowy facial detail. In his father's castle, the lonely boy makes contact with a captive in the dungeon and hears about the daughter the prisoner misses so much. Guilty of aiding his break out, the boy is condemned to death by his own father but, with the aid of associates, grows to be the Robin Hood like "Wild Beau”, going about dressed in folliage and giving to the poor. The once prisoner returns at the head of his own force and all ends happily.

The three-parter winds up in eighteenth Century Turkey, where a young prince forced to live as a pastry cook, makes a rendez-vous in the abandoned palace catacombs with the sultan's daughter. Forget Snow White or Kristin Bell's Anna in Frozen. This one with her independence and flowing scarlet hair breaking loose, instantly becomes our favorite toon princess. 

Ocelot has the skill of the best children's film makers in reviving the fairy tale world which we have forgotten as adults but still has the power to captivate. Each new film puts up another exquisitely realised ambiance - or as here, three. It's disturbing that he has not reached the public that prizes Disney or Miyazaki. It was these French Film Festivals that revealed him to me and I shall always be grateful.

Barrie Pattison 2023


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