FrenchCinema

Genèse

This 2018 film from Quebecois director Philippe Lesage played as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2019 New Director New Films series and is now available for rent on Prime Video.  The opening scene, lifted almost verbatim from Diane Kury’s wonderful 1977 film Diabolo Menthe, introduces Guillaume Bonnet, played by Theodore Pellerin, atop a school desk leading his all-male classmates in a bawdy song.  He fails to notice the teacher’s entrance and continues his antics for a few beats too many after the other students have zipped it.  What was a minor scene in Kury’s film becomes a tour de force for Lesage who presents Bonnet as brash, confident and charismatic but out of step and a bit clueless.  The scene may be ripped off – but it’s used to better effect by Lesage – so we’ll call it an homage. 

As with Diabolo Menthe, Bonnet’s story unfolds mostly at a single-sex private lycee and on first impression one might think that he and Kury’s characters are contemporaries.  In an early scene, one of the students is admonished for an untucked shirt and later at a party, students dance to the Trashmen’s Surfin Bird, a hit song from 1963, the very year Diabolo Menthe takes place.   Genese cuts between Bonnet’s story and that of his 16 year-old half sister Charotte (Noee Abita), who seems to inhabit a different time and place. She’s in a relationship with Maxime (Pier-Luc Funk) which goes south in their first on-screen scene together, a superbly written fall from grace that takes place in a darkroom – you know – one of those closet like rooms with the red light bulb photographers used for printing photos before everything went digital.  Charlotte is later shown with a pre-smart phone – but there’s not a computer in sight. 

Lesage keeps the viewer off-balance with the film’s unconventional structure.  Not only do we not quite understand when it takes place, we also don’t see quite how the two stories relate.  We learn fairly early on that Bonnet and Charlotte are siblings, but their stories don’t intertwine otherwise, except in so far as they’re about young people struggling with love as they come of age.  Lesage references the granddaddy of mid-century American coming of age novels the Catcher in the Rye which we see Bonnet reading in his dorm.  A younger student notices his reading choice (in addition to his Morrisy poster), asks if he’s read Franny and Zooey and proclaims the Glass Family “Malade”, high teenage praise. In fact, its Franny and Zooey that Genese most closely resembles, both structurally and thematically.   

With such overt references to Kurys and Salinger, Genese is squarely in the coming of age genre.  As with so many of the best coming of age films, the adults in Genese are worse than useless.  While the teachers in Diabolo Menthe were ineffectual weirdo s with a touch of malevolence, Bonnet’s teacher Mr. Perrier is an outright monster.  He’s got a particular sado-masochistic fixation on Bonnet who he goads into performing an imitation of him and is pained when the parody hits its mark.  In a later scene, he accuses Bonnet of belittling, humiliating and teasing his classmates, exactly the crimes of which he himself is guilty and those which Bonnet pointedly lampooned.  The classroom scenes in Genese really stand out – particularly one in which Bonnet is called upon in English class to give a speech on the subject of something he’s passionate about.  The speech, in which he outs himself and proclaims his love for his best friend, is an impressive writing and acting feat which should catapult Theodore Pellerin to international stardom.  With a recent role in best of 2020 critics pick Never Rarely Sometimes Always, he appears to be well on his way.

In addition to the stories of Bonnet and Charlotte, Genese has a third part which seems awkwardly tacked on in that it takes up an entirely different story related to what’s gone on thus far only thematically.  This 25 minute coda revisits Felix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier) a character from Lesage’s earlier film The Demons which is also well-worth seeking out.  Now age 12, Felix is at a co-ed summer camp where he meets and falls for Beatrice (Émilie Bierre).  Both are shy and uncomfortable with each other and their attraction seems to cause more dread than bliss, a portent of things to come as illustrated by Bonnet and Charlotte’s humiliations in love’s pursuit.

Also of note is the featured inclusion of the song Imagining My Man by the great New Zealand singer Aldous Harding.  I must admit I’d never heard of her before seeing the film.  I’m now a fan.  Genèse is not for all tastes but it impressed me enormously with its subtlety, complexity, superb writing and performances and its unique structure.   It is more evidence that Quebecois cinema is having something of a moment.     

Imagine a world in which an uncertain 16-year old girl can sleep with a different boy every night without being coerced or humiliated or having her feelings hurt deeply or getting a disease or becoming pregnant.  Well – that world is Quebec – at least according to writer Catherine Leger and director Sophie Lorain whose Charlotte a du Fun, known in English as Slut in a Good Way, is streaming on Amazon Prime.  This 2018 sex-positive hetero teen romp is shot in black and white and that’s the least of reasons for why it seems so out of step with the current US zeitgeist.  The film is a surprising disputation of the prevailing fraught attitudes about sex in the post Aids Me-Too era and I can only assume this is its raison d’etre.  Or maybe it’s just a Quebecois thing. 

The action centers around three best girl friends who get jobs at a toy store during the holiday rush – more as a means of meeting the hot guys working there than of making money.  The girls are a refreshingly motley crew. They look and act like real teens as they drink beer, smoke pot and talk shit while hanging out in the local park. Early in the film Charlotte learns that her long-time boyfriend is gay and this sets the ball rolling.  She’s vulnerable to the charms of the toy store boys who are all confident flirts and winds up sleeping with each one of them.  Realizing she’s ceded too much power and with inspiration from Maria Callas who she’s discovered on YouTube, she leads the girls in a sex strike (which doubles as a charity fund drive) in order to teach the boys a lesson and put things in balance.  Once the hook-ups stop, the boys and girls can to see each other for who they really are and are better able to pair off satisfactorily. 

While the film takes teen sexuality seriously – particularly the double standard by which boys and girls are judged for promiscuity – and Charlotte has to do some significant soul-searching in managing the fallout of her exploits – it’s all ultimately in good fun and things never get too nasty.  The film is almost disorientingly good-natured considering how rancorous sexual relations have become in the Trump era. It’s not for nothing that the film is set in a toy store.  The characters are all still kids and they like to play.  There’s not an adult to be found to put a damper on their fun or hinder them in working things out on their own – which is a nice contrast to the film’s American analogues – like Cock Blockers with its meddlesome buffoonish grown-ups.  Charlotte a du Fun is low budget and hardly cinematic but long on charm with snappy dialogue and a fresh perspective on teen sex and romance.  I’ll take Quebec over Hollywood despite the cold.

This low-key drama from 2014 about a young working-class woman’s journey of self-discovery which takes her from crafter to artist is streaming on Amazon Prime.  Sensitively written and directed by Julie Lopes Curval who scored a minor art house hit in 2002 with Seaside for which she won the Camera D’Or at Cannes, High Society never hits a false note (with the notable exception of its misleading title).  Alice, played by Ana Girardot (Back to Burgundy) lives in Bayeux in Normandy with her unemployed mother and her stepfather who has a stall at the local market.  She’s been knitting since childhood, has completed a vocational diploma in fashion and aspires to attending the prestigious École Duperré in Paris – which is a longshot for someone from her background.  We know she’s got potential though as the sweaters she knits from repurposed yarn which she hand- dyes in her bathtub are quite beautiful.  They catch the eye of Agnès, a wealthy summer resident who helps Alice with her application essay, advising her to leave out lines like ‘My life could have no other outcome’ and instead explain her craft and mention her artistic influences – including the renowned Bayeux Tapestry, a Romanesque masterpiece depicting events leading to the Norman conquest of England.  Thus begins Alice’s introduction to the world of bourgeois sophisticates.  She embarks on a consuming love affair with Agnès’ son Antoine while studying embroidery and gets an education in art, love and the ways in which the wealthy maintain their privilege.  High Society covers some of the same ground as Blue is the Warmest Color which preceded it by a year.  Both films offer insightful examinations of social class with High Society taking cues from French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s idea that the wealthy use taste to signal and maintain their position in the social hierarchy.  It’s fascinating to watch Alice’s growth as an artist.  Some of the film’s best scenes are of her professors critiquing her work and her struggles to understand and incorporate their comments.  When she takes an early assignment on the subject of “airiness” literally by knitting a bird, the prof tells her to “work on the wool while thinking of transparency, the intangible….Your bird can’t take flight.  Try cutting its wings to see” to which Alice later responds, “If I cut the wings, what’s left of the bird?”  Well – she’s about to find out what’s left of herself after her wings are clipped.  A better title than High Society would have been La Vie d’Alice: Chapitres 1 & 2!

Well – this is something interesting.  A three-part television series from Director Laetitia Masson streaming on Amazon Prime.  The director’s first film, En Avoir ou Pas, made an impression on me when I saw it theatrically in 1996.  After such a promising debut – which introduced audiences to the then relatively unknown Sandrine Kimberlain – I expected big things from her.  Masson’s follow up, A Vendre – again with Kimberlain – didn’t move me and the one after that starring Kimberlain and Johnny Halliday sounded too ridiculous.  I lost interest in her work but always thought something new from her might grab my attention at some point – so when I found this 2018 title streaming – I didn’t hesitate to watch.  Episode one gives us the story of 10-year-old Aurore whose murder of a young boy in her grim housing estate somewhere in the Camargue is witnessed by the boy’s younger sister Maya. The next two episodes deal with the repercussions of this monstrous act as Aurore and Maya try to get on with their lives 30 years hence.  Its an interesting set up that addresses issues of culpability and redemption.  The adult Aurore is played by the always interesting Elodie Bouchez – who acts her heart out.  Lolita Chammah as the grown-up Maya – looks and acts exactly like Isabelle Huppert – which is no surprise as she’s her real-life daughter.  Aurore’s guilt and shame have rendered her incapable of being loved while Maya’s trauma has left her unable to love.  The audience is hammered hard with this sort of facile symmetry and the show collapses under a mountain of implausibility and clunky writing.  Several characters are developed and then disappear without having added much to the story.  A case in point is Leonard, an African American techno musician living alone, for unexplained reasons, in a cabin in Gap.  We learn that Leonard was Aurore’s English teacher when she was institutionalized in a children’s prison in Marseille and is the only one to ever believe in her.  She’s apparently been saving his cell phone number for 20 years and calls him out of the blue and shows up at his rural retreat unannounced, daughter in tow.  He’s as befuddled as the audience.  Why is the character African American?  Why is he living alone in the middle of nowhere?  And I know the French regard techno music as a valid art form – but what the hell?  Leonard serves to show us that Aurore is not beyond redemption – but the specificities of his character seem random.  Enumerating the show’s shortcomings would take all day.  One of its inanities is the inclusion of Gerard Meylan, the actor most associated with Marseille – as the husband of Aurore’s social worker.  The character serves no purpose but did leave me wondering if there is perhaps some city ordinance stipulating that a show can’t be shot in Marseille unless Meylan is given a role.  Having said that though – I was delighted to see him.  In fact – despite Aurore’s many problems – I must admit that I rather enjoyed it.                  

This documentary, shot in beautiful Cinemascope in the late 60’s and early 70’s, details the rural Burgundy life of 80 something blacksmith Jules and his wife Felice, relatives of the film’s director Dominique Benicheti. It received its first American commercial release in a restored version shown at Film Forum in 2013 and is now streaming on Mubi (with subscription). What a beauty! The film is absolutely gorgeous and if your idea of fun is watching Jules stoke up his forge and bang out shutter hinges the same way he’s been doing it since 1905, you’re in for a real treat. I could’ve watched many more hours of Jules shaving, Felice peeling potatoes and the two of them quietly making coffee. And the wooden shoes! This film is the antidote to the hysteria of so much of contemporary culture. It coaxes the viewer to slow down and just watch and observe. Its quiet rhythm pulls the viewer in and transports them to a time when people lived closer to nature and work had dignity. An interesting companion piece to Cousin Jules is Judith Lit’s After Winter, Spring, (streaming on Amazon Prime) which documents the farming community of the filmmaker’s Dordogne neighbours. As with Cousin Jules, we get long takes of peasants practising their dying arts. Both films are elegies for a way of life slipping away as they’re being made. By the time we’re watching them, its pretty much over.

This 2017 Franco-Grec production by director Tony Gatlif is streaming on Amazon under the title Journey from Greece. I’d never heard of it before stumbling upon it while searching through Amazon Prime for something to watch. I hit the jackpot with this one. The sort of needle in the haystack I’m always hoping to find. Tony Gatlif is a Franco Algerian director best known in the US for his Gypsy trilogy which includes the 1993 film Latcho Drom. He’s got a deep filmography going back to 1975 and is an old hand and a known entity so you’d think a new release by him would attract some attention. Apparently not in the US – which is a real shame because this is a lovely film. Its a small scale odyssey of a young Rebetiko musician living on the island of Lesbos who’s sent on a solo mission to Istanbul to have a replacement connecting rod cast – so that her step-father can get his boat back in service. Her journey takes her through a bleak Southern Europe ravaged by Greece’s economic woes and the refugee crisis – which would be super depressing if not for Djam who radiates so much brash charisma we can see beyond the suffering. Djam sings, dances and blusters her way past troubles and picks up a sidekick along the way, a French girl who is lost and bereft of the resources Djam has in abundance. Djam embodies the spirit of Rebetiko, a working class ottoman folk music revived in the 60s much like the American 60s folk revival. In fact – when Djam comes across of group of Rebetiko musicians she knows from the festival circuit hanging out by a shuttered train station and joins them in a jam session, all I could think of was the complicity of Deadheads in the 1980s. Daphne Patakia as Djam is just extraordinary. I assumed after watching the film that she must be some well known Rebetiko musician but that’s not the case at all. She learned how to sing Rebetiko, to play the baglamas and to belly dance just for the role. The film is so well done and the lead is such a revelation that I felt I had to tell everyone I know bout it – but of course everyone I mentioned it to thought I was just blathering on about another pretentious crappy French movie.

This 2018 film directed by Romain Laguna and starring Zea Duprez is available to stream for free on Amazon Prime. I became aware of it because it played in the 2019 Rendez-vous with French Cinema https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/rendez-vous-with-french-cinema-2019-lineup/ festival at Lincoln Center. This festival is super well curated – though the anchor films with big stars by well known directors are often duds while the more obscure titles can be standouts. Les Meteorites is a terrific film. Like so many of my favorite French films its an intimate story (or intimiste as my wife says) of a young person finding their way in life. 16 year old Nina lives in the south of France in the countryside near Beziers. She’s a remarkably self-composed character who lives close to nature with no ambition in any conventional sense and little self-awareness. She’s absolutely self-assured though. She’s dropped out of school, lost her job and has no plans – but doesn’t seem bothered. She lives with her pot smoking mom who seems to make her living selling the produce she grows at a local market. Nina comes and goes as she pleases without her mother paying much attention – but there’s a nice connection between them – that’s beautifully highlighted in a matter of fact scene in which they carry a refrigerator down the stairs. There’s no man around to help them and they wouldn’t expect any help even if there were. Nina is a real child of nature – always observing insects animals and other natural phenomena (as in the movie’s title). Another matter of fact scene has her feeding horses with touching complicity. This film has so much of what I love about French cinema. The rural setting is gorgeous, Nina is a compelling character, the story arc ignores the conventions of American cinema. I could go on. Its a hidden gem. The sort of film I recommend to people knowing they’ll never see it. Worse – they just think I’m a pretentious idiot blathering on about another crappy French movie.