Movies

Festival of New French Cinema

December 4, 2008

Presented by Facets Cinematheque and French Cultural Services in Chicago, this festival runs Friday, December 5, through Sunday, December 14, at Facets Cinematheque. Tickets are $9, $5 for Facets members; for more information call 773-271-4114. Following are selected films screening through Thursday, December 11; a complete schedule is available at facets.org. Unless otherwise noted, all films are in French with subtitles.

Ain’t Scared Audrey Estrougo spent her teenage years in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris, and her intimate knowledge of that treacherous landscape informs this funky debut feature (released in France as Regarde-Moi, or “Look at Me”). Like Abdel Kechine’s Games of Love & Chance (2003), the movie explores the lives of modern teens, though Estrougo is even more direct in addressing her little community’s harsh racial and sexual codes. For the most part, the movie covers a single day, focusing on the boys in the first half and then rerunning the same sequence of events to focus on the girls in the second. The gulf between black and white is dwarfed by the one between men and women: in one scene a boy pressures his girlfriend for sex, but she worries that he’ll tell everyone; she tries to get him to say he loves her, but he worries that she’ll tell everyone. 93 min. (JJ)  Mon 12/8, 7 PM.

Didine This comedy-romance-drama is both funny and sad, and its exploration of thirtysomething femininity makes twentysomethings seem immature. Geraldine Pailhas (who got a false start in Hollywood with Don Juan DeMarco) gives a memorably subtle and sensitive performance as the title character, an obliging fashion artist who volunteers for an agency to help the aging. Romantically she’s torn between the somber grandson (Christopher Thompson) of one elderly charge (Edith Scob, who starred in Georges Franju’s Judex) and the irresponsible ex-husband (Benjamin Biolay) of her tormented best friend (Julie Ferrier). The whole cast is good—especially Elodie Bollee as the heroine’s ballsy coworker—and writer-director Vincent Dietschy has a real flair for casual French realism and humor. 103 min. (Michael Wilmington)  Sat 12/6, 9:15 PM, and Sun 12/7, 3 PM.

48 Hours a Day Aure Atika and Antoine de Caunes star as a harried professional couple in Paris who bicker over their household and parenting responsibilities. After Atika loses a prestigious account at her ad agency, she decides to get even with her spouse and announces she’s taken a six-month assignment in Tokyo, secretly moving in with a girlfriend and leaving him to mind their two young kids. Catherine Castel makes her writing and directing debut with this French comedy, whose notable achievement is that it’s stupid enough to be an American comedy. The contrived premise is to blame, though there are some solid laughs along the periphery, particularly in Atika’s paranoid reveries about what her husband is doing while she’s gone. With Victoria Abril. 85 min. (JJ)  Fri 12/5, 7 PM, and Wed 12/10, 9 PM.

In Mom’s Head Uncommonly wise about filial bonds, this offbeat charmer (2007) follows teenage tomboy Lucille (Chloe Coulloud) as she tries to free her mother (Karin Viard of Time Out) from a long depression. Lucille is angry about everything—her name, a boy she fights at school, even her birthday—but mostly she’s frustrated by her mother’s hypochondria and backyard trances (cleverly rendered by director Carine Tardieu as faux home movies). After discovering some keepsakes from the mother’s happier bohemian days, Lucille decides to reunite mom with her former Romeo, who’s grown almost as eccentric. To accent Lucille’s naive fantasies, cinematographer Aurelien Devaux uses framing and low-key lighting to evoke an illustrated fairy tale. 95 min. (AG)  Fri 12/5, 9 PM, and Sun 12/7, 7 PM.

The Killer Dark-eyed dandy Gilbert Melki and sullen, feral-looking Gregoire Colin make an interesting pair in this 2007 neonoir by writer-director Cedric Anger. Melki plays a frantic, overstretched investment analyst, and Colin is the stringy-haired provincial assassin hired to rub him out. The two meet and strike up a relationship, which throws a wrench into the works; more complications arrive with the hit man’s sudden conquest of ravishing Melanie Laurent (a near ringer for 60s actress Francoise Dorleac). Despite a good score by Gregoire Hetzel, a few twists, some high-rise style, and a bit of low-rent substance, this proves no more original than its overused title. 91 min. (Michael Wilmington)  Tue 12/9, 7 PM.

The Maiden and the Wolves In the years after World War I, a mountain belle (Laetitia Casta) joins forces with a crazy hermit (Stefano Accorsi) to save a wild wolf pack from predators, among them the woman’s rotten-rich fiance (Jean-Paul Rouve). Director-cowriter Gilles Legrand belongs to the French tradition of grand, loony visionaries that stretches from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Raymond Bernard, and Abel Gance all the way back to Georges Melies. Legrand has a penchant for lush period movies (he produced Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule), and Yves Angelo’s cinematography of the snowy slopes and cliffs is eye-popping. This makes a nice, nutty companion piece to Carroll Ballard’s eco-classic Never Cry Wolf, as long as you don’t try to reconcile it with the real world. 110 min. (Michael Wilmington)  Sat 12/6, 1 PM, and Thu 12/11, 9 PM.

On the Ropes Lacking the raw vitality of Girlfight and the narrative heft of Million Dollar Baby, this 2007 drama about female boxers doesn’t add much to the sports underdog genre. The main characters are close-knit cousins from a working-class suburb: bantamweight Angie (Louise Szpindel), whose father (Richard Anconina) owns a fight club, and the heavier Sandra (Stephanie Sokolinski). We never learn why Angie throws in the towel during a championship bout, so her reasons for seeking a rematch are unclear; better delineated is Sandra, who’s driven by jealousy and ego to lose weight and vie for the father’s backing. I expected more insight from the filmmaker, prizewinning boxer Magaly Richard-Serrano; she settles for ambiguity when she could have made art. 90 min. (AG)  Tue 12/9, 9 PM, and Wed 12/10, 7 PM.

13m2 Three Parisian lowlifes plan to rob an armored truck using motorcycles and AK-47s, but their botched heist leaves a guard fatally wounded and they hole up in a tiny bunker with their loot, waiting for the heat to die down. Barthelemy Grossman, who wrote, directed, and stars in this low-budget crime drama, has cited Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes as inspirations. But one can hardly imagine Scorsese passing up the kinetic possibilities of the high-speed robbery as Grossman does, confining it to the soundtrack while his camera does an arty tracking shot down a graffiti-littered alleyway. And surely Cassavetes would have come up with more revealing drama among the three cloistered fugitives than Grossman’s standard-issue recriminations and double-crosses. The plot is nicely structured and the ghetto locations persuasively shabby, but the movie could use a shot of adrenaline. 80 min. (JJ)  Sat 12/6, 3:15 PM, and Mon 12/8, 9 PM.

The Vanishing Point The title refers to the focal point at which all lines converge to create perspective, which becomes the leitmotif of this highly imaginative 2007 mystery. Sylvie Testud (Fear and Trembling) stars as a headstrong art student in Paris who’s determined to prove the identity of the unknown model central to a masterwork by the 18th-century painter Antoine Watteau. Ignoring her imperious, disapproving adviser (Jean-Pierre Marielle of The Da Vinci Code), she follows a clue provided by her secret admirer, a deaf-mute street performer nicely played by James Thierree. Director Laurent de Bartillat uses jump cuts, rack focus, wipes, and extreme close-ups to suggest thematic connections in this elaborate puzzle, which considers both the rewards and the costs of tunnel vision. In French and Flemish with subtitles. 79 min. (AG)  Sat 12/6, 5 PM, and Sun 12/7, 1 PM.

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