Tag Archives: French films

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Happy End

by Hope Madden

Happy End is as perceptive as it is dispassionate—and this, as every choice filmmaker Michael Haneke makes—is intentional.

Channeling themes from across his career, pulling most noticeably from both his 1992 horror Benny’s Video and his 2012 masterpiece Amour, Haneke slowly, deliberately unveils a tale of distance.

His subjects are the well-off Laurent family: a doddering patriarch (Amour’s brilliant Jean-Louis Trintignant), the daughter who runs the company (Isabelle Huppert), her surgeon brother (Mathieu Kassovitz), her disappointing son (Franz Rogowski), and the surgeon’s 13-year-old daughter, Eve (Fantine Harduin).

Eve has come to live with the family because of her mother’s suicide.

In the film’s opening moments, we watch as an emotionally unattached and unnamed character documents a mother’s every banal moment with critical commentary before poisoning a pet hamster.

It’s a maneuver that announces Haneke’s point: whether by way of technology, psychosis or money, the Laurents lack any depth of emotion, intimacy or personal connection. Or is it humanity they lack?

The filmmaker braids together the stories and points of view of several main participants, keeping his focus at arm’s length until we’ve become apprehensive about every move. Why is Georges (Trintignant) wandering the median in a wheelchair and talking to strangers? What struggles could cause Pierre (Rogowski) to behave—and dance—like that?

Why would anyone leave a baby alone with Eve?

Patient viewers will recognize Haneke’s deliberate and chilly storytelling, but Happy End really requires your patience. Still, don’t let your eye wander because too many frames contain a startling image, and this filmmaker won’t insist that you notice.

Eventually the distance becomes somewhat problematic because it feels as if Haneke is pulling punches he was happy to land in previous films.

As is always the case, though, you’re repaid for your efforts. Whether it’s the understated brilliance of the performances (Trintignant and Harduin are particularly memorable), the chilling clash of human emotion with whatever has taken its place within the Laurent family, or the diabolical final image, Happy End leaves you stunned.

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Delicious Dish

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Raw

by Hope Madden

Much has been made of barf bags and fainting during screenings of writer/director Julia Ducournau’s feature debut, Raw.

A festival favorite, the film has been plagued by rumors of aggressive audience nausea, let’s say, as well as ambulance calls. Several theaters recently have offered vomit bags with ticket purchases.

Don’t let that cloud your expectations. Raw is no Hostel, no Human Centipede.

What you’ll find instead of in-your-face viscera and nihilistic corporeal abuse is a thoughtful coming of age tale.

And meat.

Justine (Garance Marillier, impressive) is off to join her older sister (Ella Rumpf) at veterinary school – the very same school where their parents met. Justine may be a bit sheltered, a bit prudish to settle in immediately, but surely with her sister’s help, she’ll be fine.

The film often felt to me like a cross between Trouble Every Day and Anatomy. The latter, a German film from 2000, follows a prudish med student dealing with carnage and peer pressure. In the former, France’s Claire Denis directs a troubling parable combining sexual desire and cannibalism.

Ducournau has her cagey way with the same themes that populate any coming-of-age story – pressure to conform, peer pressure generally, societal order and sexual hysteria. Here all take on a sly, macabre humor that’s both refreshing and unsettling.

A vegetarian from a meat-free family, Justine objects to the freshman hazing ritual of eating a piece of raw meat. But once she submits to peer pressure and tastes that taboo, her appetite is awakened and it will take more and more dangerous, self-destructive acts to indulge her blood lust.

In a very obvious way, Raw is a metaphor for what can and often does happen to a sheltered girl when she leaves home for college. But as Ducournau looks at those excesses committed on the cusp of adulthood, she creates opportunities to explore and comment on so many upsetting realities, and does so with absolute fidelity to her core metaphor.

She immediately joins the ranks of Jennifer Kent (Babadook) and Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) – all recent, first time horror filmmakers whose premier features predict boundless talent.

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Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down

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Staying Vertical

by Hope Madden

Alain Guiraudie’s meditation on manhood Staying Vertical hits upon similar themes as his 2013 murder mystery Stranger by the Lake. In other ways, one film is the other’s opposite.

Stranger by the Lake – a serial killer film set on the banks of a French lake used for gay cruising – examined its topic from the inside out. We were surrounded by the suspects, the victims and the scene of the crime. We knew what the leads knew when they knew it, so we participated in each curious choice.

And though Guiraudie once again considers sexuality – sexual expression, repression and identity – he keeps the audience at arm’s length from the exploration.

We wander the French countryside with Léo (Damien Bonnard). Our wide-eyed protagonist is a screenwriter in search of a story. He meanders from one situation to the next, his open curiosity his guide as well as his frequent undoing.

Staying Vertical’s story is as loose and open as Stranger’s was tightly wound. The film is borderline plot free. Leo hikes into the path of shepherd Marie (India Hair), plays with her kids, dodges looks from her father (Raphaël Thiéry – a find!), wanders away and, periodically, back.

His rambling leads him to town, where he tries to connect with a homeless man under a bridge. Then we’re on to a ramshackle house and into the lives of a young man and his ambiguously-defined father figure, into a bizarre plant therapy situation, back to Marie and out again.

Between the loose structure and Bonnard’s guileless performance, Guiraudie creates a fascinatingly male world of disconnection, longing and hope. Léo is – as are we, by extension – an interloper, regardless of his attempts to situate himself.

The filmmaker knows how to arrest your attention despite the meandering nature of the plot. The frank and often jarring sexual imagery (seriously, there’s a scene set to a Pink Floyd riff that will floor you) manages to question preconceived notions in truly fresh ways.

He also shoots scenes through with wry humor, and he captures landscapes (in look and sound) as few if any current filmmaker can.

Guiraudie’s metaphors are frequent and interesting, but never stronger than in the closing scene. Though the crossing storylines don’t always work, the characters that populate this harsh but lovely environment pique your interest as Léo’s journey captures your imagination.

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Working for the Weekend

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Two Days, One Night

by Hope Madden

A woman wakes from a nap due to a phone call. She’s baking for the kids. It seems like a lovely way to spend your afternoon, really, drowsy and surrounded by the smell of baked goods. So why does Sandra (Oscar-nominated Marion Cotillard) sound defensive about the nap and too enthusiastic about the treats with whoever is on the phone?

Because there are layers and layers to the most ordinary of circumstances, a point Two Days, One Night explores so effectively.

Sandra’s co-workers were faced with a vote: each stands to gain a large bonus in return for eliminating one salary – Sandra’s. She has the weekend to convince them to give up their bonus and save her job.

If it sounds contrived, rest assured that writing/directing brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne embrace their characteristically naturalistic style to great effect. The films lacks any hint of melodrama, thanks in part to the brothers’ honest style and in greater part to a lead performance utterly absent of artificiality.

Cotillard is a master, and this film is no exception, it’s a highlight. Her gestures, her gaze, her posture, every syllable of dialogue simply convince you this is a woman fighting for her dignity as well as her job. She’s aided by a large, capable cast and buoyed by the Dardennes’ fly-on-the-wall camera work.

The film has larger goals, looking at ideas as concrete as corporate indifference, as amorphous as depression, and as grand as human nature. Grounding all this examination in the intimate and mundane details of one woman’s struggle keeps the film anchored in the reality so precious to the filmmakers.

Two Days, One Night is not as touching as the Dardennes’ Kid with a Bike or as gripping as L’Enfant – two of their finest efforts. It feels more contrived than those films, its craftsmanship more obvious. But Sandra’s challenge and her personal journey are so beautifully articulated that you won’t care. The film is a small, potent wonder.

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Am I Blue?

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The Blue Room

by Hope Madden

A quietly hypnotic tale that slowly takes shape, The Blue Room is an impressive piece of French cinema. This story of a clandestine love affair is hauntingly told with flashbacks that blend languidly with the present to create a dreamy effect.

Known best for performances like his devastatingly complex Jean-Do in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Mathieu Amalric proves just as nimble when behind the camera. He directs, stars and co-adapts the novel by respected and prolific crime writer Georges Simenon, a sordid yet restrained tale of love, suspicion and shame.

While Amalric weaves dreamily between a couple’s passionate moments, the man’s memory of his recent past, and his current predicament, Christophe Beaucarne’s camera articulates every detail. Amalric creates an atmosphere that mirrors his character Julien’s state of mind.

His performance is just as impressive. As these details swim through his consciousness alongside fragments of passion and moments of familial happiness, we and he try to make sense of what’s going on. As we finally, simultaneously, understand, the effect is as devastating to us as it is to Julien.

Amalric’s turn is as restrained as the storytelling, and his face animates his growing helplessness, terror and realization.

It’s a slight story, padded with no fat at all and clocking in at a slick 75 minutes. Within that timeframe, Amalric picks at your nerves, keeps you guessing, and delivers a tidy little mystery.

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Fright Club

Countdown: Best French Language Horror Movies

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French horror films are not for the squeamish. Hell, even Belgian and Canadian horror seems affected by the French flair for bloodshed and discomfort – the Grand Guignol, as they might say. And those crazy frogs may be making the very best in the genre right now. In celebration of this week’s live Fright Club, the brilliant and horrifying Calvaire (in 35 mm!), we count down the other 5 best French language horror films.

5. Sheitan (2006)

The fantastic Vincent Cassel stars as the weirdest handyman ever, spending a decadent Christmas weekend with a rag tag assortment of nightclub refugees. After Bart (Olivier Barthelemy) is tossed from the club, his mates and the girls they’re flirting with head out to spend the weekend at Eve’s (a not shy Rosane Mesquida). Way out in rural France, they meet Eve’s handyman, his very pregnant wife, and a village full of borderline freaks. The film is savagely uncomfortable and refreshingly unusual. Cassel’s performance is a work of lunatic genius, and his film is never less than memorable.  

4. Martyrs (2008)

This import plays like three separate films: orphanage ghost story, suburban revenge fantasy, and medical experimentation horror. The first 2 fit together better than the last, but the whole is a brutal tale that is hard to watch, hard to turn away from, and worth the effort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbct9qWBSME

3. Irreversible (2002)

Gaspar Noe is perhaps the most notorious French filmmaker working in the genre, and Irreversible is his most notorious effort. Filmed in reverse chronological order and featuring two famously brutal sequences, Noe succeeds in both punishing his viewers, and reminding them of life’s simple beauty. There’s no denying the intelligence of the script, the aptitude of the director, or the absolute brilliance of Monica Bellucci in an incredibly demanding role.

2. Them (2006)

Brisk, effective and terrifying, Them is among the most impressive horror flicks to rely on the savagery of adolescent boredom as its central conceit. Writers/directors/Frenchmen David Moreau and Xavier Palud offer a lean, unapologetic, tightly conceived thriller that never lets up. Creepy noises, hooded figures, sadistic children and the chaos that entails – Them sets up a fresh and mean cat and mouse game that pulls you in immediately and leaves you unsettled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Djvi1-k0s

1. Inside (2007)

Holy shit. Sarah lost her husband in a car crash some months back, and now, on the eve of Christmas, she sits, enormous, uncomfortable, and melancholy about the whole business. Were this an American film, the tale may end shortly after Sarah’s Christmas Eve  peril makes the expectant mom realize just how much she loves, wants, and seeks to protect her unborn baby. But French horror films are different. This is study in tension wherein one woman will do whatever it takes, with whatever utensils are available, to get at the baby still firmly inside another woman’s body.