French Movie Mercredi: 36 Fillette

 

36 Fillette. 1988. Directed by Catherine Breillat. Starring Delphine Zentout and Etienne Chicot. 

The title, 36 Fillette, refers to a clothing size that a teen girl might wear. The movie is about Lili, a 14 year old who wants to lose her virginity and thinks she might have sex with Maurice, an older man (I mean if she's 14 that's not saying much) probably in his 30s or so, who is not sure he wants to have sex with her. And she's not really sure either. She meets him while on vacation with her family and it's the second movie I've seen by Breillat about girls on vacation. Something about being away from home, even with your parents in tow, gives a girl ideas.

Lili is petulant and difficult but she's pretty and eager and doesn't really understand the forces she's playing with. Things don't go well between her and Maurice but all seems well in the end.

The movie is pretty explicit as you might imagine. The opening scenes show her talking to a celebrity played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, an actor who starred in what might be the best coming of age movie of all time (or at least the best one made about boys), Les 400 Coups, François Truffaut's 1959 classic. He's mentoring her a little and the casting choice is hilarious. 36 Fillette is not the best coming of age movie made about girls, or even Breillat's best (that for me is Fat Girl) but it's good and worthwhile if you are interested in girls' stories and renderings of adolescent sexuality that are honest and raw.

I'm glad I finally got around to seeing it.

 

36 Fillette is not available on streaming to my knowledge. I rented a DVD from Netflix.

French Movie Mercredi: Un beau matin (2022)

 

Un beau matin (2022). Dir: Mia Hansen-Love. Starring Léa Seydoux and Pascal Greggory.

Un beau matin, or One Fine Morning, is a sweet and moving film about a single mother, Sandra, who is trying to find a good nursing home for her ailing father and navigate parenthood and love five years after the death of her husband. 

Sandra, played by Léa Seydoux, works as a translator and has a young daughter named Linn. Her father Georg is a philosophy professor suffering from some version of dementia who has gone blind and is rapidly losing the ability to care for himself. When the film opens Sandra is facing up to the very daunting task of finding him an appropriate and affordable place for full-time care.

At the same time, she bumps into an old friend, a married man named Clément, and the two launch into a romantic relationship. It may or may not succeed.

One Fine Morning is a very affecting movie, bittersweet and complicated, and Seydoux is luminous in a role that could not possibly be more different than the one she plays in France, which I talked about last week. I'm not sure she even wears makeup at all! It's a far cry from the many glamorous or historical roles she often takes, more like some of her earlier work but instead of playing a confused teen she's grown up and is playing a full grown woman finding her way. 

Highly recommended. 

One Fine Morning Available to stream on mulitple platforms.

French Movie Mercredi: France (2021)

 

France (2021). Directed by Bruno Dumont. Starring Léa Seydoux and Benjamin Biolay.

France is a hot mess.

It's billed as a satire about celebrity and the media, and stars one of the biggest stars in France (the country), Léa Seydoux, as France de Meurs, a celebrity journalist who begins to question her life after hitting a young man on a bike with her car. She has a husband, Fred, and a best work friend and assistant, Lou, who is half accomplice and half enabler. France leaves the limelight but she doesn't stay out for long and when she comes back it's an open question whether or not it will be business as usual.

The movie runs a little over two hours and it's entertaining and will keep you watching. I didn't love it but it was fun. It has some pretty crazy sequences, which I will leave you to discover. It's definitely not a movie to take too seriously. There is no real sexual content but there is one pretty shockingly violent scene towards the end.

I'm a big fan of Seydoux and will happily watch anything she's in. She's very appealing always, she has a terrific energy and always seems like she's a little smarter than the character she's playing. I'm glad I picked this one out for my Sunday night.

French Movie Mercredi: Le Monde Après Nous (2021)

 

Le Monde Après Nous (2021). Starring Aurélien Gabrielli and Louise Chevillote. Directed by Louda Ben Salah.

Le Monde Après Nous, or The World After Us, is a very enjoyable love story about Labidi (Aurélien Gabrielli) a young Franco-Tunisian struggling writer, and his love affair with Elisa (Louise Chevillote), a pretty student, as he tries to get his first book, and his life, off the ground.

Elisa and Labidi meet in a cafe. He takes her back to the studio apartment he shares with his roommate Aleksei; both men are trying to make a go of it in life and love but they are young and poor. Labidi actually sleeps on the floor on a yoga mat. He wants better for himself and for his new pretty girlfriend so he rents them an apartment neither can afford and it's a question of whether they will be able to make it. At the same time he is negotiating his relationship with his immigrant parents who run a bar nearby. The film is set in Lyon.

I liked this movie a lot. This is a good one for Sunday morning maybe, it's sweet and romantic and I found myself rooting for this young couple. I will say I wish Elisa had been developed a little more. Her job is to be pretty and motivate Labidi to get his act together and she doesn't have much more to offer than that. They go through some perfunctory ups and downs but I promise things will be okay in the end. A cappuccino would go well with this somewhat frothy romantic drama.

 

Le Monde Après Nous is available to stream on Apple+ and elsewhere.

French Movie Mercredi: Félix et Lola (2001)

 

Félix et Lola (2001). Starring Philippe Torreton and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Directed by Patrice Leconte.

A fairgrounds operator, Félix, played by Philippe Torreton, becomes enamored of Lola, an enigmatic young woman who hangs out at the fairgrounds and gets a job there. She is played by a morose short-haired Charlotte Gainsbourg. She has some kind of shady past and present connected to a singer whom Félix is seen shooting at the beginning of the movie.

I have to say this is one of the blander of Leconte's offerings, at least in my opinion. I love Charlotte Gainsbourg- she is both French movie royalty as the daughter of icons Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin and an icon in her own right- but her heavy eye makeup, sloppy hair and downcast attitude render her character kind of like a My Chemical Romance song come to life and I'm not sure I get what Félix sees in her. Or what she sees in Félix, who doesn't seem to have a lot to offer either.

Leconte does a nice job with that opening scene building interest and suspense. I think I like Leconte more when he's using source material he didn't create himself, like with Monsieur Hire, or when there is a little more pointed satire, like Ridicule. I want to watch Ridicule again now that I mention it and maybe some of his other movies that I saw a long time ago like The Hairdresser's Husband and The Widow of St. Pierre. I think I can blame a lot of my adolescent and post-adolescent angst on him. This movie would not have made much of an impression even on teenage Marie though. 

You can watch this on a Sunday morning but your attention might wander if you have breakfast with it. I watched it on a Sunday night and it did not 100% hold mine. Maybe this is one for Leconte completeists only.

French Movie Mercredi: Zero F***s Given (2022)

 

Zero F***s Given. 2022. Directed by Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre and starring Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Rien à Foutre or Zero F***s Given is a 2022 film about Cassandre, a flight attendant on a mid-range airline based in Brussels who is just trying to make a go of life. The film depicts her ups and downs, her daily challenges and her longer term efforts to make something out of her life as she self-sabotages again and again. It reminded me a lot of what it was like to be a young person stuck in a depressing loop of work and more work with no real way out.

Cassandre is a pretty average 20-something more ore less on her own and working in a demanding and often degrading profession. She's just about treading water most of the time- neither successful nor failing. She's not sure what she wants beyond just getting from one day to the next.

Exarchopoulos, whom you might remember from Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) is charismatic even when her affect is flat and her character seems disconnected from what's happening to her. She portrays an alienated young woman very convincingly. When Cassandre's life comes to a crossroads, she must face some things she'd been avoiding and come to terms with a tragedy that's haunting her.

I liked this movie a lot even though it was pretty light on plot and action. It was a very absorbing character study whose dramas are quiet and very true to life. It could be a Sunday morning movie but not really in the feel-good sense. Maybe a Saturday afternoon movie, something to pass a lazy day or a quiet evening.

Currently available to stream on multiple platforms.

French Movie Mercredi: Late August, Early September (1998)

 

Fin Août, Début Septembre (1998). Directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Mathieu Almaric, Jeanne Balabar and Virginie Ledoyen.

Late August, Early September is a moody French relationship melodrama from 1998, about growing up and growing older, and a group of friends making the transition from youth to middle age and from one relationship to another etc.

Directed by Olivier Assayas, master of such films, and starring Mathieu Almaric and Jeanne Balabar as Gabriel and Jenny, a couple splitting up and moving on, it's talky and immersive. When the movie opens Gabriel and Jenny are selling the apartment they shared for a number of years. Gabriel is seeing Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) a younger sexpot version of Jenny and he seems to be at a crossroads with the two women. Jenny still means a lot to him but he's clearly besotted with Anne at the same time. Alongside this threesome is François Cluzet as their friend Adrien, a struggling author with health problems and a burgeoning romance with a teenager that he's keeping a secret.

I liked this movie a lot. I think it qualifies as a Sunday morning since the adult content is pretty minimal (one somewhat edgy sex scene) and the relationship between Adrien and his young girlfriend Véra is kept out of the bedroom. Anyway it's a thoughtful drama, not too heavy but filled with nuance and acting that brings out the subtle relationships between all of these people and the various characters circling around them.  I'm a big fan of Assayas in general and I think this is a pretty solid drama for adults that will make you feel things if not think too too much.

It's available currently on HBOMax.

French Movie Mercredi: The Skies of Lebanon (Sous le Ciel d'Alice) (2020)

 

In the 1950s, a young Swiss woman named Alice comes to Lebanon in search of work and adventure. She dislikes her native country and takes the first opportunity to leave; she is trained to be a nanny and accepts a job offer from a Lebanese family. She only speaks French and Italian and soon meets a handsome Arab man named Joseph; they fall in love and marry, and Alice and Joseph make a life. 

When civil war breaks out in Beirut, the family comes under increasing pressure to emigrate and the movie opens with Alice apparently leaving her husband after much struggle. The flashbacks start out cotton-candy-beautiful, their cardboard and green-screen animated backdrops reflecting Alice's youth, her hopefulness and her excitement at building a new life for herself. Time passes; things get harder but then they might get better too.

I loved this movie a lot. Alba Rohrwacher is so moving and engaging. She reminds me of Julie Delpy, the French star of the Before Midnight series, but older and wiser. Her costar Wajdi Mouawad is charming and sweet. I was rooting for them and their family every step of the way.

I've been waiting for Sous le Ciel d'Alice to hit streaming for a while now and I was happy to be able to watch it finally.  It would be a fine Sunday morning movie. The violence is all off-camera and the ending is sweet and satisfying. Get your tissues ready. 

Note: Alba Rohrwacher is the narrator of the first three seasons of the HBO series My Brilliant Friend and will play Elena in season four. Stay tuned!

Available to stream on multiple platforms.

French Movie Mercredi: Monsieur Hire (1989)

When Monsieur Hire came out I was 16 and saw it in the theater in my town because I was studying French and took every opportunity to hear and practice the language. I was a regular at the theater but they really should not have let me into a movie whose tagline should be: Psychosexual Obsession- When You're Georges Simenon and Patrice Leconte, It's What You Do!

I did not know at 16 that the movie was based on a Georges Simenon book, (Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire, or Mr. Hire's Engagement, roughly) but I was not at all surprised to learn this when I saw it again recently. It did make me a fan for life of the director, Patrice Leconte, and I've seen a number of his movies since. I haven't read the book, but the movie has an atmosphere of claustrophobic eroticism similar to other Simenon books I have read, like Tropic Moon and An Act of Passion. And it's definitely of a piece with Leconte's other works.

It's been a while since I've seen it but I have to say it holds up.

Monsieur Hire, played by Michel Blanc, is a reclusive loner who likes to watch his neighbor, pretty Alice, played by Sandrine Bonnaire, through his window. Alice has a boyfriend who may be involved in a murder. Monsieur Hire is not well-liked in his neighborhood and is openly suspected of the murder himself. He then gets into his head that he is actually in love with Alice and things kind of go downhill from there.

I enjoyed this movie for its suspense and its subtle sexiness. The ending is a downer but what can you expect from the dynamic duo of Simenon and Leconte. I saw it on Kanopy which I've mentioned before; it's a free streaming service available to many U.S. public library patrons. If you like thrillers with a tinge of eroticism this might be a good choice for you. Adults only though.

I watched this on Kanopy.

French Movie Mercredi: Happening (2021)

 

L'événement (2021) Dir: Audrey Diwan. Starring Anamaria Vartolomei, based on the novel by Annie Ernaux.

I had L'événement, or Happening, on my to-be-watched list before Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last week, but that award definitely bumped it up for me and luckily it was available to stream from several services. This 2021 movie is set in the 1960s in Paris and tells the story of Anne, a fiercely ambitious college student who gets pregnant at a time when abortion often meant death or prison. 

Anamaria Vartolomei isn't the only actor in the movie but she might as well be, so fully does she command the screen as Anne, who is determined to end her pregnancy one way, or the other, and continue with her studies. I think she's in every scene. It all hinges on Anne's drive and grit. Nothing comes easy. Even the people who try to help her seem like they either don't care or don't have the necessary power or agency to act. What would happen to Anne if she fell in line too?

It's a depressing movie for sure especially in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling which threatens to send us all back into the world she lives in, where abortion is talked about only in whispers, where a pregnant person's agency and freedom don't exist or exist only at the whims of whatever doctor they happen to run into. It's really terrifying and unfortunately all too real. One word will determine her fate.

It made me angry, and sad, and then angry and sad again. You should watch it.

French Movie Mercredi: Les Illusions Perdus (Lost Illusions) (2021)

 

Lost Illusions, a 2021 film based on a novel by Honoré de Balzac, is kind of a classic French art-house-period-piece, set in the 19th century among both high and low society, about an up-and-comer from the provinces who's trying to make it not just in the big city but in the biggest city of the time. Paris is a garden of delights, a hornet's nest and viper pit rolled into one- glamorous, treacherous, full of promise and full of sorrow.

Lucien de Rubempré, as he styles himself, is a lower class man and a poet working in a print shop in Angoulême- the sticks. He is having a passionate affair with a local noblewoman, Louise de Bargeton. They decide to go to Paris but are unprepared for what awaits them there. Soon, Lucien connects with a young newspaperman who tutors Lucien in the ways of the press- its dizzying levels of corruption, its power, the ups and downs that come with weathering the storms of Parisian life. Lucien falls in love with a young courtesan, Coralie, and soon her fate is bound to his.

I think what I enjoyed about the movie is the way the narrative is both so 19th century and so contemporary- how little has changed about the mechanics of power, the power of the press, and the power of the heart to love and to hate in equal measures. It's a good old fashioned costume drama but it also speaks to issues we care about in 2022 in ways that I did not find overly didactic or academic. The narrator speculates about the future of the press and you can infer commentary about the internet and influencer culture too.  There is a great deal of humor here as well as pathos and irony and while Lucien's fall may be preordained, it is still tragic. But he does have the chance to start again, and we are reminded that even that is a privilege that is not shared by all, in his world or in ours.

French Movie Mercredi: L'Homme du Train (2002)

 

L'Homme du Train is a 2002 movie directed by Patrice Leconte (Monsieur Hire, The Hairdresser's Husband, Ridicule) and starring two icons of French cinema and music, Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday. It was pretty interesting.

Milan, a bank robber played by rock star Hallyday, rolls into town on the aforementioned train and needs a place to stay; he falls in with good-natured retired teacher Manesquier, played by Rochefort. The two build an uneasy trust with Manesquier itching to play out a bad-guy fantasy after seeing Milan's leather jacket and guns. Milan, for his part, wonders what life would be like in Manesquier's country home teaching poetry. 

Leconte films are usually edgy, suspenseful and weird; this one ticks those boxes but it's very low-key and everything feels really underplayed and underexpressed. It's like a middle-aged-guy bromance, each man wondering what it would be like to fill the other's shoes. Hallyday exudes a quiet menace and Manesquier is attracted to that, attracted to the chaos he represents and the barely repressed violence and danger he exudes. Manesquier's quiet respectability and his love of poetry seem to gain Milan's equally quiet respect. 

Tension builds around the robbery that Milan is planning with his cronies, and around an upcoming operation that Manesquier is planning as well. Their fates are intertwined.

Definitely edgy, suspenseful and weird, L'Homme du Train is like a Sunday morning movie when you've had one cup of coffee too many. It will leave you a little jittery and a little worn out, but it's worth it.

French Film Mercredi: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is Jacques Demy's candy-coated love story released in 1964 but set in the late 1950s, about Geneviève and Guy, two lovers on the cusp of their adult lives. Geneviève works in her mother's umbrella shop (the 'parapluies' of the title) and Guy works in an auto shop; they are young and beautiful and in love, and anything seems possible.

Anything, until Guy is called up to do his military service in Algeria. Geneviève finds out she's pregnant, and choices have to be made, about herself and her future.

The movie is told entirely in song. Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève and Nino Castlenuovo as Guy are delightful and romantic and adorable. The movie is a bittersweet delight throughout, right to the teary ending telling of the emptiness of daydreams and the rewards of real love. 

When I first saw this movie as a teenager I thought it was inexpressably sad but it's one of those movies that ages with you and I see more depth in it now, even if that depth isn't much more than that of an after-dinner mint. Slight, sweet and wonderful, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is a classic to be savored again and again.

Foreign-Film Wednesday

It's not a French movie this week but I watched the wonderful The Worst Person in World (2021) a romantic drama from Norway about a young woman named Julie trying to figure out what she wants. It's a topic lots of us can relate to.

Julie is a bright young woman who gets bored easily. When we meet her she is a medical student but gives it up to try psychology, then switches to photography, then settles into a life as a bookseller. (Huh, familiar.) She gets into a relationship with Aksel, a comics artist a decade or so older, but that relationship might founder on the subject of children. Aksel, leaning into middle age, leans hard on Julie to have kids, which she is deeply ambivalent about. Things happen; time passes.

The movie stars Renate Reinseve as Julie and is directed by Joachim Trier. These names mean nothing to me but the movie was sweet, moving and affecting, and Julie felt very real and relatable to me. I liked how the film took on the subject of having children without really taking sides, and frankly it was nice to see a childfree heroine who was happy and thriving. I dislike stories that show the only route to happiness is conventional domestication, or that punish women for making their own path, even if the resolution felt like a cop-out.

I don't know what makes Julie "the worst person in the world"- her agency, her will to live life on her own terms, her lack of interest in kids. The relationship between Julie and Aksel definitely hit a nerve for me, especially towards the end, and tears were shed. It's a movie I'll probably turn to again.

French Movie Mercredi: Bluebeard (2009)

 

 

Catherine Breillat's 2009 film Barbe Bleue is definitely one for the grownups.

She tells the story of the Charles Perrault's Bluebeard through the eyes of two pairs of sisters, Marie-Anne and Catherine, and Marie-Catherine and Anne. 

The first pair are little girls and Catherine, the young girl, tells the story to her older sister Marie-Anne, who is terrified by it. Marie-Catherine and Anne are the girls in the story; they hear about Lord Barbe Bleue through local gossip and are appalled that someone rumored to have killed his wives has escaped justice. The girls return home from school to find out their father has died and the family has become impoverished, so one of them has to get married and the younger girl, Marie-Catherine, is selected to become Barbe-Bleue's bride.

The movie felt moody and felt slow-moving to me, very suspenseful as we await the fate of the young Marie-Catherine. She plays her role in the fairy tale to a point and then Breillat reminds us that even the young and innocent have agency and the power to change how their stories end.  Marie-Catherine is played by actress Lola Créton with a combination of wide-eyed wonder and steely resolve; this is a young lady who knows what she wants.

I do like Breillat's movies for the willfulness of her heroines and the way she portrays her women and girls as taking charge of their lives and their sexuality. She has a reputation for being "edgy" which I think has to do with the frank way she depicts womens' sexuality and women trying to control their own desires rather than being controlled by those of others. Definitely not a "Sunday morning movie" but worth your time for sure.

French Movie Mercredi: The Rose Maker (2022)

The Rose Maker (or La Fine Fleur) is what my mother used to call a Sunday-morning-movie; something light and delightful to watch with a cup of coffee on a nice morning when you don't have a lot to do.

The set up is kind of familiar; Eve is aging rose gardener, whose business is failing as her traditional flowers are losing out to the fancy hybrids from the big corporate farmer. She's in debt and struggling to pay her last faithful assistant when she's approached to take on three misfits from the social services system as her new team. She teaches them to be gardeners and together they come up with a plan to save her business and themselves.

It's a sweet, fun movie. Everyone blossoms when they work together. Petty criminal Fred discovers a secret talent that changes his life; shy Nadège comes out of her shell, and Samir, an immigrant who feels irrelevant, learns to value himself. Eve also finds herself renewed and refreshed with her new friends and new purpose.

The comedy is pretty low-key and their big plan doesn't exactly go to plan but it all works out in the end. It stars Catherine Frot as Eve and she brings a perfect blend of arrogance and humility to the character. She also looks great, with her little scarves, so French.  I'm also obsessed with the big song from the movie, Antoine Elie's "La rose et l'armure." Check it out on your favorite music streaming service and also check out this charming movie when you get a chance. Here's a trailer.

French Movie Mercredi: Marguerite et Julien (2015)

Marguerite et Julien, the 2015 movie based on the true story of the Ravelet siblings who were executed in the 17th century for incest and adultery, is definitely a hot mess. I have to admit it's also one of my favorite recent(ish) French films. It was directed by Valérie Donzelli from a script originally written with François Truffaut in mind. I wish both versions existed.

Marguerite and Julien are raised together in a castle in the French countryside, protected by wealth and privilege, fairytale siblings in a magic tower. They are inseparable as children but their parents (and their priest uncle) see something unsavory in their devotion. Julien is eventually sent away to school along with their brother Philippe. When the boys return as young men, Marguerite has grown up too and is about to married off. She and Julien rediscover each other and chaos ensues.

It's melodramatic, overwrought and full of crazy anachronisms; it's more like historical fantasy than historical fiction. It has a silly framing device of a schoolteacher telling the legendary story of Marguerite and Julien to a room of enraptured girls in a dormitory,  really too young to be hearing this story. The sex isn't even very sexy; the one time we see them having sex, it's actually kind of gross.  But this movie still gets me every time.

For one thing the leads play it totally straight without a hint of irony while everyone else collapses into histrionics. When they run away I was totally on their side and the windswept, seaswept French landscape captures their emotional state so beautifully. And that final dash to shore felt like Orpheus and Eurydice. 

So it's definitely one for the grownups, not like Petite Maman, and most critics hated it. I'll stand by it as a guilty favorite.

French Movie Mercredi: Petite Maman (2021)

Petite Maman is a new movie directed by Céline Sciamma, whom you might remember from Portrait of a Girl on Fire. 

It is so sweet and wonderful.

It's about two little 8 year old girls, Nelly and Marion,  who meet when Nelly arrives at her grandmother's home after her grandmother's recent death, to clean it out with her parents. Nelly plays in the woods while her father works on the house and meets Marion, a solitary girl about to undergo a scary operation. The two girls bond fast and hard; they build a tree-branch house and play games together but the friendship can't last since Nelly will only be there for a little while.

It took me a minute to realize this but the girls are played by twins, Gabrielle and Josephine Sanz. You can tell them apart because Marion has a blue headband. 

It's available to stream. It's so good, you guys. You should make some time to be charmed by this enchanting, moving film.