French Film Festival
The best of new French cinema comes to Boston's Museum of Fine Art for the eleventhFrench Film Festival (July 6-23).
Director Patrice Chereau (INTIMACY, THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN is the guest of honor, and he'll introduce GABRIELLE starring the Pascal Greggory and the fabulously versatile Isabelle Huppert. The redheaded actress also headlines a contemporary political thriller called COMEDY OF POWER, based on a recent, real-life government scandal.
The Boston festival is a great chance to see how influential and international the French film industry has become. The hot title of this year's lineup is 13 (TZAMETI), a black and white suspense movie that you'd almost mistake for a 1960s film noir, if not for the brand-new Volkswagen Beetles on the streets. Director/writer Gela Babluani is Georgian. "Tzameti" means the number thirteen in his native tongue, and the word takes on a horrible siignificane as the story unfolds. I think the movie will hit you harder the less you know about the plot, but this is how it begins: a down and out laborer working in France (George Babluani) overhears plans for a high-stakes event, sees a chance to make big money, and is drawn into a life-and-death struggle.
When GOING SOUTH/VERS LE SUD screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2005, you should have heard the huffing of male film critics.The combination of a hot French director (Laurent Cantet of TIME OUT), a hot-button subject (sex-tourism, with women rather than men as the sex tourists), and an incendiary actress (Charlotte Rampling) had of course packed the theatre. Think that would have happened if the genders had been reversed, or if we'd been seeing grown men paying for sex with underage boys, and we'd been seeing a realistic take on the subject?
Ick...no. Reactions ranged from the reflexive--Cantet is taking a gratutitous swipe at America--to the sexist (some nasty remarks about the less-than-nubile appearance of one of the lead actresses, Karen Young.
But female critics have seen something more in HEADING SOUTH, which opens this weekend in New York and in selected cities this month. Check out reviews by Salon's Stephanie Zacharek and the New York Times' Manohla Dargis.
