Tag: French

Father-Son Bootcamp (Père Fils Thérapie)

Posted on by victorfraga

Being a good father to a son is not an easy task. And neither is being a good son to a father. The bizarre and grotesque societal connotations of masculinity will often stand on the way of what should be a beautiful and tender relationship. As a result, fatherly love is often murky, sons are traumatised and whole notion of affection is mired in mud. Thankfully someone in France invented a father-son bootcamp where the two generations can reconnect through group therapy and bizarre activities. Well, actually the outcome isn’t as rosy as many would hope!

The plot of Father-Son Bootcamp is as twisted as the relationships it portrays. Jacques (Richard Berry) and his son Marc (Waly Dia) are police investigators seeking a a gangster called Claude Bracci. Jacques regrets that Marc – who happens to be black thanks to his mother’s genes – does not resemble him, and the two are constantly bickering. They join the bootcamp not because they are seeking to bury the hatchet, but instead because they want to get close to Bracci’s lawyer Charles (Jacques Gamblin), and obtain more information about the criminal. On the other hand, Charles is nin the therapy group for very genuine reasons: he wants communicate with his estranged son Fabrice (Baptiste Lorbel). He’s extremely violent and passionately hates his father. Top it all up with a very insecure female shrink, who’s in charge of the entire therapeutic experiment/adventure.

Participants are forbidden from using their mobile phones, as they seek to forge a very different “connection” with those who they’re supposed to love. Father-Son Therapy finds humour in very strange situations. The father-son mud-wrestling will elicit some awkward laughter. Likewise the image of a father trying to bond with his grown-up son through breastfeeding. And a joke about the amount of sushi consumed being the ultimate gaydar (the more fish and rice you eat, the gayer you are). But Father-Son Therapy is not set out to be a comedy. Instead, it’s a film intended to challenge our shallow and orthodox notions of virility. It’s intended to make us feel uncomfortable about our notions of masculinity. And it does it extremely well.

Halfway through the therapy, it becomes clear that very little is being achieved. Instead of love and tenderness, the males dsiplay mostly callousness and competitiveness. Some decide to stay not because they want to achieve reconciliation but because they cause further inflammation, and to humiliate their own “bloodsake”. At one point, the participants are asked to pick an object to represent their father/son. Fabrice chooses a turd to symbolise Charles. He explains that the little M&M-looking bits in the faeces represent the drugs that Charles takes. Not quite a beautiful moment of compromise and harmony.

Ultimately, Father-Son Bootcamp is anything but therapy for fathers and sons. It’s a dirty and caustic reminder of the our restrictive masculinity requirements, which often prevents males from communications with each other and displaying affection. Surprisingly, some sort of redemption is achieved in the end of the film, if in a very dark and twisted way. A happy ending, in very dirty European fashion.

Father-Son Bootcamp is out on all major VoD platforms on Monday, July 9th, as part of Walk This Way. Click here in order to view it in the UK, or here for information about how to view it in other countries.

King of Hearts (Le Roi de Coeur)

Posted on by victorfraga

The phrase “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king” is something of a guiding ethos for Philippe De Broca’s 1966 anti-war satire King of Hearts. In the last days of WW1, after an ornithologist is mistaken for an explosives expert, a lone Scottish infantryman is sent into a French town that has been rigged with booby traps by retreating German forces. Tasked with defusing the bomb, Private Pumpnick (Alan Bates) inadvertently liberates the inmates of an asylum, only to become inducted into their bizarre, yet appealing way of life.

The opening of the film, which centers on the evocative image of a mechanical knight sounding the chimes of the village clocktower, suggests that what is to come is a somewhat more serious examination of war and peace than what De Broca has in mind. This foreboding image quickly gives way to larger than life military officers with cartoonish moustaches hatching absurd plans as the war grinds to a halt. A young Adolf Hitler even makes an appearance as an eager German recruit, reminding us that the insanity of global conflict will rear its head again soon. De Broca’s case is clear: there is madness on both sides and those who refuse to accept the ritual of war are seen as outliers. In fact, the hedonistic joie de vivre of the escaped lunatics is far more appealing than the stuffy, lethal determinism of the officer classes.

The title of the film, and Pumpnick’s journey, deliberately recalls Lewis Caroll’s Alice In Wonderland, the abandoning of the rules and logic that define our ordinary existence proves to be a liberating experience and facilitates Pumpnick’s epiphanic arc. Though he initially resists the blatant absurdism of the lunatic’s world, he finds himself quite literally seduced by their way of life and rapidly takes on the role of their de facto leader. Considering the time of the film’s release, the height of the 1960s, the themes of free love, peace and a rejection of historic ideas about how things are meant to be done take on a revealing light.

What are the inmates if not 1918’s equivalent of hippies? Rejected by a society who see them as dangerous, they abhor violence, encourage liberated attitudes to sex and embrace a new perspective on life, wholly distinct from the people in charge. When the British troops arrive at the town in the third act, even they are not immune to the appeal of the loonies. Their arrival also heralds the inevitable clash between the British and German forces, which reverts the town back to a warzone and signals the return to the status quo. Pumpnick’s climatic decision, however, retains much of the film’s endearing optimism. Broca concedes that war is the norm, but also suggests that excluding yourself from a society that keeps it that way is a perfectly reasonable response.

King of Hearts is out in selected cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 8th.

My Golden Days (Trois Souvenirs De Ma Jeunesse)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The director revisits the main character of his earlier, three hour long My Sex Life… or How I Got Into An Argument/Comment Je Me Suis Disputé… (Ma Vie Sexuelle)(1996). Anthropologist Paul Dédalus (played once again by Mathieu Amalric) prepares to leave Tajikistan for Paris to take up a new job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He remembers childhood trauma, political intrigue and the love of his life as a young man in and out of the Northern French city of Roubaix (incidentally Desplechin’s home town).

The childhood trauma involves irreconcilable differences between small boy Paul (Antoine Bui) and his mother Jeanne (Cécile Garcia-Fogel) which result in lengthy shouting matches between parent and child and the boy moving out to live with his grandmother while his younger brother and sister remain with their mother. It’s gripping stuff and lasts maybe ten minutes. The young Bui is a beautiful bit of casting: you immediately see him and think he’s Amalric as a boy.

The political intrigue takes place when sixteen year old Paul (Quentin Dolmaire, who sadly looks nothing like Amalric or Bui and therefore defies believability as the same character) via his best mate Zyl (Elyot Milshtein), full name Marc Zylberberg, agrees to bunk off a school trip to Minsk so Zyl can deliver a package of money and other items to a refusnik community and Paul can give his passport to a refusnik teen who looks like him. It all goes horribly wrong, but because they’re privileged Western kids they return to France without too much difficulty. Shortly after this, the Zylberbergs move out of Roubaix and Paul loses contact with Zyl.

The story comes to light in the present day frame story when Paul is stopped at French airport customs owing to passport irregularities: specifically, a second Paul Dédalus holds a passport with many identical details. Again, it all works out fine. This episode runs about twenty minutes and feels less focused than the opener.

This leaves an hour and a half for the third flashback about the love of his life which again features Dolmaire as Paul in his student days, occasionally mediated by present-day recollection scenes featuring Amalric. It’s the story of his initially tentative, subsequently full on and finally disastrous romance with Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet, recently seen in I Got Life!/Aurore). She seems to have several men in tow from the moment he first meets her and their relationship goes from teaching her to play Go through passionate letter writing to a combination of letters when Paul is away from Roubaix and a consummated physical relationship when he’s there. Eventually, as he spends less and less time in that city, she dumps him for a rival who actually lives there.

The romance delivers some striking scenes. When Esther/Roy-Lecollinet enters a crowded party, she’s electrifying as the camera lingers on her. When she can’t say goodbye to Paul when he boards a train, you’ll be on the edge of your seat. But a few strong scenes among a lot of so-so ones does not a great film make. The relationship meanders all over the place with no sense of what was so amazing about it. When Paul embarks on an affair with the older Gilberte (Mélodie Richard) in Paris, you don’t particularly care.

And in a way that’s like the overall film. Someone looks back at their life. And…? What was so significant about that? What’s different, or remarkable, or special about them or their life? In this instance, it’s hard to pinpoint anything. Former cinematographer Desplechin ensures the film looks good overall, and his matter-of-fact shooting of sex scenes as narrative development rather than gratuitous titillation is to be applauded. Ultimately, though, his meandering script with its overall lack of focus proves an insurmountable obstacle.

My Golden Days is out in the UK on Friday March 16th. Watch the film trailer below:

I Got Life! (Aurore)

Posted on by victorfraga

When it comes to prominent leading women, French actors may well be on the tip of your tongue. Both Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy have had long, critically-acclaimed, international careers, and the wonderful Isabelle Huppert continues to make stunningly subversive films at the ripe old age of 64. Director Blandine Lenoir’s debut feature-length Zouzou (2014) attempted to tackle 60-year-old women’s sexuality to mixed-reception. Her follow-up, I Got Life!, covers similar ground with a small twist: it’s unabashedly focused on the menopause.

I Got Life! tells the story of Aurore (Agnès Jaoui), a woman in her 50s who has recently separated from long-term husband Nanar (Philippe Rebbot). Her younger daughter Lulu (Lou Roy-Lecollinet) still lives at home with her brilliantly deadpan (and deadbeat) musician boyfriend, while her older daughter Marina (Sarah Suco) has just delivered the news that Aurore will soon become a grandmother. Meanwhile, an old flame, Titoche (Thibault de Montalembert), has moved back to the provincial town where the protagonist is experiencing employment issues owing to a slimy new boss. The cherry on this deliciously complex cake is that Aurore has also started to experience the menopause, as well as all the hot flashes and mood swings that come with it.

If this combination of bad coincidences sounds somewhat unlikely, it’s because it should be. The film is marketed as a rom-com and it fulfils that genre in a quirkily enjoyable way. There’s genuine pathos at play in a number of scenes – most notably in the examination of Aurore’s tempestuous relationship with Marina – yet director Lenoir does an excellent job of interspersing the emotional with the laugh-out-loud absurd. Whether it’s baby-equipment shopping with an amusingly out-of-touch in-law, or the ridiculous novelty of a restaurant with operatic waiters, the director crafts a wonderfully wild world that we can both empathise with and laugh at.

In mainstream Anglo-American cinema, we are often presented with deeply-drawn leading men, while younger women are ushered to the side – frequently as an object of ridicule and/or sexualisation – and older women are made completely invisible. I Got Life! sticks a defiant middle-finger to Hollywood by casting women of all ages, shapes and colours in a variety of roles. In fact, the majority of men in the film are lecherous idiots who are ruthlessly dispatched by the smart, assertive women that lead it. This doesn’t apply to every man – Titoche is a suitably sensitive soul – but there’s something satisfyingly unconventional about this significant role-reversal.

Of course, I Got Life! is at its most radical when showcasing Aurore’s full spectrum of experiences as a menopausal woman. There is a beautiful frankness about the way Lenoir integrates the menopause into the film. It comes and goes in waves – as is indeed the experience for Aurore – and is something that can be painful, yet connecting. It’s not brushed under the carpet, but it’s also not presented as embarrassingly burdensome or unbelievably empowering. In short: the menopause is present and therefore the protagonist deals with it. This is probably as realistic a representation as possible.

That said, the ending of I Got Life! is somewhat lacking. For a film that pushes so many boundaries elsewhere and seems to genuinely want to do something different, it concludes in a surprisingly swift and saccharine way. Nonetheless, the rest of the film is a joy to watch and makes for an excellent treat for International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day.

I Got Life! was out in cinemas on March 23rd. It’s out on VoD on July, 2nd.

Mrs Hyde (Madame Hyde)

Posted on by victorfraga

Threaded with an absurdist tone throughout its narrative, Serge Bozon’s Mrs Hyde is surprisingly captivating in its characters, setting and cinematic language. In the lead role, Isabelle Huppert portrays a conserved teacher who struggles to captivate the imagination of her boisterous science students. In the actress’ chameleonic abilities, seamlessly merging into the women she portrays, it is hard not to be absorbed in watching Huppert deep in the fragility of Mrs Géquil. Bozon’s direction too imbues the film with a contemporary edge, offering colourful frames to compliment the swift cinematography.

Gentle – furthered by Huppert’s slim figure – Mrs Géquil struggles daily to hold the attention of her teenage pupils. Merging into the soft pastel colours of the school classroom, her outfits emphasise how passive her authority is. Constantly interrupted by Malik (Adda Senani) and his rowdy classmates leave the teacher in a position of powerlessness. Not supported by the school’s head teacher (Romain Duris) – who is more concerned with keeping up with the kids than expelling them – forces her into her scientific laboratory. Away from her work, Marie has a stay-at-home husband who respects her sense of being.

Having witnessed Bozon discuss the film in a talk in the New York Film Festival last year, it is evident from his personality that the eccentricity of his character’s situations is an apt reflection of the director himself. Bestowed with a title that alludes towards Robert Louis Stevenson iconic novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, its references the duality that human nature possesses. In the instance of Marie, after experimenting in her laboratory during a thunderstorm, the consequences are life changing – offering a comical twist on the somewhat clichéd superhero origins story. Malik says: “I believe in superheroes because they are not real, whereas you Mrs Géquil, are”.

Possessing a quick edit, resulting in moments of comedy or absurdism, Madame Hyde, in this cinematic tool, shifts along at a pace which benefits the narrative. Captudre with a crispness in the quick yet steady movements of Céline Bozon, moments are not dwellt upon and have an eagerness to them. Furthered by its three-act structure, with a 90-minute running time, Bozon constructs a tightly constructed narrative, leaving little room for overindulgence.

Welding a script that pivots on a theme of the importance of education, and the pivotal relationships teachers and pupils share in forming the latter’s being, Huppert roots the film in an eccentric, fragile tone. Equivalent to some of her best roles, the iconic French actress wields the ability to transform into any character she possesses. Benefited by the contrasting clothes she wears as she enters her Hyde-esque transformation, the visual sight of Marie wearing a luscious red shirt in the final few scenes speaks a thousand words of her transformation.

Akin to his contemporaries of Bruno Dumot and Eugène Green, Serge Bozon may be an acquired French taste, nonetheless, his eccentricities and distinctive style is undeniable to be revelled in.

Mrs Hyde shows as part of the Berlin Critics’ Week, which runs parallel to the 68th Berlinale, when this piece was originally written.

Watch Mrs Hyde right here with DMovies and Eyelet:

Lover for a Day (L’Amant d’un Jour)

Posted on by victorfraga

Featured on the main slate of the 55th New York Film Festival and winning the Composers’ Prize at Cannes last year, Philippe Garrel’s Lover for a Day offers a contemplative examination of love, anguish, lust and sexual autonomy. Casting his daughter Ester Garrel as Jeanne- a 23-year-old heartbroken after breaking up with her boyfriend Mateo (Paul Toucang) – who consequently decides to temporarily live with her dad (Eric Caravaca). Garrel’s monochrome feature is a piece of artistry upon the very nature of love. Expressive of the greatest poems and literature on the topic, it is a sophisticated entrée into exploring the fragilities of l’amour.

Recently seen on screen in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (2017), Ester Garrel’s Jeanne is initially a figure of pain; physically awash with frightening moments of agony. Again adopting the ethos of working with his family members, exemplarily with his father Maurice in Liberté, la Nuit (1983), and his son Louis Garrel in Regular Lover (2005), the lineage of placing those closest to him in front of the camera inevitably imbues the context surrounding her character with a psychological Freudian quality. Still, predating her entrance into the narrative, we firstly see Ariane (Louise Chevillotte) experience a deep sexual moment, against a white toilet wall, with Jeanne’s father, Gilles. It is a moment of pure passion in a public space, leaving one initially in a state of intrigue as to whether or not their relationship is one of lust or a deep spiritual understanding.

On her arrival, Jeanne, claims Ariane as ‘less beautiful’ than her mother amidst her pain. Extending the historicity of alluring French female actors, particularly Chevillotte, a newcomer to the big screen, holds every take with a captivating edge; drawing you closer and closer to her attractive freckled face. Garrel too, in monochrome, attracts the camera to hold on her frequently anguished complexation. Building a relationship henceforth from her residence at her father’s place, the two women allow their lives and secrets to become entwined with one another, away from the knowledge of Gilles. Continually, Ariane is allowed to express her youthful sexual urges to a level of secrecy, Gilles openly adopting the ethos of ‘what you do not know, will never hurt you.’- a very blase European approach to love.

A juxtaposition of each other yet still the same age, Jeanne and Ariane depict two sides of love that are the pinnacle and nadir of the profound emotion. Languid and sexually consuming in her relationship with Gilles, Ariane does not see the age difference between the two as a cause of concern. Further, she is a woman of independence and operates to a level of autonomy that is of verisimilitude. Yet, in light of recent allegations against Woody Allen et al, Lover for a Day, without its nuanced characters and philosophical edge, would be susceptible to backlashes and outright criticism. Nonetheless, at its uttermost core, Garrel and co portray the greatest human emotion of all with a softening touch, achieved through exquisite moments of dialogue, written partly by Philippe’s wife, Caroline Deruas-Garrel.

Surveying the negative aspects of being in a comfortable relationship, Jeanne claims that ‘At least, in solitude, you battle the cold’. Akin to any romantic line of Shakespeare, the solace of Milton’s writing or the lyrical dizzy heights of love in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, it’s a statement in the screenplay which encapsulates the insightfully articulate reflections on love Lover for a Day holds inherent through the narrative, performance and cinematic language.

Lover for a Day is out in cinemas from Friday, January 19th.

A Woman’s Life (Une Vie)

Posted on by victorfraga

Jeanne (Judith Chemla) is a beautiful and young woman returning home from a convent, and with an apparently promising life ahead of her. Her parents are wealthy barons, and they live comfortably in a French chateau. She’s cared for by the doting maid Rosalie (Nina Meurisse), with whom she also brought up. She is soon to be married to the young and charming Julien de Lamare (Swann Arlaud, who looks a lot like Kenneth Williams in his early years). But of course life is never as rosy as it seems in A Woman’s Life.

The direction of A Woman’s Life is firm and steady. This is a movie that delves into the world of a female without being exploitative. Stéphane Brizé’s directorial style is tender, subtle and even feminine. For a few moments, I literally thought that I was watching Claire Denis’s latest movie. Yet this is not a feminist movie. In fact, the French title is simply Une Vie (“One Life”), without the “woman’s” bit. As is Guy de Maupassant’s romance, which is widely considered one of the greatest French novels ever written.

This is a film about the unexpected twists of fate in the life of a female aristocrat. How each every foundation of her life gradually begins to crumble, and how she’s left in a despondent state at old age. Jeanne’s marriage begins with suffering. Sex feels a chore. The moment she loses her virginity will make you feel very uncomfortable, and will also serve as a sordid reminder of how the rape culture is deeply ingrained in our history.

Julien turns out to be gently manipulative and outright unfaithful. They eventually have a child, but then disaster strikes. Jeanne develops a strange symbiotic relationship with her son, and what happens next makes her borderline insane. Then she begins to squander her wealth. Ironically, she ends up relying on the person who helped to ruin her life.

The film narrative is punctuated with water. It rains often. It’s almost as if this water was there in order to to cleanse Jeanne’s life and prepare her yet for another chapter. But rain also turns the soil muddy. And Jeanne’s life is as soaked and soiled as her dresses under heavy rain.

Unfaithfulness and truthfulness are the central themes of the movie. Jeanne longs for honesty. She confesses to a priest she cannot bear lies. But she too struggles to deliver the sheer truth that the holy man demands from her. Such moral dilemma prevails throughout her life. Jeanne is a morally upright person, yet sometimes the truth is way too painful to handle. Ultimately, some secrets are best kept secret.

A Woman’s Life was out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, January 12th. It is available on all major VoD platforms in February.

Fast Convoy (Le Convoi)

Posted on by victorfraga

Cinema certainly has an association with a literal ‘need for speed’ and none more so than in Frédéric Schoendoerffer Fast Convoy. Offering a high-octane merge of zooming cars and an atypical hitman, its speed does not necessarily result in a riveting nature. Stylised to an inch of its life, through the six different men involved in trafficking cocaine and other drugs from Malaga into France. All accompanied by blacked out German cars and fine leather jackets, it’s a routine piece of European thriller that feels somewhat of a mixture between the Locke’s dialogue-based scenes in a fast moving vehicle and Luc Besson’s stories in the Transporter series.

Featuring Benoit Magimel, widely known for his role in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), the film reflects the kineticism of fast travel through constantly switching to different members of a convoy escorting drugs across southern Europe. Accompanied by undertones of an aspiring Islamic working class in France, who are forced to turn towards such criminality in order to survive, through Fast Convoy’s cinematic diversity, a touchstone of social and economic problems in contemporary France and Europe is revealed. Likewise, the racial identities of the police are rarely seen, adding to this political message increasingly so.

When two of the crew crumble under the press of a police checkpoint, Magimel’s Alex is forced to clean up the mess left by Elyes’ (Mahdi Belemlih) inexperience. Sporting a pair of 1999’s Matrix-esque (Lana/ Lilly Wachowski) sunglasses, a fast Porsche 4 x 4, he is clearly a man with a particular set of skills for a particular task. Still, in the final few fleeting moments, in the company of Nadia (Reem Kherici), a civilian who gets taken hostage when Elyes steals her car, gives a glimpse behind the emotional shield that Alex so constantly maintains. In the moments of dialogue he has, the character attempts to interact with Nadia, furthering this reading. Throughout, there is a sense of a brokenness relating to all the male characters, calling into question their place in this hyper-masculine environment of guns, drugs and fast driving.

Divided by a distinct colour palette in the first half of the film where the screen is filled with jovial conversations about the men’s favourite sex positions, the yellow ting which accompanies these scenes is a literal stark contrast to the deep bluish night time that closes out the piece. Granted, the characters are not as deepened as the cinematography of Vincent Gallot, who filmed taken, they still service the tense plot. Gallot is an indicator of the film’s aims in targeting the same audience as such Taken films.

Thankfully not as outlandish and gravity-defying as a different piece of car-related film (The Fast and Furious series), what Fast Convoy offers instead of flying cars is a solid piece of high-budget American-influenced French film.

Fast Convoy is available on all major VoD platforms as part of the Men on the Edge strand of the Walk this Way collection.

Men on the verge of a criminal break-in

Posted on by victorfraga

Many people think of Hollywood when they think of action movies, and they forget that Europe is also teeming with gangsters, bank robbers, crooks and all sorts of dirty criminals. These rogues are everywhere: in Southern Spain, on the roads of France, in the dark and derelict suburbs of Berlin and even in virtually “crime-free” Scandinavia. You just have to look! Thankfully, the Men on the Edge Collection, which is part of the Walk This Way initiative, is here to help us. Walk This Way is funded by EU Media (a sub-programme of Creative Europe) and is aimed at fostering and promoting straight-to-VoD European cinema.

We spoke again to Muriel Joly, Head of the Walk this Way, and asked her where the idea for Men on the Edge came from. She explained: “our aim is to create a collection of thrillers that would more embody the European film noirs in all their diversity. A typical genre carried out by a great tradition of famous authors and scenarists. Thriller is a genre for audience everywhere in the world thus this is one of the most successful Walk this Way Collection. We wanted to highlight the characters more than the genre, as all these films have in common to have heroes and plots that are intense, but each story is so different, as they take place in France, Scandinavia, United-Kingdom…”

She goes on to described how the films are compiled: “Since 2015, 17 films (including this year’s releases) have been part of the collection. Each film is available in at least three European countries and we ask for the movies to be also available in at least one of the three priority areas outside Europe: United States, Latin America and Japan. We select them on both editorial and sales criteria, thanks to our network of sales agents partners.”

So let’s now change this notion that European cinema can’t go fast, wild and dirty. Our men too know how to shoot and misbehave. Long live our robber, swindlers and racketeers! Click here for the full catalogue of the Men on the Edge collection. And check out the two latest releases just below, both from – dirty reviews of both movies will follow soon!

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1. Fast Convoy (Frédéric Schoendoerffer, 2016):

A “go fast” convoy shipping a ton of cannabis Malaga in southern Spain is disrupted following a shoot out that results in the kidnapping of a tourist. The picture at the top of the article in from Fast Convoy.

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2. Thank You for Calling (Pascal Elbé, 2016):

Biography based on the life of conman Gilbert Chikli who invented the “CEO scam” and was able to persuade bank and company officers to transfer money by simply ringing them and impersonating their CEO. He is now living in luxury in Israel. The second picture illustrating this piece was taken from Thank You for Calling.

Daguerrotype (Le Secret de la Chambre Noire)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

In a large house in a rural French town, contemporary photographer Stéphane (Olivier Gourmet) employs 19th century daguerreotype photographic plate techniques involving lengthy exposures. (The “chambre noire” of the title is the French term for both “darkroom” and “camera obscura”.) Subjects must remain utterly motionless for 20 minutes at a time in order for their image to be captured without becoming blurred. Stéphane attaches his models to metal rigs designed to hold them in place for the duration, an experience both uncomfortable and sometimes painful for them. He makes a living from fashion shoots set up by his colleague Vincent (Mathieu Amalric).

In between paid gigs, Stéphane obsessively photographs on a larger plate camera life-sized images of his 22-year-old daughter Marie (Constance Rousseau) just as while she was still alive he previously lensed his late wife Denise (Valérie Sibilia). Exposing his daughter for longer and longer periods of time of around 60 minutes, he sometimes has her drink liquid compounds to help her keep still.

Marie is concerned that the mercury-laden chemicals required for her father’s work, spillages and seepages of which can kill vegetation, are stored near the greenhouse in which she’s grown rare plants since she was a child. She wants to study botany and gets accepted on a course in Toulouse. This would mean moving away from home. She’s deeply unhappy about the father-daughter relationship and her father’s new assistant Jean (Tahar Rahim), talking to estate agent Thomas (Malik Zidi), hatches a plan to convince Stéphane of Marie’s death so that he will sell the house at a low price enabling Jean and Marie to make a fast buck by reselling at market value. It’s the sort of plot from which Hitchcock or Chabrol might have made a terrific suspense thriller.

“He’s confused photography and reality for so long he can no longer tell the difference between the living and the dead”, Marie confides to Jean. A few minutes in, when neither Jean nor the audience have been introduced to Marie, he spots her as a silent apparition in a blue, nineteenth century dress moving slowly up a staircase to be briefly framed like a pictorial subject in the circular landing above. Have we just seen a ghost?

Occasional creaks, blackouts and apparitions recall classic ghost stories like The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) or The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963). There’s a scene when Marie emerges from a bedroom that recalls the a similar scene in Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and there are echoes in the father’s moulding his daughter into her departed mother which recall Obsession (Brian DePalma. 1976), itself a reworking of Vertigo. The heavily melancholic/ romantic score by Grégoire Hetzel, while light years away from Bernard Herrmann’s work for Vertigo and Obsession, has a similar effect.

However, those expecting a shocker like Kurosawa’s own Pulse/Kairo (2001) or Creepy (2016) are likely to be disappointed. Admittedly, an unexpected fall down some stairs proves as unnerving as anything in Pulse/Kairo and unsettling corridor lighting cues recall rival J-horror ghost outing Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002). Yet the film largely eschews J-horror shock tactics to deliver a far more meditative, languorous and fluid experience to dreamlike, ethereal effect – as you might expect from a film based around the slow processes of nineteenth century photography.

Despite the French cast, crew, locations and architecture, this feels every inch a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film with numerous echoes of his other, Japanese-shot work. Opening exteriors recall the house that opens Before We Vanish (2017) and in almost every scene, there’s a clean feel to the composition familiar from those other films. Away from his native Japan, Kurosawa has imposed his own unique visual sensibilities on French culture and come up with something at once recognisably French and at the same time strangely alien to that culture.

(A note on spelling: the photographic plate is referred to as a ‘Daguerreotype’ after its inventor Louis Daguerre, while the film’s title drops the second ‘e’, presumably to make the English title’s pronunciation easier for a popular audience.)

Daguerrotype is available to stream on all major VoD platforms, and is part of the Walk This Way collection. And don’t forget to check our interview with Kurosawa!

MFKZ (international title: Mutafukaz)

Posted on by mjbstaging

Firstly, Mutafukaz (as MFKZ was originally named) is a Japanese animated feature made by the French for the French market utilising Japanese animation expertise (the version playing at the London Film Festival is French with subtitles, though the end credits suggest there might also be an English language version), secondly a very French, lowlife, dystopian action movie to rank alongside the live action likes of Nikita (Luc Besson, 1990) and, particularly, District 13 (Pierre Morel, 2004) and thirdly an adaptation of a French bande dessinée, the director Guillaume Renard having penned the original in comic book form under the name Run.

The animation medium allows the piece to completely design its images and environment from, as it were, the blank page/empty screen upwards and the results are fabulous. Japanimation company Studio 4°C previously worked on such high profile anime productions as SF portmanteau Memories (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1995), avant garde pop video Noiseman Sound Insect (Koji Morimoto, 1997) and fan favourite Spriggan (Hirotsugu Kawasaki, 1998) to name but three (others are name dropped in the trailer) and pull out all the stops here.

(Ange)lino is a small, young, black guy vaguely resembling Marvin Martian without the helmet and struggling to survive the mean streets of Dark Meat City (“DMC, as in Desperate, Miserable, Crap”) where he rents a roach-infested apartment with his mate Vinz whose head resembles a human skull, bare bone, no flesh, column of fire permanently burning on top. Lino can barely hold down a job for more than a few days.

We first meet Lino on a pizza delivery boy gig which falls apart when the sight of a pretty girl causes him to have a bike accident. Unemployed, Lino and Vinz are visited by their nervous liability of a friend Willy. As the three cruise around in a car, Lino notices a strange phenomenon inspired by They Live (John Carpenter, 1988): people who cast shadows belonging to creatures not of this Earth. Meanwhile, a mother with her baby in her arms is being hunted by mysterious, gun-toting men in black suits led by one wearing a white suit. Before long, they’ll be after Lino and Vinz too.

The film rattles along at a rapid pace through urban malaise, gangland shoot-outs and conspiracy theories, in passing presenting a squalid environment that could stand in for the seamier side of any number of real life cities. Designed in glorious, eye-popping colour and with a hip hop sensibility referencing Grand Theft Auto and more, it never lets up for a moment.

Although the production values have anime written all over them, with key fight scenes shots sporting familiar tropes of that medium, Renard’s Francophile sensibilities inject a whole other aesthetic and indeed feel to the proceedings. It’ll no doubt be huge in France, but it’s an impressive work which transcends its national culture and deserves to see a UK distributor taking a chance and giving it a proper release here too. I could never imagine London Transport accepting posters bearing the film’s international title, though. Which is why the new English language title MFKZ makes a lot of sense.

MFKZ played at BFI London Film Festival 2017 as Mutafukaz. It’s released in the UK on October 11th. Watch the 2017 international film trailer and the new 2018 English language film trailer below: