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 Film reviewer, TIM MILFULL munches on croissants and slurps excellent coffee as the 2010 ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL rolls into town.
Some festival news this week, with the Alliance Française French Film Festival touring through Brisbane in the latter half of March. Before the traditional after-party atPalace Centro on the 17th of March, the AFFFF will screen Micmacs à tire-larigot. Starring French man-of-the-moment, Dany Boon – who also stars in another festival event, Change of Plans – plays Bazil, who has a bullet lodged in his brain and could die at any moment. With a dysfunctional crew of saboteurs, Bazil plans the downfall of two large arms manufacturers. This is the latest film from magic realist director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and from all reports Micmacs is a melange of his earlier works, Delicatessen and Amelie, which really says a great deal.
I managed to catch several previews, including The Army Of Crime – a dramatic true story about Jewish members of the Resistance wreaking havoc on the Nazi occupation of France. Apparently Tarantino is not the only director still mining the rich vein of narratives hidden in the Second World War. There’s also a raft of romantic films, from LOL, starring Sophie Marceau as Anne, a divorcee struggling with her hormonal teenager daughter, Lola (Christa Theret), to some very satisfying personal growth in Queen To Play, featuring some prodigious manoeuvres by Sandrine Bonnaire as Helene, a cleaning lady working for misanthropic expat, Dr Kroger (Kevin Kline), and newly obsessed by the game of chess, which brings new life into an otherwise a mundane existence.
Lovers of family drama will lap up the dynamics of The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life, which follows the trials and tribulations of an ordinary family over a period of two decades. And thirty-somethings will enjoy the twists and turns and surprises revealed over the course of two dinner parties a year apart in Change Of Plans. Those who like thrillers will appreciate the tense Skirt Day, an impressively cast hostage drama set in a classroom, where the identity of the hostage-taker is never quite clear, especially to the befuddled negotiators outside the soundproof crime-scene. And in Regrets, Yvan Attal plays Mathieu, a middle-aged architect who rekindles an old romance when he returns to his hometown to take care of his dying mother. As Maya, Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi – sister-in-law of French President, Nicolas Sarkozy – is suitably conflicted at the arrival of her old flame, and Attal’s performance as the increasingly obsessed Mathieu is quite disturbing.
Finally, I could barely contain myself when I heard that the impossibly handsome Jean Dujardin would be stepping back into the shoes of French superspy, OSS 117 – aka Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath – as he heads off on the hunt for Nazis on the run around Brazil in the very silly OSS 117, Lost In Brazil. While not quite as consistently hilarious as OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, writer-director Michel Hazanavicius again offers a gorgeous sixties aesthetic and some ridiculous spy shtick.
There are more than forty films on offer throughout the ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL, which runs Mar 17 – 31. check out the festival’s programme on www.palacecinemas.com.au and www.frenchfilmfestival.org.
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