The 27th Annual Alliance Francaise French Film Festival kicks off in Sydney on March 1 and the myriad of movies selected and the intersecting themes explored suggest this should be the most successful season of all.
The theme of relationships ending for the same reasons they began is explored in two brilliant films, MON ROI and PAPA OU MAMAN.
MON ROI is a heady drama starring Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Bercot. Cassel plays a nightclub entrepreneur, Georgio, pursued by lawyer, Toni, a Cannes Festival prize winning performance by Bercot.
They fall into a fine romance, marry and propagate. The fly in the ointment of their perfect union is Georgio’s ex, a fragile model with suicidal tendencies. No longer in a sexual relationship, he nevertheless feels an overwhelming obligation to her, which puts a great strain on the marriage.
There is also a Peter Pan aspect to Georgio, and although he is a demonstrably loving parent, there is still much of the adolescent about him.
The narrative is told in flashback as Toni recuperates after a skiing accident, an event that serves as a metaphor for the slippery slopes of relationships.
At one point Toni complains about the peaks and troughs of their relationship and Georgio counters that life is a cardiograph and if it flat lines, there is death.
Presented in comedic tone, PAPA OU MAMAN is also concerned with the idea, “When does the similarity that feeds content become the familiarity that breeds contempt?”
PAPA OU MAMAN begins fifteen years ago with a frenetic tracking shot underscored by David Bowie’s Modern Love, that follows young lovers Florence and Vincent in what appears to be an outraged frenzy, for all intents and purposes a brawl, that appears to be the end of an affair.
Fifteen years later, married with three kids, this tempestuous and tumultuous relationship seems to have mellowed to the point that they have come to the mutual decision to divorce. The only hurdle is how to tell the kids.
Both highly skilled professionals, she an engineer, he a doctor, they are trying to be civil and politically correct in their choice. But when both receive career opportunities that will see them posted in foreign locations, each conspires against the other as to who will not be foisted with single parent custody of their enfants terribles.
Sophisticated comedy with slick slapstick notes, PAPA OU MAMAN is the latest from the subversive pen of Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere, who wrote the delicious What’s in a Name a few years back, and boasts a couple of knock out performances by Marina Fois and Laurent Lafitte as the combative couple, whose screamingly funny scheming illustrate just how completely compatible they are.
Two other films that are thematically linked are THE MEASURE OF A MAN and IN HARMONY, both intimate stories about individuals versus the system.
Big business is the baddie in IN HARMONY, this time an insurance company out to bully a claimant. Cunning stuntsman, Marc, has become paraplegic after an equestrian accident on a period film shoot. His mount, Othello, has fallen on top of him, but though his body is crippled, his will and spirit is not.
The film company’s insurance tries to force a settlement that will save them money rather than adequately service Marc’s future. Like in The Thomas Crown Affair, the insurance assessor is a beautiful, resourceful woman, the radiant Cecile de France. She follows the company line but in the light of Marc’s integrity see the unethical practise of her firm and risks her own livelihood to see his resilience rewarded.
Forget the law of the jungle, modern man is measured by the law of the market, in Stephane Brize’s devastating La Loi du marche, retitled here as THE MEASURE OF A MAN.
We hear a lot about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder these days, applied mainly to service men and women, but here we see the PTSD of everyday working people who find themselves unemployed and forced to recalibrate the measure of themselves.
The film starts without titles with out of work Thierry being told by an employment agency staffer that they have stuffed up by sending him to a training scheme that is unlikely to lead to a job.
Thierry hasn’t worked in months and he has had to start dipping into his savings to make ends meet. He’s a proud man who prides himself on taking care of his wife and disabled son. Blessed with a positive demeanour, he is nonetheless sorely tested by pressures regarding his son’s care and education and keeping hearth and home together.
He takes a job at a supermarket as a security officer, a job that satisfies his work ethic but not his personal ethics. The position requires him to conduct surveillance of customers for shoplifting and spy on his fellow workers looking for grounds of dismissal. The company is keen to lay off staff without redundancy package and so any small misdemeanour is met by sacking. bitter reality: in order to survive at the new job, Thierry now needs to humiliate others.
THE MEASURE OF A MAN is a beautifully intimate film about the wider concerns of the modern labor market and features another brilliant performance by leading man, Vincent Lindon as Thierry.
The 26th Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2016 screens between March 1 and 24 at the Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona and Chauvel cinemas. For further information and bookings visit http://www.affrenchfilmfestival.org.
Sydney Arts Guide has ten double passes to give away to the upcoming Festival. Be one of the first to email ther Editor on [email protected]. Winners will be advised by return email.
