STUCK TOGETHER (8 Rue de l'Humanité) (France 2021) *** Directed by Dany Boon
The non-French unless one is one who loves French comedies might not likely be familiar with the name of Dany Boon.To Boon’s credit, he has starred and directed one of the biggest French comedy hits of all time, the 2008 WELCOME TO THE STICKS.He has at present at least a film a year, last year seen in a supporting role as an action hero in LE LION (I saw the film on an Air Canada flight) and now the Netflix original film STUCK TOGETHER (8 Rue de l'Humanité).This is a comedy about the tenants, except for one owner played by Boon of an apartment with the address of 8 Humanity Street in Paris who try to make sense and survive during the Covid-19 Pandemic.The Pandemic comedy is manic and occasionally all over the place, as it crisscrosses stories with several tenants, but there are fresh laughs around every corner.
The streets of Paris are silent and empty.While many flee the capital, seven families experience lockdown in a building on the rue de l'Humanité.Among them: A café owner who reuses her pear alcohol as a hydroalcoholic gel, a geeky Zoom sports coach who gets fatter by the week, his fiancée, a singer (she sings a really corny song though getting more hits on the internet than her husband; spots videos) who is seven months pregnant and doesn't want to go to hospital alone, a self-made man who desperately wants to be as smart as his 8-year-old son, etc.During the three months of lockdown, the families eventually meet each other - for better or worse.They argue and fight but also end up banding together to fight the difficult times. The story also involves a death due to Covid, but though a bit sappy, it brings the film to credibility levels as people do die from the disease.
The funniest tenant of the lot is the mad scientist played by Yvan Attal who is constantly searching for new animals to test the second dose of his vaccine.He eventually tests it on himself, after running out of animals, most of which had died, resulting in his hilarious uncontrollable behaviour.Attal is an actor and director of countless French films, rising to fame after his directorial debut in 2001, MA FEMME EST UNE ACTRESS (which I manage to see while in London).
The film is funniest when it makes fun of director Boon’s keen Covid observations.The PCR Covid test swab with the swab more than twice in length than the actual performed on Boon’s character gets the biggest laugh.Some Covid-19 lockdown practices observed in the film might be unfamiliar to outsiders.In Paris during the lockdown, residents had to carry on them, when they go out, a déclaration sur l'honneur, a form downloaded from the internet they had to fill out and carry on their person.In the film, Boon’s character is stopped by the policier and him asked for the form.
It is not surprising that the French would be the first to come up with a Pandemic comedy and quite a hilarious one at that, enabling the audience to laugh at what they had to endure during these times.Time for Hollywood to do a re-make.
STUCK TOGETHER (8 Rue de l’Humanité) opens this week on Netflix.
Director Mia Hansen-Løve is a master of films on relationships.She examines the mechanics of them, often offering valuable and entertaining personal insight. These deal with quite a few of young teen relationships but returns to an older couple here, as she covers the sensitive relationship between a middle-aged couple, both writers in their own right.
BERGMAN ISLAND is the island of Fårö, where legendary director Ingmar Bergman spent most of the end of his life.Bergamn was born in Upsala, not Fårö.A tourist attraction, Fårö sees Chris and Tony renting a place, in order to write.The residence holds the bedroom where Bergman shot SCENES OF A MARRIAGE, the film that caused a million people to divorce, a joke of the film.Hansen-Løve has been one of the most respected and outstanding French directors since LE PERE DE MES ENFANTS (The Father of my Children), all her films about relationships, mostly young ones. Tony’s work is fêted at their artist residency while Chris struggles with her screenplay and the two, despite a tender rapport, seem to be at an unspoken impasse, navigating romantic malaise and subtle professional enmity under the spell of the stunning island and Bergman’s legacy.Chris’s in-development script comes to life: a bittersweet love story starring Mia Wasikowska as Amy, a young filmmaker and obvious alter ego to Chris, who is reunited with her first love Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) at a mutual friend’s wedding on the same remote island.Hansen-Løve does Woody Allen doing Ingmar Bergman in this film, with a surprise revelation at the end that should keep audiences thinking.
Occasionally clever and vastly entertaining, BERGMAN ISLAND should not disappoint Hansen-Løve’s fans.
BERGMAN ISLAND premiered at this year’s Cannes and continued its run at the Toronto International Film Festival.It opens in theatres October the 15th and is available to rent everywhere on October the 22nd.
One of my favourite local film festivals is Cinefranco for the reason I, like many others, adore French films.French films (particularly by François Truffaut) is the reason I studied French.This year, Cinefranco under the direction of the ever-energetic Marcelle Lean offers once again a wide variety of films from all over the world.
Cinefranco welcomes audiences once again to in-theatre, as well as online screenings for its 24th edition. The hybrid festival will take place Tuesday, October 26 – Tuesday, November 2, 202, with 27 features, 3 shorts programs, post-screening Conversations, and Panels, at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema and via the festival platform, accessed at:
www.cinefranco.com
Capsule Reviews of Selected films:
MARGAUX HARTMANN (France 2021) ** Directed by Ludovic Bergery
Recently widowed Margaux Hartmann (Emmanuelle Beart from MANON DES SOURCES and LA BELLE NOISEUSE) moves in with her sister.She has been and is still distraught.Looking to turn a page, she re-enrolls at university and becomes interested in new pursuits. At the same time, dark compulsions begin to arise.She succumbs to her sexual desires leading to trouble.The film gets at its most ridiculous point, a point that puts the film immediately into strapped hole when Bearts character and her professor go to a hotel room and begin sexual play.He stops and says to her: “I cannot do it.I cannot make love to a teenager.”Beart is an actress as everyone knows is not a teenager.She is in fact to this date 58 years old. The film’s sex scenes do not help the story’s credibility either.Beart as Marguax has sex with clothes on, as if she is self conscious of her age and figure, which is probably right.A film that is supposed to go deep in the emotions of a troubled female but fails miserably, unfortunately because of the miscasting of Beart.
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MÉDECIN DE NUIT (France 2020) ***
Directed by Elie Wajeman
MÉDECIN DE NUIT (NIGHT DOCTOR) follows The misadventures of Mikael (Vincent Macaign), a doctor on night calls. It's a job Mikael is passionate about and will do all hurt of the night, ignoring his wife (or girlfriend, it is not made clear) and two children.Between two patient visits in slum areas, he cares for those whom no one else wants to see: the drug addicts, the homeless. He rubs shoulders with destitution, with destitution also flowing into his life. His life is in shambles.Especially when it comes to his pharmacist cousin of questionable morales who makes him write false prescriptions for Subutex.Overnight, he decides to get out of drug trafficking and rebuild his life.Touted as a psychological thriller, the film moves more like a drama with a few violent scenes.Director Wajeman makes no effort to make Mikael a likeable character - he has a mistress; he never makes up his mind; he gives in to his cousin, with the result that the audience grows more detached to the protagonist as the film progresses.Why Mikael keeps helping his course and why the cousin is so money greedy is also left largely unexplained.But director Wajeman creates a morbid, creepy and menacing atmosphere of the doctor’s work with junkies at night.
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MESSE BASSE (THE LODGER) (France 2020) *** Directed by Baptiste Drapeau
Jacqueline Bisset has a starring role in MESSE BASSE (translated literally in English to Low Mass that might mean more appropriately ‘whisper’) and is one of the main reasons to rush to see this film.In the film, she, an English actress (veteran of dozens of films including RICH AND FAMOUS, TOO MANY CHEFS, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS) speaks fluent French in this film as in one of her early films, SECRETS.(She was educated in French). The story follows university medical student Julie who moves into the house of Elizabeth (Bisset), an old widow as a lodger.Elizabeth lends her a room in exchange for her help with daily chores.But things get weird as Elizabeth acts as if her dead husband, Victor, is still alive. . But soon, Julie starts feeling his presence…and an inescapable and dangerous love triangle begins. Director Baptiste Drapeau’s supernatural treatment of the film encompassing romance, mystery, mental imbalance and murder does not always work but at least he tries.At best, this worthy effort has the feel of a Chabrol film but Bisset is the reason not to miss this film.
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PREMIERE VAGUE (FIRST WAVE) (Canada 2021) *** Directed by Max Dufad, Remi Frechette, Reda Lahmouid and Kevin T. Landry
PREMIERE VAGUE is a Conicd-19 anthology comprising 4 short stories set in Montreal, Quebec during the first wave of the Pandemic.It is March 12, 2020.COVID-19 has just been declared a global pandemic and confinement measures are being implemented all across the world.Fanny, Samuel, Marianne and Daniel, four Montrealers from very different backgrounds, must now adapt to this new reality. What they believe to be a temporary situation will turn into a long ordeal that will change their lives forever.The film is framed with the province’s Premier announcing on television the progressing states of lockdown as the numbers of Covid cases (deaths and new cases) rise.This is dramatic stuff that everyone has gone through, so the material transpiring on screen rings so true.Audiences have themselves experienced or had heard these stories - so to that effect the film does not offer anything new nor does it offer any new insight to the Pandemic.A cross section of characters, mostly young adults (except for the aged mother in Long-term care) form the basis of the story.
PROFESSION DE PERE (MY FATHER’S STORIES ) (France 2019) ***1/2 Directed by Jean-Pierre Améris
A crazy father played no better than by one of my favourite French (actually Belge) actors, Benoît Poelvoorde is the cause for alarm in this strange, wonderful but eventually disturbing story. 12-year-old Luc adores his crazy father who tells him that he is a judo champ, a parachutist, a soccer player and even an advisor to Général de Gaulle. The scene where Poelvoorde freaks out at De Gaulle on TV accusing him of betraying France is in itself worth the price of the admission ticket.Both comedic and scary (as in the scene where Luc is badly beaten with a belt) Poelvoorde portrays a violent man who needs to be understood and treated for the danger he poses to his family.Luc, who has the talent for drawing, is also coerced by his father to write the names of resistance fighters on the walls of buildings around Lyon.All these antics drive Luc’s mother crazy and with reason.Set in 1960’s Lyon, Jean-Pierre Améris directs PROFESSION DU PÈRE with subtlety and sensitivity the collateral damage caused by a parent’s madness. The film also tackles the issue of racism as when Luc encounters a new classmate from Algeria, a pied-noir (black feet, plural, a term that refers to French and other European origin born in Algeria during the period of French rule from 1830 to 1962). The film’s relevant message about mental illness comes through loud and clear!
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TOKYO SHAKING (France 2021) *** Directed by Olivier Pyon
TOKYO SHAKING, set in Tokyo during the real life twin disaster of the March 2011 tsunami and the nuclear plant meltdown follows the drama of Alexandra, a valued employee at a French Bank working in risk management.Alexandra (Karin Viard) must choose between the demands of work and the demands of her family.She has two children and a husband left in Hong Kong.It is March 11, 2011. The biggest tsunami Japan has ever experienced triggers the Fukushima disaster.Risks are being downplayed for the Japanese but the foreign community in Tokyo is terrified by this tragic event and the fact that no one is capable of assessing its scope.Alexandra finds herself defending honour and given word, despite the pervading terror and chaos.Director Pyon includes some nice disaster shots in his film while creating a credible atmosphere of dread and danger.The drama that ensues is nothing short of predictable but it is actress Karin Viard as Alexandra who carries the movie successfully.
AFTER BLUE (PARADIS SALE) (France 2021) ** Directed by Bertrand Mandico
Described as a sci-fi acid western, whatever that means, in the press notes, director Mandico’s sci-fi dystopian opus has the audience believe that humans have left the planet Waert and colonized another called After Blue.Males are irradiated but their sperm keep to fertile the flames and continue the human race.If here are no males around, all the females have left is to make love to each other, in what is director Mandico’s gay lesbian fantasy.The story has Roxy (Paula Luna), the lonely teenage daughter of the colony’s hairdresser Zora (Elina Löwensohn), impulsively unearths a notorious criminal called Kate Bush, who promises to grant her three wishes, the ensuing violence exiles mother and kin from the settlement, so they may track down and bring this legendary killer to justice.Armed with designer Gucci rifles and Paul Smith pistols, the duo ventures into a hostile alien landscape rife with toxic gases, slime-encrusted crystalline entities, and promiscuous fashionistas. From there, things get pretty weird. The film is not as good as it sounds and is likely for acquired tastes, not to mention that the film is too long, running just over 2 hour
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LE BAL DES FOLLES (THE MAD WOMAN’S BALL ) (France 2021) **** Directed by Melanie Laurent
The trouble in the story begins when Eugenie becomes disoriented when combing her grandmother’s hair one night. She stops and rummages through her grandmother’s drawers to discover a lost locket in it, on the underside of one of the drawers. When she claims a dead spirit has led her to the locket, she is deemed crazy.This is pretty much a female movie with a tough female protagonist and with a family that is generally ruled by its women. THE MAD WOMAN’S BALL is a handsomely mounted period piece as evident from the films' art from everything to costumes and set design to wardrobe to lighting and soundtrack.Director Laurent provides some well needed humour in all the dire surroundings with Eugenie’s night mate, Louise. Though described as a total nutcase, she humorously describes the illnesses of all the other inmates to Louise.Besides the suspense, there is much to enjoy and observe in LE BAL DES FOLLES. Highly recommended!
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BERGMAN ISLAND (France 2021) ***1/2
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
BERGMAN ISLAND is the island of Fårö, where legendary director Ingmar Bergman spent most of the end of his life.A tourist attraction, it sees Chris and Tony renting a place, in order to write.The place holds the bedroom where Bergman shot SCENES OF A MARRIAGE, the film that caused a million people o divorce, a joke of the film.Hansen-Løve has been one of the most respected and outstanding French directors since LE PERE DE MES ENFANTS, all her films about relationships, mostly young ones. Tony’s work is fêted at their artist residency while Chris struggles with her screenplay and the two, despite a tender rapport, seem to be at an unspoken impasse, navigating romantic malaise and subtle professional enmity under the spell of the stunning island and Bergman’s legacy.Chris’s in-development script come to life: a bittersweet love story starring Mia Wasikowska as Amy, a young filmmaker and obvious alter ego to Chris, who is reunited with her first love Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) at a mutual friend’s wedding on the same remote island.Hansen-Løve does Woody Allen doing Ingmar Bergman in this film, with a surprise revelation at the end that should keep audiences thinking.
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CHARLOTTE (Canada/France/Belgum 2021)
Directed by Eric Warin, Tahir Rana
Done in glorious animation, CHARLOTTE is the remarkable true story of Charlotte Salomon, a German Jewish artist defying incredible odds to create a masterpiece during World War II. She died at the age of 26 in Auschwitz but left behind a legacy.
Charlotte Salomon is the enigmatic young German Jewish painter who created a sprawling masterpiece in the face of both private turmoil and sweeping global cataclysm. Born into a wealthy but troubled family in Berlin, Charlotte is preternaturally gifted, with a wild imagination and grand ambitions. In 1933, at age 16, she saw her dreams dashed. The antisemitic laws and violent mobs of the Nazis, who have seized power in Germany, force her out of school and later spur her to leave for the South of France, where, despite relative and temporary safety, life for Charlotte becomes increasingly difficult. Struggling to comprehend — and come to terms with — both a traumatic past and present, she sets out to paint her autobiography. Within 18 months, Charlotte completes nearly a thousand gouaches depicting the lives of everyone near and dear to her. The animation captures the period mood and despair of WWII persecution of the Jews. The animated rain, water and fire is also stunning as are the paintings seen in the film. A star that needs to be told, to remind the world of the horror of racism, non-tolerance and the danger of family pride. The film also incorporates the coming-of-age story of poor Charlotte - a doomed and gifted painter.
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INEXORABLE (France/Belgium 2021) ***
Directed by Fabrice Du Welz
INEXORABLE stars and is largely carried by Belgium born actor Benoit Puelvoorde who rose to fame with the 1992 cult classic (that I have not seen) MAN BITES DOG. But I have recently seen Puelvoorde in comedies VENICE N’EST PAS EN ITALIE and the recent Netflix hit I AM NOT A SUPERHERO both films demonstrating his acting prowess in comedy and drama.In INEXORABLE, Puelvoorde plays Marcel Bellmer a successful author suffering from writer’s block who moves into the colossal old country manor belonging to the family of his wife and publisher Jeanne (Mélanie Doutey) for inspiration.Long hidden secrets start to haunt him.Distraction and certain danger arrives in the form of Gloria (Alba Gaïa Bellugi), a shy, awkward young woman with no home or family of her own who, by happenstance, connects with Marcel and Jeanne’s daughter Lucie.Gloria is invited and stays with the family.Gloria confesses to Marcel that reading his work, and the book Inexorable in particular, saved her life during its darkest moments. But as Gloria becomes increasingly involved in the family’s affairs, a whole new darkness threatens to consume the lot of them.Bearing a resemblance to the 1970’s film, Harold Prince’s SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE but more sombre and chilling,INEXORABLE shares the common theme of a stranger entering a wealthy home and destroys it.Everyone loves a good mystery thriller but this one is a tad hard to swallow. INEXORABLE, though not without its flaws satisfies to a point.
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NOBODY HAS TO KNOW (Belgium/France /UK 2021) ****
Directed byBouli Lanners
NOBODY HAS TO KNOW follows Phil (played by director Lanners) who suffers from amnesia following a strike.The amnesia might be temporary, says the doctor, as Phil slowly but surely remembers his past after a while.Do not expect the speed of a JASON BOURNE IDENTITY movie - this one is a pretty slow burn with lots of gloom and grey, typical of the Scottish environment.Phil works on a remote Scottish island and the story follows Phil’s journey to recovering his memory — and the love story he’s told along the way — lies at the heart of this tender, gorgeous film. Phil’s boss’s daughter, Millie (Michelle Fairley), helps him acclimate back to his life, reminding him of his origins, his likes and dislikes… and the fact that he and Millie were secret lovers.But the fact is kept whether that romance ever existed in the first place.NOBODY HAS TO KNOW is an extremely moving film both meticulous and sublime and comes highly recommended as a romantic drama about grabbing opportunity before it is gone forever.
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PETITE MAMAN (France 2021) **** Directed by Céline Sciamma
Mesmerizing, beautiful and magical, director Céline Sciamma’s latest film about loss and discovery from the point of view of a young girl, Nelly (Josephine Sanz) is an unforgettable film that is a must-see.This is the director that has amazed critics with PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE and demonstrated her smarts with her script for the amazing animated MA VIE EN COURGETTE, nominated and should have won the Oscar for Best Animated feature.When Nelly’s granny dies, she goes to her home with her parents and meets a girl her age, also long somewhat like her.As she plays and gets acquainted with Marion, but it turns out that the new friend is her mother when her mother was her age.The film moves in and out comfortably, between times, between personalities as Nelly learns about her mother.There is immense intelligence and sensitivity and remarkably thought-out scenes like the connection between the two girls while having soup or playing. The English translation of the title LITTLE MOTHER prepares the audience for Nelly to meet her maman when she is little.
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SALOUM (Senegal 2021) ***1/2
Directed by Jean Luc Herbulot
Shot mainly in French though set in the poorest regions of Africa.A trio of mercenaries navigate a mysterious region of Senegal, in Jean Luc Herbulot’s perhaps coolest film of the festival. His film demonstrates great ingenuity and spirit with lots going on in each layered scene that what might be overlooked.Amidst Guinea-Bissau’s coup d’état of 2003, Bangui’s Hyenas, an elite trio of mercenaries, skillfully extract a drug dealer and his bricks — both gold and narcotic — from the chaos and make tracks for Dakar, Senegal. But when their escape plan is unexpectedly waylaid, the Hyenas find themselves and their bounty stranded in the Sine-Saloum Delta, a coastal river realm speckled with insulated island communities and steeped in myth and mystery.Believing they can keep a low profile at a nearby holiday encampment, they attempt to blend in with the tourists but are soon at risk of exposure with the arrival of both a suspicious police captain and an enigmaticSigning deaf woman who harbours secrets of her own.The film is not perfect, as it is messy and occasionally confusing, but SALOUM is definite evidence that Herbulot has the best that is yet to come.
Selected to be in the Wavelength Category of TIFF , which means that the film has not much meaning and little story and lots of experimental visuals - STE. ANNE is exactly what one would expect from a Wavelengths film.Set and shot in Treaty 1 territory, which today includes Winnipeg and the nearby town that lends the film its title, this meditation is a deeply mysterious and alluring examination of home by way of places and people.The central revenant is Renée (Vermette), who returns to her young daughter Athene — now living with Renée’s brother Modeste and his wife — after an unexplained absence of several years.The reunion is fraught, not in the least due to Renée’s closely held secrets and obvious unease with the prospect of settling into a traditional role of mother or homesteader. The fragmentary (and at times fractious) nature of the dynamic is heightened by an approach that incorporates experimental diversions, as well as beguiling ambiguities and anachronisms that locate the film out of time.Filmed in French and English.
LES FEMMES EN OR (Two Women) (Canada 2025) *** Directed by Chloé Robichaud
Violette and Florence no longer understand what's happening to them. Respectively on maternity leave and off...
