Reviews

How does a filmmaker bring out something new in the prolific Jessica Chastain? From the first scene onward, Michel Franco photographs her character Sylvia almost exclusively in profile, or slightly from behind in his widescreen compositions. It is as if we are sharing her sideways approach to life, following her thoughts. Seldom seen in close-up, the versatile actress is entrusted to hold the center from a distance. The effect is devastating in the film's most emotional scene, with Sylvia's weeping uncontrollably in the middle distance, her members just standing around, aloof, unsupportive, her monster of a mother almost blocking Sylvia from view. That short scene encapsulates her entire life, how she becomes who she is. The film's last scene is similarly perfect; short and sweet, it points to her future.

I think Chastain handpicked the emerging auteur Franco to work with (they have another film coming out). I am impressed with his classical restraint. His formal, visual signatures never overwhelm the story. The camera is mostly static, but the scenes are short, avoiding the usual art-house oppressiveness. When Saul (Peter Skarsgaard) is in the frame, or in Sylvia's mind, the camera moves, the earth moves, she has a spring in her step, her voice grows softer.

_Memory_ asks pointed questions about the mysteries of the human condition. We are defined by what we remember, misremember, cannot recall, choose to forget. Straight-jacketed by childhood trauma and past addiction, Sylvia is a supremely reserved, overprotective single mother. All her friends seem to hail from Alcoholic Anonymous. Saul has the lack of inhibition of the mentally ill (early onset dementia). One night he tries to follow her home, but she barricades it with quadruple locks. Slowly she lets down her guard, shares with him complementary vulnerability. Their late blooming romance, aided by Sylvia's precocious teenage daughter Anna (Brooke Timber), reminds me of another great humanist director Lee Chang-Dong's taboo-breaking relationship in _Oasis_.

This is my first Franco film, so I naturally regard Chastain as much the auteur of this film as the director. _Memory_ comes on the heel of _The Good Nurse_ in which she plays another financially strapped single mother. Yet her spontaneous, open-hearted nurse in the previous work cannot be more different from the tightly wound Sylvia. Even the voices are like night and day, sonorous in one role, curt in the other. Chastain looks shockingly young in _Memory_, especially since the last time I saw her was as the dying Tammy Wynette. Lithe and as tiny as Anna, she can easily pass as a teenager, especially in the presence of Skarsgaard, an embarrassed crouching bear of a man. In fact the actress may have conceived of her character as someone arrested in her teenage state, with sullenness and exhaustion baked into her soul, her gait. She can barely manage a smile, unless it is for her daughter, and later Saul. It is a tricky, non-showy role, and Chastain inhibits the passive character to the fullness of her being.

Yet for someone with such a checkered past, Sylvia is devoid of meanness, full of hidden sensitivity. When she offends Anna or Saul -- which is often, given her abrupt manners -- she tries to make amends. When something triggers her festering wounds she would curl up and cry for hours -- but always out of the public's eye. (The alcoholism subtext seems to draw from Chastain's heartfelt experience with her own sister, but I hate to intrude on her privacy here.) When they finally start dating it is like first love; Sylvia opens up like a flower. Timber, Skarsgaard, and the supporting actors are good, but _Memory_ is the latest great Jessica Chastain character study first and foremost.

The low-key _Memory_ especially stands out when it is compared with more highly touted but inferior movies I have watched (or rewatched) recently. I applaud the refusal to wallow in the alcoholism trap (unlike _To Leslie_), to turn the protagonist into a cypher (Petzold's _Barbara_, and Wenders's _Perfect Days_ which has similar family dynamics but less thematic depth), or to treat the memory motif as a video game (Bonello's _The Beast_). Most modern "art-house" films take out too much. Withholding the defining moments of the protagonists' lives is such a tired gimmick and diminishes their humanity. Being human is such a fragile thing; Chastain, Skarsgaard, and Franco have explored that oblique mystery so very profoundly.

I saw _La Discrete_ when it came out in theater 34 years ago. Watching it again I realize it is even better than I remembered -- a masterclass of story-telling. There is not a single extraneous scene or element in the screenplay. Everything is connected, coalescing into a deep, reflective whole.

At the heart of the film is the very nature of literature (and art) -- whether it should be solipsistic snobbery or humanizing edification. When I was young I could never understand why amazing writers with such deep insight into human beings could be monsters in life. Bookstore owner Jean (Maurice Garrel) and writer Antoine (Fabrice Luchini) are living embodiment of the answers. Jean knows every book but is manipulative, pulling strings to get the best money's worth out of his staple of novelists, and also, one suspect, to feed his ego. Antoine is an arrogant womanizer left seething when Solange (Marie Bunel) ditches him for another. Together they concoct a plan to seduce a random young woman and turn the resulting diary-form story into lucre.

The woman turns out to be Catherine (Judith Henry), who answers Antoine ad for manuscript transcription. She is in awe of Antoine's erudition, amused by his overbearing, misogynistic putdowns, and seduced by his big city elegance, endless anecdotes about literary lions past. She hails from rural France, which is no small thing in class-conscious Paris, and even acknowledges out loud she must not be his type. Behind her back, Antoine savagely belittles her looks to Jean. In truth, Judith Henry is lovely in her demure way, but never lands a starring role afterwards. (By way of contrast, Solange is sophistication personified, dressed like a photo shoot.)

The two men's meta-commentary on this phony courtship recalls Rohmer's masterpiece _Claire's Knee_, except that one of Rohmer's schemers is female and the film does not come off as sexist. (But reviewers who think Rohmer never portrayed truly toxic masculinity obviously have not seen _La Collectionnese_.) Slowly Antoine falls for Catherine, only for Jean to twist his knife in at the end.

Luchini gives one of the greatest performances of his unique career. (It is shocking the French icon has never had a career retrospective in the U. S.) For his Antoine, telling anecdotes and incorporating life into the literary continuum is his essence of living. Despite that, it is his silence -- staying perfectly still looking into the distance as he listens -- that marks him as a deep thinker, someone open to the redemptive, humanizing force of art. Catherine may have the Galatea role in this perverted Pygmalion tale, but it is her anecdote about her night as a sex-party hostess, indulging grown men to act like children (a fitting commentary on Antoine and Jean, although she does not know it), that sticks in our mind. When the truth comes out, she seeks no revenge, but writes Antoine a surprisingly graceful and brave letter. Such hidden depth and strength of character.

The female bonding between Solange and Catherine at a chance meeting, leaving Antoine feeling left out, is a sweet rendering of the eternal battle of the sexes. Even the grotesque, unloved Jean has a moment of humanity when his minion Manu (Francois Tourmarkine) tells the story of Jean sitting in his dead mother's apartment for hours. (The next shot is Jean framed sitting alone -- such deft editing!) One hopes that Antoine never hardens into such a bitter misanthrope in his old age. Manu himself evokes the first story Antoine tells Catherine about a simpleton, and shows that even the fool has his moment of insight. What an astonishing screenplay by director Christian Vincent and co-writer Jean-Pierre Ronssin; Vicent would make many more movies but none would approach the perfection of _La Discrete_.

The title cards, mostly static and stately composition, and spare use of music evoke so many Rohmer films. Here Schubert's Hungarian Melody (D817) is almost the entirety of the score. The piano is mischievous and jaunty in the early going, only to slow to a melancholic crawl at the end, The last segment fittingly focuses on Catherine in the country, the sun cold and waning in the sky. The film's coda, back to Antoine in a Parisian cafe, cannot have been better imagined.

This is from 2018; the online information about Sonia Millot is no longer available, and I cannot vouch for the accuracy regarding this playwright below!

_The Mad Kings_ may not be a great film but it is certainly powerful. The opening -- muscle car driving over an animal's carcass on a road to nowhere -- plays like David Lynch on steroids, and it only gathers more speed, dead bodies, and primal fury from there. It succeeds in being operatic without resorting to supernatural or Freudian cliches, unlike in much of Lynch.

Writer-director Laurent Laffargue and co-writer Frederique Moreau apparently adapted the story from Sonia Millot's play _Casteljaloux_. Both Millot and Laffargue grew up in that sleepy commune close to Bordeaux, where buying your own butcher shop is a crowning achievement. Jacky Chichinet (ex-soccer star Eric Cantona) is doing just that, and wants to marry the town beauty Chantal (Celine Sallette) into the bargain. The passionate Chantal toils as a cashier by day and teaches Tartuffe and Moliere to young wannabe actors on the side. With her miniskirts and Shakespeare poster in the kitchen, she is clearly too glamorous for him, for Casteljaloux, and for all the communes miles from there. The Romy Schneider-winning actress is a French Carmen Maura; she effortlessly conveys a world weariness beyond her years. But life's disappointments can be held at bay if you wear adoring gazes.

The idyll, such as it is, lies shattered when her old flame Jeannot (Sergei Lopez) rides into town. He is a hard-drinking ex-con, romantic, charming, but prone to shocking violence. While scheming to win back Chantal, he falls in with his buddy-in-crime. His sister (I think?) sends him job interviews and tries to steer him out of trouble. Romane Bohringer has played her share of crazy, wildly romantic youths (_Total Eclipse_, _Savage Nights_); here she is almost unrecognizable as the gaunt, prim, religious single mother trying to hold the center. Her troubled son is in Chantal's class. He could have been Jeannot's boy; he is charismatic and theatrical, and shares a girl with his sidekick buddy.

There is obvious parallel between the two love-triangles and the generations. Will the son sublimate his passion into art, redeems himself and Casteljaloux, or turn violent like Jeannot, who ends up re-enacting a passion play right out of _The Iliad_? Playwright Millot is a local theater actress, puppeteer, and part-time teacher, and the stark choices and dilemmas facing these characters stuck in backwater towns feel fiercely person, even if she is not listed in the film credits.

_Blood Trail_ (as translated by Amazon) is perhaps Gotz Spielmann-lite, but still worth a look. The TV film is morally straight-forward compare to his highly rated _Revanche_, _Antares_, and also _Die Fremde_ (those are the three I have had the chance to see). It repeats quite a few motifs and themes from those films however: a underlying romanticism and humanism; ensemble cast with overlapping stories; promiscuous women (or sex workers) who need saving; murder and attempted murder. Here the good guys are the cops and the bad guy reads Nietzsche. The narrative is quite complex though, going forward and backward in time, linking a disappearance from long ago to a seemingly innocuous death in the present day. Unlike his Austrian compatriots Haneke and (I suppose) Ulrich Siedl, who make deeply nihilistic, misantropic films that are highly celebrated, Spielmann is a classicist. (The film is scored mostly to classical music, with a long debates about philosophy between the killer and the detective.) Despite the sordid plot points often found in his stories, forgiveness and kindness triumph in the end. Maybe that is why Spielmann has not been more celebrated in modern film culture! That, and his refusal to engage more famous actors.

Cedric Klapisch's _Someone, Somewhere_ seems designed to milk the success of his _Back to Burgundy_. Francois Civil's tongue-tied awkwardness personified is resurrected as Parisian Remy. He has neither friends or family and work in a soulless product distribution center (like one of Amazon's). Literally across an empty shaft from him (in a architectural horror show of a building reminiscent of _Candyman_) is Melanie (Ana Giradot, also featured in _Burgundy_). She is marginally more functional, is a biochemical researcher, but suffers from extreme low self-esteem. Her father abandoned her and boyfriend jilted her. You might argue she is a depressive waiting for the next car-wreck to justify her existence. (I was one, once.)

Their lives intersect often -- on the overpass to the Stalingrad Metro Station, in the funky grocery store in "Little Turkey" (the 10th Arrondissement), ultimately in the dance class -- but never quite connect till near the end, shades of _Three Colors: Red_. The setting isn't picturesque as Geneva, but the benign sense of community reminds me of the ethnic enclave in _Queen of Montreuil_. The supporting actors are uniformly colorful and fascinating: Simon Abkarian as the gregarious grocery store owner, Eye Haidara as Remy's would-be flirty girlfriend (I was rooting for them to be together), Rebecca Marder as Melanie's sister, Francois Berleand and Camille Cottin as Remy's and Melanie's respective therapists. (Cottin must have been born full and entire as a mature beauty age 35, and has stayed that way since.) And Civil, reprising his hilarious shy shtick, is endlessly watchable.

The problem is Giradot, once again sporting her woe-is-me, navel-gazing persona. Her Melanie claims she visits cancer-ridden kids in the hospital every morning, and that gives her the motivation for her research (despite complaining she can't get out of bed). I wish Kapisch has shown that scene, because I have a hard time visualizing it. When Haidara and Marder appear (and they have few scenes), their vivaciousness immediately makes you wonder about the casting.

In the end the two therapists cure them of their guilt and lack of self-love. Remy reveals a traumatic childhood memory which seems a bit tacked on. Klapisch is nothing if not attuned to the mindset of today's youths; the plot points about trauma and mental health would resonate strongly with his target audience, although old people like me might think of pandering. What _Someone, Somewhere_ truly lacks is the great insight, great rupture of his previous film _Back to Burgundy_: the singularity that is Maria Valverde, regal, assured, commanding, providing a contrast and pointing a way forward for his other inarticulate and aimless youths. Inevitably, _Someone, Somewhere_ comes off as a step backward.

The setting is Bordeaux and its verdant woods, hardly a desert; the sentimental landscape is alive with longing as well. Both Doctor Courreges and his son Raymond are entranced with Maria Cross, a widow with a soiled reputation and now a dead son. She is desperately unhappy and their yearning for her provides a comfort she cannot reciprocate given the societal constraints. (The story must have straddled WWI, because there is subplot about a war-widow.) Instead she is saddled with a rich suitor she does not love ... Twelve years later, as its framing device, the film presents a reunion of sort.

I have not seen an Emmanuelle Beart film in years, and can't say I have enjoyed one of hers for much longer (the last great film must be Andre Techine's _Witnesses_). The actress has withdrawn into an all-purpose hostility. In _The Desert of Love_, however, she is sensational, by turn prim, seductive, world-weary, and strangely alive. It is heart-breaking to see her cover-up her unhappiness with her imperious manner at the end ...

The TV film by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe (who seems to specialize in prestige TV production) is adapted from Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac's novel. I have never read anything by Mauriac, but am quite impress by this women-centric story, and by Claude Miller's _Therese_, also adapted from his work. The lighting and production design here is tony bourgeois, but the spare score is particularly beautiful.

Surely many teenagers become entranced with older women, but you seldom see this depicted in American movies. (Off the top of my head, I can only think of _Sophie's Choice_.) European films are full of them. A favorite is _The Miracle_ by Neil Jordan, in which both father and son are obsessed with the same woman, much like in this film and in _First Love_ (Maximilian Schell). You wonder why. In any case, _The Desert of Love_ is a great return to form by Emmanuelle Beart. To answer pallavibhunjun's question from 2018, I saw it on amazon's "France" channel, but it will be gone in a few days!

For once, just a short review. The colorful supporting characters (the bookstore owner who has an opinion on everything; the young co-worker who grades everyone on a numerical scale; the latter's "10/10" lady friend; the rebellious niece) are as interesting as the Tokyo streets (and its toilets). The main character is interesting in the sense that he could be the aging version of any of the male protagonists in Wim Wenders's 1970s and 1980s road movies; settling down with a job, but still as fond of the old rock-and-roll playlist and driving around. The Tokyo "sky tree" also reminds me of Berlin's Fernsehturm! In that sense this is perhaps Wenders's most personal film in a long time. My slight frustration is that the use of Lou Reed et al.'s music is a bit too self-indulgent. The director's late period work is a bit uneven, but I would put this right up there with _Every Body Will be Fine_, his underrated 2015 effort (which may be his first film about people who love to read?). Of course that film has Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marie-Josee Croze, so I may biased. But it does seem like there is plenty in Wenders's tank yet! Don't retire!

All flowers nurse a secret sorrow. Some boast hopes and dreams. They sing to us in voiceover, foreshadowing the mood swings in Olivier Dahan's hypnotic ballad.

All blonde-mother-son movies come from one source. _La vie Promise_ inverts _Paris,Texas_'s journey: amnesiac Sylvia (Isabelle Huppert) retraces her path to long-lost husband-and-son, while Laurence (Maud Forget), the daughter by her side, is left chasing her across France. Faded polaroids and grainy home videos (Sylvia in a cowboy hat) are bread crumbs, all that is left of her memory.

All men are poor wayfaring strangers. Joshua (Pascal Gregory, more soulful than we have seen him) is Laurence's guardian angel, then the mother's confessional priest. He dresses the part too. Of course he turns out to be an ex-con. Knighting himself, he escorts his Ladies over River Jordan.

All of Sylvia's wardrobe is stunning and out-of-place. Chinese silk, high heels, grey nails: a street walker's getup in rural France as she travels back in time. She finds haunted villages in the mist, long-forgotten neighbors, her burnt-down bridal home. The Virgin Mary statuette still stands, a miracle.

All pastoral scenes are painterly rendered by day, anamorphic golden fields against dense verdant trees. At night ghostly rivers sparkle, those are neon blue. The interior scenes are also blue, and filled with terror, unless they are red, or some other flowers' eerie color. It is as though the characters cannot bear to face themselves indoors. The clever camera movement makes the lighting pop, flashing out warnings like UFOs. (Talented cinematographer Alex Lamarque would die young.)

All music is mournful pop, florid and overripe, until it resolves into quiet strings. The trio arrive at the edge of the world; Sylvia earns her redemption. The ending feels purified, rinsed in cold water, as the protagonists double back on the open road. Can they now face themselves when they run out of asphalt? A lone wildflower sways in the wind, and poses the question.

_The Green Perfume_ is Nicholas Pariser's comic/romantic thriller, in the mode of Hitchcock (the femme fatale's blond wig in the opening scene is a dead giveaway) and _Diva_ (with Comedie-Francaise stage plays rather than opera as subtext). Martin (Vincent Lacoste) finds his costar dying in his arms on stage, and is immediately kidnapped and framed for murder. On the run, he bumps into cartoonist Claire (Sandrine Kiberlain), who complains of his off-kilter, neurotic ways. Since those two adjectives are pretty much the middle names of most of Kiberlain's characters in her career, you can tell they are all but separated-at-birth, and will ultimately hit it off.

Claire is whip-smart, five steps ahead of the hapless Martin, the police, and the thugs chasing them. They criss-cross Europe, to Brussels and Budapest in search of answers, as people drop like flies around them. (For a romantic comedy, _The Green Perfume_ has a serious body count, even if the violence occurs off-screen.) The film ends on a romantic note on a bridge on the Danube, which nicely echoes their earlier adventure over the Seine. One assumes it is also a bridge to their happiness. The visual compositions are marvelously evocative indeed: repeated overhead shots of staircases and cramped train rides recall each other, they return to haunt you. The sound design is lovely. When the police chief finds her agent dead in a phone booth, we only see the back of her head, but from the sudden hushing of ambient crowd noise we know exactly, subjectively, how she feels.

Despite the farcical tone, the film addresses the usually serious Pariser's recurring themes: the intersection of art and politics; ideology and idealism in the face of indifference; the role of Western ideas in this chaotic start to a new century. The climatic "Ivanov" rendition (an early play by Chekhov) is staged against a backdrop of war's carnage; the "Mcguffin" everyone is seeking is a device for dispensing fake news. In a heart-to-heart chat of the type often found in the middle of Pariser's films, Claire reveals she has spent 20 year in Israel as a left-wing activist, losing every election; she has returned to France to relive her idea of Europe. (Correction -- _Ivanov_ must be the play in the opening scene. I haven't pinned down which the second play is ...)

Pariser has an enviable track record of creating great female characters among male writers. Here he is helped immeasurably by Kiberlain, who can toss a thousand side-way glances and eye rolls a minute while pursing her already downward curling lips; she has more facial ticks, more dream-shakes on camera, than Hakeem Olajuwon has moves in front of a basket. If you are a fan you will love _The Green Perfume_. (And if you are not -- what is your problem?) Vincent Lacoste is like a young Hugh Grant here, a magnet for small accidents and women. He plays the young version of the protagonist in Honore's wonderful _On a Magical Night_, and has thus amassed a remarkable romantic casting chances against older female leads (Camille Cottin, Chiara Mastroianni, and now Kiberlain). Of the supporting actors, Rudiger Vogler has better lines than most James Bond villains. Good to see the alter ego of so many Wim Wender road movies again! One wishes Jenna Thiam is given more to do, but looking up imdb, the mother of the boy on a train ride is played by Gwenaelle Simon, one of Eric Rohmer's sirens in _A Summer's Tale_! The matching mustache on two secret agents makes me swoon. It is that kind of film.

In the last 30 minutes of so of _Simone: Woman of the Century_, the Holocaust scenes (Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and the death marches in between), only hinted at in flashbacks before, take center stage. Relentless depravity haunts every scene, interrupted only by brief cutaways to the elderly Simone Veil (Elsa Zylberstein) narrating these personal events in voiceover. These haunting images harken back to the scenes of French/Algerian prisoner being mistreated, and finally explains the explosive outrage that has driven the young Veil (Rebecca Marder) to crusade for human dignity for France's lowest citizens, even its enemies. (Is Veil also paying forward her debt to the Polish death-camp guard-woman's unexpected kindness here?) Watching scenes after scenes of Simone, her sister Milou (Judith Chemla), and mother Yvonne (Elodie Bouchez) clinging to each other in their desperate ordeal, we finally understand the depth of Simone Veil's despair at Milou's death in a car accident, and the film's insistent reminder of Yvonne's influence on her daughters.

In other words, _Simone_ has the same narrative structure as the very famous _Sophie's Choice_. Yet Alan Pakula's 1982 film won Meryl Streep an Oscar and numerous other awards. Olivier Dahan's work has lodged two minor Cesar nominations, winning both; the film is never released in the U. S. And it is the better film, more grounded in reality -- even if the improbable rise of Holocaust survivor to political immortality in France registers as a more "Hollywood" ending! In a way, _Sophie's Choice_ would fit today's trendy discourse about "trauma" to perfection. Veil's unwavering courage and heroism, by contrast, seem to make her a Cold War relic, or perhaps something out of distant Greek myths.

Both actresses themselves have mixed Jewish-Catholic upbringing. Zylberstein supposedly puts on weight and lots of facial make-up for the mature Veil scenes. Her Simone is calm and contemplative, but we also see flashes of the combative self evident in the character's younger years, especially during the abortion debate when opponents rain abuse and bigotry on her. Marder has just starred as another high-spirited, highly educated Jewish girl the previous year, in Sandrine Kiberlain's astonishing _A Radiant Girl_. The effervescence, head-strong determination, and clever repartee are still there in this film. But it is in the last half hour, when she is reduced to an abject squalid wreck, her hair shaved and her words silenced, that you see the true strength of Marder's performance. You always read about the hollowed-out spirit of death camp survivors, their gaze dead, but oh, how Marder's eyes burn! Her character is put on earthwork duties near Auschwitz, then masonry. That rock-like, indomitable essence will never desert her. If there is lingering doubt about whether Rebecca Marder will be a legend of cinema someday, _Simone_ has swept it away. (I see her as the worthy successor to Barbara Sukowa, who has had quite a monopoly on the Hannah Arendt, Hildegard von Bingen, and Rosa Luxemburg "great intellectual women of history" roles.)

But the triumph is also Olivier Dahan's. The non-chronological, episodic, emphatic depiction of Veil's greatest triumphs and worst heartbreaks is exactly what viewers like me, relatively ignorant of Veil's eventful life-story, can benefit most from. (It is how _Maestro_ should have been structured!) Veil's compassion for the down-trodden -- including those afflicted with AIDs -- is particularly touching. The one thing missing from the screenplay is, surely, Veil's political savvy. You don't win world-changing votes, over and over again (on abortion, prison reforms, for the Presidency of the European Union) with only idealism and fervor; you need to know how to court allies. Anyone can be a firebrand. Being able to work with the system and change institutions from within takes superhuman tenacity and courage. On that score, Simone Veil must truly be one of the greatest women of the 20th century.

In terms of the quality of film-making, _Simone_ sends me back to Dahan's previous best film. Not _La Vie en Rose_ which I barely remember, or _Grace of Monaco_ which I did not finish, but _La Vie Promise_. Stylistically they are similar indeed. Both _Simone_ and _La Vie Promise_ convey a sense of fragmentation early on, the flashbacks and present-day events depicted with contrasting graininess and lighting choices. The visuals are perhaps a bit too busy (both feature the 2.35:1 widescreen format, which helps), and the use of music also gets a bit heavy-handed. As the traumatic past is revealed, the debris of memory accumulate, and the poignant voiceover (coming at an angle to the narrative) percolates in our head, the narrative becomes hyper-focused -- the score also distilling into solo piano -- and each film takes on the force of a landslide. It took me hours to recover from the ending of _Simone_. Elsa Zylberstein, also a producer, reportedly labored to draw Dahan out of his post-_Grace of Monaco_-failure self-imposed exile, so the film is about the director exorcising his own demons too! His film is an inspiration to everyone; it is a must-see for the younger generation so often given to fear for the future, to despair.

_Caprice_ is by far the best film by French acidic romantic comedy specialist Emmanuel Mouret I have seen. Of his previous films, I barely remember a thing of _Please, Please Me_, _Shall We Kiss_, and _Venus and Fleur_. _Another Life_ is almost universally hated; while the cynical _Lady J_ has a touch of redemptive sincerity, it comes too little, too late. By comparison, _Caprice_ is almost a tragedy -- at least for its eponymous character (Anais Demoustier). It also boasts multifaceted rumination on the nature of love, and surprising depth.

Director Mouret himself plays Clement, a theater enthusiast who adores famed actress Alicia (Virginie Efira). He is also fated to sitting next to Caprice during Alicia's stage performances, and you'd think they are meant to be together. Instead, and despite being mismatched -- Alicia is a star, mobbed by admirers every night, he is an uncharismatic school-teacher -- he moves in with his idol. One night his colleague and possibly only friend Thomas drags him into a foursome night's out, who else but Caprice as the fourth wheel. She briefly seduces Clement but the relationship fades out. A crestfallen Alicia, cheated on again, ponders a relation with Thomas. Given what happens to Caprice at the end, it is hard to see how this film qualifies as romantic, a comedy, or even as bittersweet.

Mouret plays his usual slumped-over shamble who is somehow a magnet for glamorous ladies. Efira has never been more alluring, but her scenes on stage seem to suggest her character's fame exceeds her dramatic range; she is no Jessica Chastain or Sandra Huller. In contrast, it turns out Caprice is an aspiring actress, and the non-professional play she puts on with friends (a science fiction about, what else, the nature of love) is quite a revelation. Her keen intelligence and surprising depth are revealed when she spices up Clement's debut stage play, starring Alicia. By that time Caprice is long gone; Clement never summons up the courage to leave Alicia for her. Of the three leads Demoustier has the most mysterious role. She is the innocent theater companion, the veteran seductress, the jealous stalker, the idealistic admirer obviously head-over-heals in love with Clement even if she denies it. I guess this must be true love. Through it all the young Demoustier gives an deft and electric performance. Meanwhile Clement openly questions whether he is more taken with Alicia the actress than the person, while his partner reveals she picks him because of a fortune teller's words. At one point she admits she only thinks she loves him ... they both seem to live inside their head, playacting their way through relationships.

Mouret is often described as a Rohmer-lite. The four-side relationship might be his _Boyfriends and Girlfriends_, without the satisfying resolution. Clement might be the prim Jean-Louie Trintignant in _My Night at Maud_ without the intellectual underpinning; perhaps he is a pale version, Bernard Verley's straying bourgeoisie in _Love in the Afternoon_? Efira is certainly as glamorous as Francoise Fabian's Maud, or Arille Dombasle's Marion in _Pauline at the Beach_. Is Demoustier the demur Blanche in _Boyfriends_, or Haydee Politoff's reckless ingenue in _La Collectionnuese_? I think of her mostly as the sirens disposed of by Rohmer's protagonists, whose heartbreak we seldom get to see ... To its great credit, _Caprice_ has truly earned these Rohmeresque comparisons.

_A Radiant Girl_ is an absolute masterpiece. It opens with surprising 2.35:1 widescreen compositions, faces in close-ups -- off-kilter, off to one side, against a dark background, against the void -- delivering classically written lines. It is slowly revealed that they are auditioning for a Marivaux play. Indeed this turns out to be a unique film, classically informed yet sui generis -- like the director Sandrine Kiberlain herself as an actress.

Kiberlain follows in the recent footsteps of numerous French actresses who have also become visually sophisticated directors (Nicole Garcia, Melanie Laurent, Hafsia Herzi ...). As a group, they seem preternaturally primed to channel the great cinematic story-tellers they have worked with, as though through osmosis. In _A Radiant Girl_ the point of reference is clearly Benoit Jacquot, whose _False Servant_ (also based on Marivaux) she starred in. Her lead actress, Rebecca Marder in a star-making role as Irene, also has extensive theater background; she is one of the youngest salaried members of the Comédie-Française, ever. Irene is a high-spirited, impossibly talented 18-year-old non-practising Jew living in the shadow of Nazi-occupied Paris. Keen on being selected into a conservatory, she enlists her friends and family in rehearsals, blind to the encroaching restrictions and intolerance -- even after she is fired from an usher job and is forced to wear the yellow star. She is also experiencing the throes of first love, feigning poor eyesight so she can spend time with an optometrist's assistant. Like many Frenchmen in the film Jacques embraces her ethnicity. But virulent elements are on the rise, like the resentful waitress who informs on her. The film ends with Irene on verge of being arrested by Nazi agents, to the horror of devoted friends in that cafe; sitting with her back to the entrance she never sees it coming.

The film's focus on the lives and loves of exalted Jewish youths soon to be rounded up is very much in the tradition of _Au Revoir Les Enfants_ and _The Garden of the Finzi- Continis_, although _A Radiant Girl_ even more radically elides the horrors of Nazi rule. Unlike those work it has a female protagonist whose tunnel-vision define this film's point-of-view. In interviews Kiberlain reveals this is the central insight that gives her the point-of-entry into that dark era of German occupation/French collaboration. Another nod to French cinematic tradition is the troupe of impossibly passionate, idealistic students driven to learn the classics, to debate the fine points of literature. They may be catty about the talent of their peers, but on the whole there is not a mean bone in their bodies. These are truly the best of youth; to touch a hair of any of them is a crime against all humanity. I am particularly enchanted by idyllic scenes of Irene cavorting with lover and classmates in cafes and in outdoor picnics just before tragedy strikes. Those scenes remind me of Eric Rohmer, but also of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's masterpiece "Luncheon of the Boating Party." I have always thought that "Luncheon" was the impressionists' answer to da Vinci's "The Last Supper." Communal bliss and betrayal/mortification are two sides of the same coin; only in tandem can the full measure of each be registered. In that sense, Renoir's painting is as sacred an artform as da Vinci's. The same may be true of _A Radiant Girl_, implicitly in conversation with Holocaust films of the past.

In this directorial debut, Kiberlain wisely plays to her strength and that of Marder. The deep insights into the theater acting/auditioning mechanics, and the thrilling creative process behind new takes on venerable roles, are clearly drawn from deeply personal experience. (Speaking of which, Kiberlain seems to be 100% Jewish, with all four grandparents of that ethnicity.) Marder is the spitting image of Valentina Cervi playing another inspired artist in _Artemisia_. Her Irene has the hauteur of Marie Gillain in Tavernier's _The Bait_, and her fainting spells and tender scenes with father and grandmother remind me of Irene Jacob in _The Double Life of Veronique). Some actors are always ten times better than their material and their costars. Others, no matter how brilliant, thrive on special roles and dedicated direction. I should have recognized Marder from the forgettable _Mama Weed_; consulting my notes, I once thought that she should have switched roles with Lola Creton in a period film _Quarter_. In _A Radiant Girl_ Kiberlain gives her full license to express herself, perhaps even to take on the director's quirky acting persona (not that anyone can truly imitate Kiberlain, a unicorn among actors). She brings out the best in Marder, who must be now considered among the most gifted French actresses of her generation.

The production design by veteran Katia Wyszkop is first rate, all muted colors which highlight the very occasional flush of red on Marder's lips or chin. (Especially her red ribbon, for good luck, which becomes a plot point.) The film clearly has a limited budget; there is not a vintage car in sight, WWII era technology is restricted to rotary telephones (later confiscated from Jewish homes), and Paris period landmarks are thinly represented by the banks of the Seine. But the film turns this frugality into strength, emphasizing the timelessness of its premise. The camera work by Guillaume Schiffman is Benoit Jacquot-like, static in the theater scenes, gradually more mobile as the film opens up to the world, both its glory and ugliness. I don't know where the inspiration for the wide screen choice comes from; it must have been one of Kiberlain's acting credits but I am drawing a blank. It provides a poignant contrast, a peripheral vision field for a protagonist who lacks one. But Kiberlain's solo screenplay is as responsible for keeping the story fresh as the technical excellence and Marder's exuberance. There are so many unexpected side stories, they feel off-kilter until you think about them afterwards, and then they feel so right. Lovely use of the Philip Glass concerto at the end. This film will be on my best-of-decade list.

I read all the positive reviews and was really excited about this Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear winner. I should have tempered my expectation. _Black Coal, Thin Ice_ is at its best when it uses (unintentionally?) coal as metaphor for death and dehumanization. Otherwise it is a pastiche of Nordic noir, with the body dismemberment, mutilation, drunks, taciturn males, and desolate snow-bound landscape from where evil erupts so often found in bleak Danish and Swedish police procedurals. I suppose the interesting local colors (shot in the Heilongjiang, or "Black Dragon River," Province) is a plus. The comically inept policemen, three of them got killed by the not-too-imposing serial murderer, are not. (They may be homage to the Coen Brothers, but are poorly done, and I don't even like the Coens.) The director Diao Yinan isn't great with actors either. The femme fatale is played by decorated Taiwanese actress Gwei Lu-mei; once in a long while she gets to show off her skills, but most of the time she is another stone-faced canvas in a film full of those.

_Alice and the Mayor_ by Nicolas Pariser is hands down one of the best political films I have ever seen. It deals with policies and politics gently and humanely, in a dialectical manner, pitting the jaded long-time mayor of Lyon (Fabrice Luchini) against a novice, 30-year-old literature PhD (Anais Demoustier as Alice) who has been teaching philosophy overseas. The leftist mayor's instinct is to go for grand, inspirational speeches and projects; Alice, in contrast, hews to modesty and decency. The fresh perspectives she brings rejuvenate the mayor, and despite their differences they become best friends, platonic confidants. Together they navigate the early 21st century's realignment of political forces: the Right full of misguided convictions, the Left drowning in its platitudes, and the Greens paralyzed by their apocalyptic prophecies; all are wonderfully embodied in colorful supporting characters.

Luchini is in his element as the man of big, beautiful words, but secretly laboring through exhaustion; he is just going through the motion. Demoustier, in a Cesar-winning performance, makes Alice our surrogate in the whiplash world of city politics. Her reaction shots are priceless as she takes in the glamor but also the hubris, intrigues, professional jealousy, entrenched PR nonsense, and donor/politician hierarchies. Fielding calls late at night, being pulled this way and that (literally, as in the walking-and-talking epic "The West Wing," but by lackeys with far less conviction), the machine eventually wears her down -- even as she brings a spark back to the mayor's office. The denouement, with presidential implications, is classic French cinematic understatement.

As in his previous film _Le Grand Jeu_, director Pariser dramatizes the collision between politics and academia, but instead of a thriller, _Alice and the Mayor_ is a Rohmeresque meditation. Even the opening scene, a panoramic establishing shot, recalls the New Wave master (although Rohmer would have used static montages). I have never seen Lyon being photographed more beautifully. It is certainly better than _The Tree, The Mayor, and the Mediatheque_, also starring Luchini. In fact the film restores our faith in the humanity of those in power trying to make a difference.

Good Austrian film directors do exist in recent years -- Gotz Spielmann is a good example -- but they are a minority, overshadowed by the pseudo-serious, humorless, overpraised, unwatchable majority led by Michael Haneke. _The Beast in the Jungle_, a fairly literal adaptation of a famous Henry James novella, is directed by Patric Chiha, who is firmly in the latter category.

A young man John Marcher (Tom Mercier, adopting the Henry James novella character's name) thinks something momentous will happen in his life and spends the next 15 years waiting for it. He goes to a dance club every Saturday but hangs back, seldom joining the dancing. May Bartrum (Anais Demoustier) somehow becomes besotted, perhaps touched by his loneliness, and meets with him every weekend even after she is married to an increasingly jealous Pierre (Martin Vischer). John is a vacuous, self-absorbed specimen unmoved by the most earth-shattering events shown in news-clips throughout the film. The AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin War, the 9/11 attacks in the U. S., Demoustier's out-of-this-world charm come and go, and he is still waiting for Godot. Perhaps he is a metaphor for boring Austrian movie directors?

The film would have no reason to exist if it weren't for Demoustier, playing against type (excitable neurotics) as a level-headed old-soul. Still she is vivacious enough on the dance-floor to seduce anyone -- but John simply wouldn't dance with her, or give her a kiss. Dancing is a metaphor for life in the heavily stylized film. Chiha probably gets his inspiration from Claire Denis's _Beau Travail_ and Gaspar Noe's _Climax_, although the monotone techno music and dance moves (surely anachronistic for the 80s?) only succeed in making everyone look like zombies. Another influence may be Wong Kar-Wai's _In the Mood for Love_, with mostly indoor locations, elaborate period garments, saturated colors, and focus on the heroine's shoes. The comparison doesn't flatter Chiha's film, unfortunately; the historical specificity isn't there, and _Beast_ can really use a brilliant coda, a sense of rupture (or rapture) seen at the end of _In the Mood_.

Beatrice Dalle relieves the monotony somewhat as the narrator and dresses up as some kind of witch, guardian of time's passage, or Queen of the North. Otherwise Demoustier has to carry the film for her bland costar and boring director, and even her magnetic charm isn't enough this time.

I did not have much expectation of this mini-series, but it turns out to be absolutely first-rate. Its total length is not much more than that of a 2-hour theatrical release. _Thanksgiving_ may lack the traditional 3-act structure, but makes up for it with its extraordinary performances, good writing, and far-above-average camera work.

The three episodes are titled "Vincent," "Louise," and "Masks" -- basically him, her, and them. Vincent (Gregoire Colin) is the co-founder of a software company in danger of losing his flagship product to Korean hackers. His American wife of 10+ years Louise (Evelyne Brochu) runs a real-estate firm for newcomers to Paris, and she secretly works for the CIA. Brochu is perhaps best know for her supporting role in "Orphan Black"; in this lead role she is nothing short of a revelation, seemingly able to express 10 different emotions on her face at any one time. She should be recognize as one of the great French-Canadian actresses, and reminds me of Marie-Josee Croze and Caroline Dhavernas who also excel in deeply compromised heroine roles. Colin is also good, and Stephen Rea, as Louise's CIA handler, perhaps gives his best performance in years. His spymaster acts like a sweetheart who can talk you into anything, yet he also leaves you no doubt he can pounce with deadly intent. The director deserves praise here, isolating the conflicted, complicit, and perhaps corrupt characters in the frame and giving them all the time they need to register the layers of deception they wear as masks. The mini-series effortlessly works as an allegory of U. S.-French relation. The French Vincent drinks too much and only looks out for financial gain; the American Louise doesn't drink at all, and in her misplaced idealism she gets ever more deeply entangled in her "national security" spider-web.

The camera work is excellent, with many evocative lap dissolves that you have to see for yourself. There is a particularly beautiful scene in the woods between husband and wife. There is no gun-play and only one death, but the moral rot that it reveals is truly devastating. Romantic music may swell at the very end, but it reverberates in an empty hall-of-mirror completely devoid of human decency and truth.

Benoit Jacquot's _Suzanna Andler_ is a minor key masterclass in filmmaking. Although the cast is spare -- each scene has two characters, unless it has one -- the camera is a constant dynamic companion, closing in, pulling out, observing, judging. On the minimalist set the glitter in Andler's embroidered shirt, the blue twirl of cigeratte smoke become startling special effects. The main setting is dominated by the wide balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, the sea separating two strips of land at the edges of Jacquot's widescreen composition, as if to emphasize that, even when actors share the frame, they are oceans apart. Except for a few chords of medieval music, ambient noise and the sound of the sea punctuate the characters' dialogues. Towards dusk, the quasi-natural lighting is reminiscent of that of high-contrast black-and-white films, with the camera swirling around the characters, the lens's shallow focus now favoring the person in the house, now illuminating the one outside. Decorating the dining hall of the voluminous villa are modernist landscape paintings, child-like and jarring in a film where innocence goes to die.

Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the despondent Suzanna. Her boyish haircut and miniskirt channel Delphine Seyrig, even if Seyrig plays the "unknown woman" instead of the lead in _Baxter, Vera Baxter_, Marguerite Duras' own adaptation of the same play. You can feel the winter chill in the fur Gainsbourg wears. Her Suzanna is the wife of rich financier Jean, and she is ostensibly sent to finalize the rental of the villa as summer vacation home. In reality it seems a ploy to push her into the arms of her lover Michel (Niels Schneider), a small-time writer. The husband, who only materializes as a disembodied voice, has been having affairs and neglecting her since her 9-year old was born. His minions are everywhere though, including the real-estate agent and Suzanna's "friend" Monique, one of Jean's numerous former mistresses. She is played by Jacquot's frequent muse Julia Roy, as if to multiply the sense of complicity.

Downhill from the balcony is a stone-rimmed seashore, where Suzanna spies on two unknown women's conversation. Or so she tells Michel. Perhaps she is lying -- she herself and Monique are those conversationalists, shown sharing intimate, possibly false, details of their respective affairs in one of the film's earlier long acts. Suzanna lies a great deal, to herself and others, even as everyone hides things from her. She is incredibly passive, seemingly watching her life unfold from the outside, yet for all that, unable to see very much.

The entire film takes place in these two locations, and unfold chronologically in four acts from hung-over mid morning to elegiac sundown. I haven't read the play (I doubt it is available in translation, even though it was once staged in New York) but the writing seems pure Duras. Both husband and lover whisper her name like an incantation; the ghostly litany of exotic places she has visited (Paris, Cannes, Bordeaux) becomes a substitute for having lived a real life. In the last act she reunites with her inconstant lover, and Gainsbourg finally lets down her guard and her mask. Suzanna loves Michel's cruelty, his bad-boy vibe, obsession with fast car and drinking. If the relationship seems a car-wreck waiting to happen, their embrace at the film's end at last, for an instance, obliterates the gulf between human beings Jacquot's precise camera work has insinuated since the beginning of the film. _Suzanne Andler_ is a portrait of an tawdry affair from an era as bygone and quaint as the corded telephones in the film, but its emotions and personal demons are universal. To paraphrase Alice Diop pontificating on another Duras screenplay, Jacquot's formalist craft and Gainsbourg's nuanced acting translate Suzanna's shame into a state of grace.