French Film Festival | Feb. 18-21, 2010
FESTIVAL DU FILM FRANCOPHONE
University of Virginia | Feb. 18-21, 2010
All showings are FREE and subtitled in English.
This Year’s Lineup:
PEUR(S) DU NOIR
FEAR(S) OF THE DARK
Six leading graphic artists and cartoonists turn their personal terrors into reality in this nightmarish animated anthology. Stylistically connected, the stark black-and-white imagery adds a layer of the surreal to the already disturbing subject matter. As reality crosses over into the unknown, these six interlocking stories bring to life fears of the dark, injections, pursuit and more. One by one, a noble man unleashes his angry dogs on peasants and city-dwellers; a young Japanese girl suffers from the cruelty of her peers and deals with her own demons; a young student quickly moves in with an overbearing girlfriend who ultimately uses his body as a breeding ground for strange creatures; a man enters a dark and empty house to escape a snow storm… Narrated by well-known French comedians, these stories raise goosebumps that only recede when Nicole Garcia tells a much more light-hearted story in a humorous and harried voice.
Date: Thursday, Feb. 18
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: Wilson 402
Directors and Screenplays: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire, Romain Slocombe, Jerry Kramsky, Michel Pirus, Etienne Robial (2007)
Duration: 80 min.
Presenter: Chris James, U.Va. French Department
UN BAISER S’IL VOUS PLAIT
SHALL WE KISS?
It’s only a simple, scientific experiment when longtime best friends Nicolas and Judith decide to see what it’s like to be physically intimate with one another. After all, they’re both in happy, fulfilling relationships with other people, they’ve known each other forever, and they could never fall in love… could they? Promising young director and star Mouret constructs his film with humor, suspense, and a keen eye for the dreams and selfdelusions of his thirty-something protagonists. Nicolas and Judith are the last to notice their friendship turning to passion, their infidelity to their partners at home growing increasingly blatant, and their platonic experiment spiraling out of control. But when they do, there’s nothing to do but concoct a wild plan to set up their exes-to-be, in the hopes of carrying on their affair without guilt. This whole sexy, modern story-withina- story is narrated by yet another young woman as sparks fly between her and a mysterious stranger she meets on a business trip. But because of what happened to Nicolas and Judith, no matter how much sexual tension builds between the narrator and the stranger she won’t even give him one single kiss… or will she?
Date: Friday, Feb. 19
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: Wilson 402
Director: Emmanuel Mouret (2007)
Duration: 102 min.
Presenter: Monica Sokol, U.Va. French Department
LES PLAGES D’AGNES
THE BEACHES OF AGNES
On the eve of her 80th birthday, Agnès Varda, often referred to as “the godmother of the French New Wave,” decided to make the autobiographical The Beaches of Agnes, guiding us through her extraordinary 55-year career and poignantly reminiscing about her husband, the filmmaker Jacques Demy (best known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), who died of AIDS in 1990—information that Varda makes public here for the first time. Raising two children—costume designer Rosalie Varda and actor Mathieu Demy—and making some of France’s greatest movies from the 1960s, Varda and Demy traveled the world but appeared to have been most at home in the septième art. Or, as Varda puts it: “Cinema—I feel like I’ve always lived in it.” As Varda explains how a relatively shy, awkward young woman from Brussels first taught herself how to be a photographer and then a filmmaker, we marvel at her drive, determination, and endless curiosity about the world. Richly illustrating her documentary with clips from her (and Demy’s) films, Varda remains a constant, lively presence (much as she did in her documentary, The Gleaners and I), remarking of her on-screen persona, “I’m playing the role of a little old lady, plump and talkative.”
Date: Saturday, Feb. 20
Time: 4:30 pm
Place: Maury 125
Director: Agnès Varda (2008)
Duration: 110 min.
Presenter: Professor Ari J. Blatt, U.Va. French Department
LA FILLE COUPÉE EN DEUX
A GIRL CUT IN TWO
A flirtatious television weather reporter named Gabrielle is the object of two men’s affections in this colorful new film from popular filmmaker Claude Chabrol, who has directed more than 50 films over the course of his career. When Gabrielle meets a famous elderly novelist at a booksigning event in her mother’s Lyon shop and at an interview for her TV station, she sets her sights on him. Their brief amorous affair soon grows to become a dark fixation which drives Gabrielle’s handsome, spoiled young suitor, Paul, the heir to a pharmaceutical company, to madness. As the film progresses, the scheming protagonists and their families become more deeply obsessed, their relationships become increasingly humiliating and depraved, and the stakes of their games grow higher and higher. Chabrol uses black humor and accessible cinematic structure to skewer his stubborn, independent and self-absorbed characters. The story, inspired by the murder of architect Stanford White in 1906, begins as a playful, sexy triangle that turns darkly foreboding and dangerous, until it builds to a fever pitch with disastrous and melodramatic results.
Date: Saturday, Feb. 20
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: Maury 125
Director: Claude Chabrol (2007)
Duration: 110 min.
Presenter: Jennifer Holm, U.Va. French Department
LA GRAINE ET LE MULET
THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN
This stunning film takes place in the Southern French city of Sète where Slimane, the patriarch of a large and vivacious North African family, is an elderly dockworker. When his job of many years is suddenly no longer secure, he decides to restore an old boat in the harbor, and turn it into a floating couscous restaurant. It’s a wildly ambitious project, and the increasingly ailing Slimane will need the help of all of his family members in order to pull it off—from his ex-wife and their children, many who have families of their own, to his longtime lover and her quietly charismatic, determined daughter, Rym. But even if their conflicts can be patched together in time, will this immigrant family’s energy and verve be enough to overturn the will of the powerful white townspeople who hold the bureaucratic keys needed to make Slimane’s dream a reality? Writer and director Abdel Kechiche is a master at communicating the finest aspects of his colorful brood of characters. Vibrant cinematography and dynamic editing make this personal story all the more engrossing; each individual character is amazingly distinct, while their interpersonal dynamics are rendered with startling clarity and familiarity.
Date: Sunday, Feb. 21
Times: 4:30 pm
Place: Minor 125
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche (2007)
Duration: 151 min.
Presenter: Gayle Jones, U.Va. French Department
Festival Map:
The Tournées Festival was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC), and is sponsored by the Florence Gould Foundation, the Grand Marnier Foundation, highbrow entertainment and the Franco-American Cultural Fund.
A grant for the festival has been provided by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at U.Va.
Brought to you by the Department of French Language and Literature at the University of Virginia.
Questions? Email Josh Armstrong at jta3g@virginia.edu.