TRAILER: Cinema Release: My Afternoons With Marguerite

Film: My Afternoons With Marguerite

NEWS: Cinema Release: My Afternoons With Marguerite

Germain Chazes (Depardieu) is a middle-aged loner who lives in a van outside his mother's home and does odd jobs for a living.

When he meets Marguerite (Casadeus), a highly cultured and well-read elderly woman living in a nearby retirement home, she introduces him to her passion for literature.

As Germain's desire to learn to read is ignited, a deep bond develops between the unlikely pair.

Film: My Afternoons With Marguerite
Release date: 12th November 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 82 mins
Director: Jean Becker
Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Gisèle Casadesus, Maurane, Patrick Bouchitey, Jean-François Stévenin
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Picturehouse
Format: Cinema
Country: France

REVIEW: DVD Release: Paris Je T’Aime

Film: Paris Je T’Aime
Release date: 4th February 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 115 mins
Director: Gus Van Sant, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Christopher Doyle & Vincenzo Natali
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Natalie Portman, Gerard Depardieu, Bob Hoskins, Nick Nolte
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Universal
Format: DVD
Country: France/Liechtenstein/Switzerland

Paris, the city of love; and what better a location to typify love in all its splendour? But just how profound can ‘love’ be? How many different kinds of love can you count on your hand? Hard, isn’t it? This is where Oliver Assayas and Frederic Auburtin step up with Paris Je T’Aime; exemplifying all the forms of love humankind has forgotten in the hype of love being all-good, using a cohesive intensity of “stories of love, from the city of love.”

Try not to be fooled by the title – translated to Paris, I Love You - which would mislead the hopeless romantic into believing they were about to view a tale of happy-ever-after romance from the passion capital, and although this is not entirely untrue, there are other surprises in store structured around love at its best, its worst, and it’s most downright bizarre!

Paris Je T’Aime takes an innovative approach to screening the model love story - by showing the good, the bad and the ugly sides in all types of dealings. Originality is the key - this film doesn’t merely account for the soppy saga of a male and a female, and their romantic journey and fruitful encounters, but does, using eighteen short pictures produced collectively akin to a slideshow, portray eighteen mini fables of how love can take on many forms – ones often overlooked.

Each one of the five minute long shorts were put in place formerly to represent the districts of Paris, and each shot therefore is named after said administrative districts, or “arrondissements” to be precise, of the city. Although, the eighteen short films, each directed by twenty-two separate administrators, are screened collectively without any headings, nor any specified introductory or ending clarification - so focus is required to ensure full perspective is gained…


The film begins with the first short set in Montmarte where we watch as an obviously lonely man believes his luck could be in a positive transition when a woman suffering from low blood sugar levels collapses outside his car where he attends to her and they appear to hit it off immediately.

However, this optimistic short is not an example of a pattern to follow, as screened subsequently are tales of love and the possibility of it, love in its peak form, dying love, and love that has already been lost. Not only focussing upon the everyday granted relationships, the film explores homosexual relationships and the relationship between divorcees, between father and daughter, between employees and employers, between strangers on the street, between a mother and a baby, between married couples, between a grieving mother and her deceased son, between fiancés, between an actress and her drug addiction/dealer, between a blind boy and his girlfriend and, also, peculiarly, between a vampire and her prey-turned-lover!

Praise must go to the opening sequence where Paris in all its wonder and exquisiteness is shot skilfully using artistic cinematography, including awe inducing long shots of the city by day and night. Slow sweeping scans hypnotise and have the ability to make us fall in love with the charming Paris, echoing the title immediately. This captivating scene further enhances our lust for Paris, as fireworks appear onscreen alongside the great Eiffel Tower, accompanied by fairytale Cinderella-style melodies. One begins the movie adoring Paris, and ends feeling still in love but sceptical of what that love truly means and its level of sanctuary.

It would appear, as there are numerous varying characters throughout, many of whom are Hollywood big timers, including Maggie Gyllenhaal and Elijah Wood, that the city is the uniting protagonist of the show. As well as a star-studded cast, which also features the more established Gena Rowlands and Bob Hoskins, the films represent various nationalities including British, French and American. Yet, this cast of Hollywood elites and diverse representations don’t exactly improve on the show’s prominence as much as they conceivably should and perchance the main flaw with the production - the mise-en-scene is overcrowded; making for claustrophobic viewing.

The entire film is innovative and, at times, truly gripping, however, it would seem rather than the good shorts out shining and thus cancelling out the bad shorts, the ghastly drag the superior down. Even so, the unison of sensations experienced whilst watching range from cheerfulness to wretchedness, from jolt to wonder, and from perceptivity to total perplexity, so commendation should be given to the twenty-two directors for making this occur.

Each short reeks of individualism and distinction from the next, making for a fine watch. If you enjoy array in a movie and tiny segments of stories rather than an extensive drawn-out single narrative then you’ll care very much for Paris Je T’Aime and will declare the title with a personal sentiment.


Paris, Je T'Aime will have you smiling and perhaps crying, and is certainly uplifting, but mostly you’ll be left with a mood that is not just unsatisfactory but aptly uncertain and uneasy. It’s like the French take on British classic Love Actually - although, not quite as good, actually. VMF

REVIEW: DVD Release: The Alain Resnais Collection

Film: The Alain Resnais Collection
Release date: 21st June 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 394 mins
Director: Alain Resnais
Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Fanny Ardant, Adolph Green, Pierre Arditi, Vittorio Gassman
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: France/Brazil

Octogenarian French film-maker Alain Resnais has been directing films for over sixty years. Formerly friends with The Doors’ Jim Morrison and latterly with Alan Ayckbourn, his career has flirted with French New Wave and box office success but tailed off dramatically in the 1980s. Critical and commercial success were regained in 1993 with Smoking/No Smoking, but is it now time to reassess his eighties output?

The Alain Resnais Collection groups together Life Is A Bed Of Roses (1983), Love Unto Death (1984), Mélo (1986) and I Want To Go Home (1989) and offers a chance to revisit his tales of love, death and discovery.

Life Is A Bed Of Roses weaves three disparate stories together into a light-hearted musical. Beginning with the construction of a Temple of Happiness, and a bizarre social experiment by wealthy Michel Forbek (Ruggero Raimondi), the film then moves to a more modern setting where the same building has been re-invented as an educational establishment. Between these two plots is another more abstract story about a medieval jousting competition.

It’s never quite clear what the film is trying to say or why. The occasional inexplicable bursts of song add little – the tone of the film is whimsical enough without needing to resort to such a technique. The melding of the three stories doesn’t quite work – the Python-esque style of the medieval scenes looks good but adds little – and it’s difficult to avoid the feeling that the sumptuous visuals and excellent cast mean that this film is less than the sum of its parts.

Love Unto Death and Mélo are companion pieces which share the same aesthetic, themes and even the same cast. Both are ruminations on mortality and love, dealing with the death of a partner from illness and suicide respectively, and the subsequent aftermath.

The central couple in both films are played by Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi, a piece of casting that works remarkably well. Azéma is considerably younger than her on-screen partner, and given the flighty nature of the female characters this works remarkably well alongside the more measured and authoritative presence of Arditi. Supporting performances come from Fanny Ardant and the enigmatic André Dussollier. There are very few other characters in either film, and those that do appear serve merely to develop the plot.

Love Unto Death opens with the sudden and inexplicable death of Simon (Arditi) who is then mysteriously restored to life. What follows is an existential drama as Elisabeth (Azéma), his partner, falls deeper in love with the seemingly doomed Simon. Meanwhile their friends from the priesthood, Jérôme (Dussollier) and Judith (Ardant) discover that their own religious beliefs are challenged by the low-key unravelling of the plot.

The film unfolds slowly and quietly, with much dialogue and little in the way of action. Each scene is bookended by an orchestral score playing over an image of a snowy night sky. This provides the film with a strangely rhythmic sense, and a period in which the audience can reflect on what came before, turning the movie into a slow burning and introspective creation.

Mélo is more obviously theatrical, which is unsurprising given that it started life as a play by Henri Bernstein. It’s not difficult at all to imagine how the script would have worked on stage, with each scene occurring in a static setting with a tight focus on two or three characters at any given time. Characters are prone to long monologues, and scenes are edited almost like stage-cuts, with long fades to black leading into the following set-piece.

The story focuses on an illicit affair between Romaine (Azéma) and Marcel (Dussollier) behind the back of Pierre (Arditi). Set in 1920s Paris, the film evokes a world of flappers and concert musicians, which is drenched in melodrama. There’s something almost Brechtian about the style of the film, with theatrical over-acting rarely giving an impression of realism. Even scenes where the key characters play music look extremely clumsy – representations rather than a serious attempt at replicating truth.

The film always seems set to end in tragedy, and the drastic action that Romaine takes to keep her affair secret comes as no surprise. It does, however, set up the best scene of the film, a finely acted confrontation between the two male leads which changes pace and tone subtly throughout – it’s slightly at odds with the over-the-top acting which precedes it but it’s a fine tête-à-tête nonetheless.

A more absurdist approach permeates I Want To Go Home. At times the film almost becomes a comic caper as Joey Wellman (Adolph Green) a Jewish American cartoonist - who bears more than a passing resemblance to numerous Woody Allen characters - travels to Paris for an exhibition and an attempted reunification with his estranged daughter Elsie (Laura Benson).

Gerard Depardieu appears as philandering philosopher Gaulthier, who is a fan of Wellman’s work, and the action thus shifts from downtown Paris to the Frenchman’s mother’s country pile. Here a masked ball and some Carry On-style sexual shenanigans provide an amusing and diverting penultimate scene prior to the somewhat predictably redemptive ending.

Featuring cartoon cats interacting with humans, characters riding bicycles in full armour and Depardieu dressed as Popeye, the light comic touches keep the movie ticking along nicely. The real star of the show, however, is Adolph Green. His performance drives the movie as his tough exterior gradually melts and his xenophobia gives way to a mellow acceptance of French life and of his daughter’s lifestyle.


There is plenty to interest fans of Resnais in this collection, but it’s easy to see why these movies are regarded as some of the weaker elements of his canon, and it’s hard to imagine they will convert non-believers. RW

REVIEW: DVD Release: Sous Le Soleil De Satan

Film: Sous Le Soleil De Satan
Release date: 22nd March 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Maurice Pialat
Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat
Genre: Drama
Studio: Eureka
Format: DVD
Country: France

Given the subject matter, Sous Le Soleil De Satan (Under The Sun Of Satan) courted much reaction and controversy upon its original release, although it did take home the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1987.

Based on a novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos, Sous Le Soleil De Satan centres on the inner conflict of the young, overzealous, rural priest Donisson. Self-flagellating, in a state of constant intense contemplation, he is ready to give himself over to God to cure all the world’s ills. Yet, at the same time, he is torn as to whether he is in fact doing the work of Satan himself.

In a parallel story, we meet Mouchette (Bonnaire), a 16-year-old seductress who has fallen pregnant. Flittering between her various elder lovers, she ends up killing one with a shotgun, and threatens to disgrace the other with the revelation of their affair if he does not help to terminate the pregnancy.

As Donisson sets off to another parish to gain some peace of mind, he experiences visions off the beaten track. He is confronted by Satan himself, before attempting to return to his mentor, only to meet Mouchette at the outskirts of the town. There in this dawn twilight he experiences another vision and tells her life story, her deepest, most vile, secrets, attempting to turn the young girl towards God. The next morning she takes a knife to her throat. Donisson is sent away to a monastery and then is returned to service at another rural parish where his reputation as a saint in modern times is cemented with his resurrection of a dead child...


Anyone who has seen Gérard Depardieu in action knows he is a fine actor who throws himself into his performances, and here his quiet intensity simmers as the young man who is both humbled by his circumstances and desperate to break free. Accentuating this maverick disposition, Donisson is presented as a loose cannon of the order - a McBain of the clergy, if you like. “Inner life today is a battlefield of instincts,” Menou-Segrais warns him, “there’s no room for a saint in such a world, or else he is declared mad.” Further, what could have essentially been the same tale as The Last Temptation Of Christ, albeit without the controversy of having to depict Christ himself as in the throes of Satan’s thrall, is somewhat different – and perhaps braver – than the Scorcese picture, in the way Pialat depicts this spiritual turmoil. The mysticism that imbues the story is presented without any irony, as if such visions are a given in reality, which is refreshing to see in a modern drama. After all, it is usually the curiosity value of such spiritualism that is at the basis of its use in contemporary horror or fantasy, the genres most commonly engaging with such factors today.

However, despite all this, the filmmaking is so uninspiring that Donisson’s trials are rendered prosaic, his torment sedated by the slow pacing and overly didactic screen writing. Unlike many other achievements of adaptation, only near the end of the movie is there any justification given for this cinematic treatment of what may as well have remained as prose. The scene in which Donisson returns life to a dead child is beautifully shot, the dust dancing in the dim light shining naturally, yet directly, upon the waking child. Donisson’s lurching, his yanking, by invisible forces as the film reaches its climax is also an unnerving sight that gives Depardieu his dues, where he has otherwise been smothered by the poor editing and lengthy dialogue.

But while these later scenes give life to the main narrative, the parallel story of Mouchette that punctuates the first hour is consistently brilliant. Bonnaire’s sly seductress is of the Nabokovian variety; sauntering on bare feet somewhere between naivety and manipulation, sweetness and spite. Mouchette is more Margot than Lolita, an intriguing young girl who the viewer is never quite sure of. The scene in which she kills her lover is fantastically rendered. The camera spies her wandering absently over to a table, toying childishly with a shot gun, before falling into deep contemplation with the weapon in her hands. Our eye then leaves the doorway, panning over to her man who walks across the room and through the open door we can no longer see beyond. Angry at her insolence, his rant is stopped dead by the gun blast, off screen, and with Mouchette’s reaction flittering between shock and agony, then cold calculation, we are unsure whether this is murder or manslaughter, cruel revenge or a mistake. It is a shame that Bonnaire’s character does not take up much screen time, as it is with her presence that the film comes alive - her meeting with Depardieu brief yet electric with possibility.


This is an intriguing film in many respects, but is ultimately a sedate rendering of an interesting story. Sous Le Soleil De Satan was apparently booed at Cannes when Pialat received its greatest honour, and while that reaction is perhaps unwarranted, it does seem that the award was, too. JGZ

REVIEW: DVD Release: Mesrine

Film: Mesrine
Release date: 25th January 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 237 mins
Director: Jean-François Richet
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Cécile De France, Gérard Depardieu, Gilles Lellouche, Roy Dupuis
Genre: Crime/Action/Thriller/Drama
Studio: Momentum
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: France

The critical and commercial success of this film has brought the name of gangster Jacques Mesrine to much wider attention than simply that of his homeland, France – and, as the biopic illustrates; it’s a level of notoriety he would have basked in.

Mesrine was a thorn in the authorities’ sides for nearly two decades, committing countless robberies, murders and escapes – so many that a film depiction warranted two lengthy features – Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 . Each feature was released separately in cinemas, but both have been released together on DVD. Given the seamless continuation of the timeline over both movies, it’s the correct decision – far less two separate movies than a single movie having been split out of consideration for bottoms, but not our wallets.

In the first film, we follow Mesrine from his time serving in the French Army during the Algerian War, in the late-50s, to his return to France, where he was easily swayed to follow a life of crime (flash cars, beautiful women…), starting relatively small scale (robbing people’s homes) before becoming involved with big-time gangster Guido (suitable sleazy performance from the ever reliable Gérard Depardieu). This feature shows a younger, more suave and charming Mesrine, and the majority of his criminal activities are covered here – as well as the more exciting action set pieces (his prison escapes will have action junkies on the edge of their seats) – as he works his way quickly up the criminal ladder.

The second movie starts in similarly thrilling fashion – as our protagonist escapes from court – but the events at the back end of the first film have left him more jaded – he’s now overweight, unkempt, and his crimes less glamorous, including the kidnap of an old man for ransom money. He’s also consumed with paranoia and obsessed with his public image…


A film of this ilk stands or falls largely by the central performance, but Vincent Cassel nails it – never in doubt if you’ve seen his performance in Irréversible. From the cocky two-bit criminal with an eye for the ladies, to the world-weary, pot-bellied has-been, Vincent embodies every stage in Jacques life, and is totally believable as a man capable of cold blooded murder in one scene (violently stabbing a pimp to death), and charming a lady into his bed the next (and he manages a few).

For a running time of 237 minutes, over both films, however, there’s a surprising lack of depth. Minimal character development for the supporting cast, as we quickly hop from one event to another (sometimes bypassing years) without any indication, and with little understanding of what took Jacques there. Choosing not to delve too far into his psyche, or explain the choices he made, the film is somewhat shallow and showy (production values are second to none) – cramming in as many crimes as possible for an electrifying rollercoaster ride that is representative of Hollywood more than European cinema.

However, when it comes to action, they’ve stayed within the realms of realism – from large scale shootouts to car chases; you can believe this is exactly how events went down. It’s also this level of authenticity that makes Mesrine’s more odious acts completely convincing, and therefore more unsettling, including the murder of a reporter who dared to give him negative press.

Unlike Hollywood, also, the film doesn’t glorify or put Mesrine onto an iconic pedestal. He’s a bad husband (who’ll force a gun into his wife’s mouth), uncaring father, selfish, egotistical and downright nasty. Unlike many criminal biopics, where we are asked to empathise with the figure because of a life of poverty or ill treatment, we are shown that Mesrine comes from a comfortable home, a kind and good natured parentage, and is motivated purely by his craving for self-reward and celebrity – taking great pleasure when he earns Public Enemy #1 status.

He’s also far from infallible. Rather than giving the authorities the run around and getting to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, his plans are continuously botched (there’s a wonderful apt comical touch when the song Stand By Your Name comes on the radio after another plan is bungled); he gets caught on numerous occasions, and dealt fairly cruel punishment (the scenes where we see him brutally beaten and tortured by guards are particularly off-putting – Cassel afforded the opportunity to flex his acting muscles in the subsequent breakdown); and he is never presented as content in his chosen lifestyle – moving from seedy nightclubs to hiding out in the backwoods (there’s no glamour to his surroundings or associates). This is a man who led a life we can now pity rather than take any kind of voyeuristic pleasure from.


Even if the filmmakers were always a bit too eager to get to the exciting bits, the lack of sugar-coating and Vincent Cassel’s career-defining performance make this one of Europe’s best-ever crime flicks. DH