TOURNéES FILM FESTIVAL
At
University of St. Thomas Houston
Films
TIP TOP / TIP TOP
Directors: Serge Bozon
Screenwriter: Odile Barski, Serge Bozon and Axelle Ropert
Genre: Comedy
In his breakthrough film La France (2007), Serge Bozon created a singular anachronistic war movie/musical hybrid. Tip Top similarly upends categories: This unclassifiable policier audaciously balances slapstick with a fiercely intelligent probing of the still-knotty legacy of colonialism. Internal-affairs officers Esther Lafarge (Isabelle Huppert) and Sally Marinelli (Sandrine Kiberlain) are summoned to the town of Villeneuve to investigate the murder of an Algerian informant named Farid. The oddly matched cops are themselves surveilled by Robert Mendès (François Damiens) the local flic to whom Farid reported. Now grooming a new, younger informant, Younès (Aymen Saïdi), Robert is begrudgingly tolerated by Villeneuve’s Algerian residents, who must endure his horrible Arabic. During his snooping, Robert will become aware of the highly unorthodox off-duty practices of Esther and Sally; the bizarre bedroom behavior of this law-enforcement duo provides Tip Top with most of its bracing, askew humor. Yet while the film regards these two idiosyncratic cops with affection, Esther and Sally are nonetheless agents of a corrupt
institution. After introducing several plot twists, Tip Top ends abruptly, its case still unsolved. The investigation is ongoing, much like France’s uneasy reckoning with its past. uf
L’ECUME DES JOURS / MOOD INDIGO
Directors: Michel Gondry
Screenwriter: Michel Gondry and Luc Bossi
Genre: Romantic drama
Long thought unfilmable, Boris Vian’s 1947 cult novel—which translates literally as “The Foam of Days”—is charmingly adapted by Michel Gondry, who fills the screen with his trademark whimsical touches. The central
narrative of Mood Indigo concerns the ultimately tragic love story of Colin (Romain Duris), an exceptionally wealthy man who inhabits a spectacular rooftop apartment/playhouse, and Chloé (Audrey Tautou), a physically
frail woman he meets a at party. Yet theirs is no ordinary courtship: Colin and Chloé travel across Paris in a cloud-shaped vessel, sip beverages from a cocktail-mixing piano, and dine on elaborate concoctions prepared by Nicolas (Omar Sy), Colin’s in-house chef and lawyer. Although Gondry has been celebrated for his inimitable mise-en-scène ever since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), here he takes production design to a whole new level, deftly mixing stop-motion animation and digital special effects. For all its visual splendor, though, Mood Indigo never loses sight of the great romance shared by its main characters—bonds that deepen when Chloé is diagnosed with a life-threatening malady: the growth of a water lily in one of her lungs. h.YoZBFKoD.dpuf
BANDE DE FILLES / GIRLHOOD
Directors: Céline Sciamma
Screenwriter: Céline Sciamma
Genre: Drama
Girlhood, Céline Sciamma’s third feature, continues to probe what has been this perceptive writer-director’s abiding interest: female pubescence and adolescence, the stage when bodies and identities are still in flux. Set in the impoverished banlieues that ring Paris and are home to many of its French-African denizens, Girlhood focuses on Marieme (Karidja Touré), a sixteen-year-old who assumes responsibility for her two younger sisters while their mother works the night shift; the teenager must also frequently absorb the wrath of her tyrannical slightly older brother. School provides no haven from these hardships: Having already repeated a grade twice, Marieme is told that vocational training is her only option. Rather than accept this indignity, she falls in with a triad of tough girls, abandoning her braids for straightened hair, her hoodie for a leather jacket—and learning the pleasures of raising hell at malls in Les Halles and impromptu dance-offs on the Métro. Led by the swaggering Lady (Assa Sylla), this crew—whose members are all played by charismatic first-time performers—boosts Marieme’s confidence. “You have to do what you want,” Lady exhorts her; patiently and astutely, Girlhood follows Marieme as she tries to put this mantra into practicewhile being repeatedly reminded of her severely limited options.
Directors: Paul Grimault
Screenwriter: Paul Grimault
Genre: Animated feature film
Paul Grimault has long been regarded as the greatest of Frenchanimators; the marvelous The King and the Mockingbird (1980) is thepinnacle of his five-decade career. The history behind the film hascontributed to its legendary status: Grimault, working with screenwriter Jacques Prévert, began The King and the Mockingbird in 1948 as an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep”; it was released unfinished in the 1950s by the movie’s producer, in a version Grimault decried as an “impostor.” Over the next
20-some years, Grimault was able to obtain the rights to the movie and complete it as he had originally intended. The result is a wondrous vision, dominated by soft reds, yellows, and blues, and filled with futuristtouches: Although set during medieval times in Tachycardia, the realm of the vain and universally despised monarch Charles XVI, The King and the Mockingbird features not only rocket travel but also giant robots. Charles is an avid huntsman but a terrible shot—incompetence that invites further ridicule by the taunting, top-hatted bird of the title. Hailed as an influence by the eminent Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, Grimault’s film is a visual and aural delight.
LE ROI ET L’OISEAU / THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD
DIPLOMATIE / DIPLOMACY
Directors: Volker Schlöndorff
Screenwriter: Cyril Gely and Volker Schlöndorff
Genre: Historical drama
A brisk, intelligent adaptation of the World War II–set play of the same name, Volker Schlondorff’s Diplomacy features magnificent performances by two lions of French cinema: Niels Arestrup and Andre Dussollier, re-creating the roles they originated onstage. The former plays Dietrich von Cholitz, the German military governor of occupied Paris; the latter stars as the Swedish consul-general Raoul Nordling. The actual meetings between these two historical figures, which occurred over several days—and which were earlier dramatized in René Clément’s 1966 film, Is Paris Burning?—are here compressed to one extremely tense night in August 1944 at the hotel that served as von Cholitz’s base during the war. It is in this grand lodging on the Rue de Rivoli that Nordling
tries to convince the Nazi commander not to carry out Hitler’s orders to bomb Paris. To watch the nimble negotiating that follows—the Swedish diplomat at once flattering the German officer and trying to appeal to his
nobler instincts; von Cholitz quick with ripostes, defiant and defensive yet all too concerned with how he will be judged by history—is to witness two formidable actors at the top of their craft.
Directors: Benoît Jacquot
Screenwriter: Benoît Jacquot and Julien Boivent
Genre: Drama
A stirring love-triangle tale, Benoît Jacquot’s 3 Hearts evokes some of Hollywood’s greatest romances from the 1950s, such as An Affair to Remember, yet brilliantly updates classical melodrama with its own searing flourishes. After Paris-based tax auditor Marc (Benoît Poelvoorde) misses his train home, he spends the night in a small town
in southern France, where he meets by chance the melancholic Sylvie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Immediately drawn to each other, they never exchange names or numbers, instead agreeing to meet by a fountain at the Jardin des Tuileries in the French capital. This romantic plan is thwarted, however, when Marc, en route to the destination, suffers severe chest pains and is rushed to the hospital. Dejected, Sylvie returns to her unhappy marriage and soon leaves for the US; Marc, meanwhile, meets and falls in love with another woman, Sophie (Chiara Mastroianni)— who, unbeknown to him, just happens to be Sylvie’s beloved sister. Once Marc realizes the connection between the two women, his excruciating anxiety at being found out only heightens the near-operatic pitch of this devastating story of passion, secrets, and betrayal.
3 COEURS / 3 HEARTS
