2024-03-20 03:01:00
Embracing the months of March and April, just before Bafici, it usually arrives the first strong season of the year in terms of cinematographic meetings, those small but productive festivals dedicated to promoting cinematography of diverse origins that concentrate, usually over seven days, a series of representative titles from the honored countries. To the recent Jewish Film Festival and the imminent Italian Film Week is now added to French Film Festival, that arrives again in the rooms of Cinépolis Recoletathis year Starting Thursday, March 21st and ending Wednesday, March 27th, with thirteen recent feature films that will be screened at a rate of three per day, usually with one repetition per title.
At the meeting, creations by prestigious authors such as Bertrand Bonello, Nicolas Philibert and Michel Gondry along with the most popular cutting works on the grounds of comedy, horror and fantasy, in addition to two films directed by the cult director Quentin Dupieux. The vast majority of the members of this authentic feast of French cinema, organized by the French Embassy in Argentina and the Institut français d’Argentine, They will be seen in quality previewthat is, they will have a commercial release sooner or later on the Argentine billboard.
“This year we tried to have a very diverse selection,” he tells Page 12 Antoine Sebire, regional audiovisual attaché of the Institut français in Buenos Aires and one of the people most responsible for programming. “I don’t know if it is possible to say that a selection of thirteen films is representative of a cinematography that produces close to three hundred films a year, but what we try to do is highlight the diversity of current production. At the same time, we challenged ourselves to maintain a balance between well-known filmmakers and newer faces.”
In that same sense, Sebire highlights that “they tried to satisfy the expectations of the most traditional audience of French cinema, but also to surprise. Demonstrate that French film production is also a laboratory where new proposals appear, which enter areas where they did not regularly do so before, such as science fiction and horror. These days, French comedies do not come to the country very often, and in this program we include some examples of author comedy, which is very interesting.”
The formal opening session will be Thursday the 21st at 7 p.m. with the projection of new feature film by Franco-Vietnamese Trần Anh Hùng, famous for his debut feature from 1993, The smell of green papaya. the taste of life had its world premiere at the Cannes Festival, where won the Palme d’Or for Best Director, and was selected by the French Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques to participate in the awards Oscaran election that generated several discussions after the success of Anatomy of a fall in the Hollywood awards season.
Starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, the taste of life It is a period culinary story that intertwines the most delicious dishes with the personal lives of those who prepare them, based on the story of Eugenie, a cook with obvious aptitude for mixing ingredients, and Dodin, a demanding chef for whom She has been working for two decades. “It’s a gastronomic romance between two great stars of French cinema, who some time ago had been a couple in real life,” says Sebire. “A sensory film with a very elegant and delicate staging, a classic story that also makes you want to live and eat. For that reason we chose it as the opening film: to whet the appetite of viewers regarding French cinema.”
Another of the relevant titles in authorial terms, and one of the best films of the 2023 season, French or from any other latitude, Love without time (local title for the much more enigmatic The beastinspired by the nouvelle The beast in the jungleby Henry James) once again demonstrates the unlimited talent of Bertrand Bonello to construct cinematographic stories absolutely runs of conventional narrative formats. Throughout two and a half hours that conjure astonishment, the director of Nocturama y L’Apollonide narrates the meeting of a man and a woman through time and space, using tools typical of historical cinema, science fiction and several other genres.
Léa Seydoux is Gabrielle, introduced as an actress at the beginning of the film, but who is quickly seen transformed into a 19th century woman; the British George MacKay is Louis, a Frenchified Englishman with whom Gabrielle begins a bond destined to continue in the future (although it would be more appropriate to refer to the futures, in plural). Winking at several classics of French and international cinema –among others the Alphaville Godardian–, Bonello builds what may be his most complex and fascinating film to date, a space-time labyrinth of which it is not advisable to anticipate too much and which demonstrates, if necessary, the infinite range of acting nuances by Seydoux.
It also deals with realities and probable fictions. The book of solutionsalthough in a more “orderly” and, if you will, classic way. Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) returns to French-language cinema to tell the story of Marc, a young film director played by Pierre Niney, whose latest creation is taken from his hands in the face of imminent financial disaster. In reality, the producers do not get hold of the raw material, since Marc and his inner circle of collaborators literally escape with the hard drives to finish the editing in a country house, whose owner is the filmmaker’s aunt (the legendary Françoise Lebrun, which is still as active as in its Nuevaoleros days). Reflection on the creative process and the internal conflicts of artists, The coexistence of this group of human beings with the impossible Marc – whose capricious, aggressive, unbearable character pushes everyone to disaster, including himself – is the basic material of a Bittersweet comedy with high doses of hyperkinesia.
According to Antoine Sebire, one of the keys to this selection lies in the intention that “People have fun, although that does not mean that there is no bottom. On the contrary, many of these films have a complex and rich background, but their forms are fun and can be enjoyed with great pleasure. Quentin Dupieux’s two films are a good example; also The animal kingdomwhich is one of the most important films of recent French cinema, or Vermin – The Plague. Son aesthetic and political proposals that many people do not usually expect from French cinema and that they manage to change the perspective.”
Indeed, The animal kingdom, Thomas Cailley’s second feature film, was very well received during its global launch in the section A Certain Look from the Cannes Film Festival. It is a film that brings together elements of science fiction, fable and family drama, and takes place in a world in which some human beings begin to develop mutations that slowly but inexorably transform them into semi-animals. In this way, Cailley takes up and restructures the stories of lobizonesalthough along the way there are also bird men, frog children and other creatures from a fascinating bestiary. The super star Adèle Exarchopoulos she plays a police officer halfway between empathy and duties as a law enforcement officer.
Cult director installed in the firmament of strangeness and surprise, the prolific Quentin Dupieux arrives at the French Film Festival twice. On the one hand, in Smoking causes coughs Director of Mandibles creates a group of superheroes inspired by the Power Rangers called Strength Tobacco, whose powers lie in the most harmful components of tobacco and whose boss is a stuffed rat that constantly drools. Of short footage (like most of the author’s films, the film is around 70 minutes), the path of the heroes includes the mission of saving the world from destruction, a mission enlivened with other stories within the general story that wander through terror and the wildest fantasy.
Incredible but true also participates widely in the fantastic universe, based on the story of a couple who buys a house whose basement hides a wonderful secret, a temporal portal and fountain of eternal youth not without existential and physical complications. Vermin: The Plaguemeanwhile, returns to the teachings of the most classic monster cinema, with a strong inspiration in John Carpenter, pitting a group of inhabitants of a Parisian apartment complex against an invasion of insanely aggressive, XXL-sized spiders.
The rest of the programming is made up of very diverse titles. As an example, two buttons. On the one hand, comedy in constant motion The dream tripof Marc Fitoussi, in which two old friends who have not seen each other for years and who, due to the rigorous logic of the script, could not be more different, end up sharing a tourist trip through the islands of Greece, getting lost and reunited at every step. On the contrary, based on the strictest reality, In the Adamant. The veteran documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert It records the daily activities of a floating psychological help center built in the center of Paris, on the Seine River. Faithful to his observational style, the director of be and have finds rich stories in the interaction between patients, doctors and nurses, revealing an institution that tries to go against dehumanization in psychiatric treatments.
The list is completed with recent movies as The stars of Parisby Sébastien Tulard, Teacher(s)by Bruno Chiche, Tokyo Shakingde Olivier Peyon, e Winter in Parisby Christophe Honoré, one of the titles of the French Film Festival whose local premiere is not confirmed. Good projection and that the slogan of the public institution Arte France, whose logo prefaces several of the festival’s films, is fulfilled: “The film you are about to see was born under a lucky star.”
* French film festival. From Thursday, March 21 to Wednesday, March 27 at Cinépolis Recoleta (Vicente López 2050). Complete programming, days, times and ticket sales on their website.