Thursday, January 23, 2020

7 Off My Head: France In My Pants

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First and foremost everybody say hello to the actor Thimotée Robart -- another Thimotée, who knew? Anyway while I don't particularly consider myself a Francophile -- I don't speak French, and I don't really have much desire to visit France, except maybe their portion of the Alps -- I always question that stance when this time of year comes around. This time of year is when FLC here in New York announces their annual "Rendez-vous with French Cinema" series  -- which will run from March 5th to March 15th this year -- and I inevitably find myself wanting to see a dozen at least of the titles they're premiering. You can see 2020's entire line-up at this link, including New Thimotée's movie which looks interesting and is called Burning Ghost. Below I'm going to share several I'm personally jonesing for.

(dir. Christophe Honoré)

I literally just posted about my love for Honoré's previous film, the gay love story Sorry Angel with Vincent Lacoste, so it shouldn't be surprising that I'm fairly psyched to see Honoré's new film, which also stars Lacoste. I've even posted about this one before

(dir. Alice Winocour)

Winocour's last film was the marvelous Disorder with Matthias Schoenaerts (my review) -- already I'm sold on the strength of that. But this movie stars my beloved Eva Green! Eva Green, so brutally under-appreciated, playing an astronaut! Eva in Space! Bring it on! 

(dir. Safy Nebbou / Hirokazu Kore-eda)

A Juliette Binoche double-feature! The Truth is the opening night movie and is from Shoplifters director Kore-eda -- I didn't love that movie quite as much as most people did (I love me some melodrama, but that movie was a little soppy for me) but with a cast that also includes Catherine Deneuve and Ethan Hawke and Ludivine Sagnier I'm curious. 

I'm admittedly a little more curious about Binoche's other movie at the fest (and PS she'll be there for both of these movies!) though, which has the greatest actress in the world creating a cat-fishing profile on Facebook. The movie co-stars François Civil -- we are definitely fans, as this gratuitous post attests -- and Nebbou's last movie In the Forests of Siberia with Raphaël Personnaz had this scene in it (cue Tex Avery bulging eyeball effect) so yes please, we want to see this. 

(dir. Quentin Dupieux)

Quentin Dupieux once made a movie about a murderous car tire, and I've followed him ever since. (Read my review of his last film Keep An Eye Out here, which I saw thanks to this series last year.) Anyway I thought that Dupieux working with his new leading man The Artist Jean Dujardin would be plenty to get me excited, and it was, but then I saw that their leading lady is Portrait of a Lady on Fire marvel Adèle Haenel, and I really rocketed right over the moon on this one. Per usual with a Dupieux movie I really have no idea what to expect from this thing's plot summary, which has Dujardin becoming obsessed with a new deer-skin jacket.

(dir. Lucie Borleteau)

This sounds basically like an upscale re-do of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and I am a sucker for that shit. Will it probably be a little classier? Maybe. Who cares? Bring on the crazy nanny! It also co-stars Antoine Reinartz from BPM as the bedeviled daddy.
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(dir. Bruno Dumont)

John Waters had this movie on his best of 2019 list.
I mean so did Cahiers du Cinéma but really... John said.

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Tickets for this year's "Rendez-vous With French Cinema" series go on sale on February 20th -- again you can see the entire line-up at FLC's website and I recommend you do, there are even more titles I didn't even get to that look exciting. I mean I didn't even talk about the Vincent Cassel movie, or director Claude Lelouche doing a sequel to his 1966 classic A Man and a Woman with original stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée. Imagine the nerve.


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