Michael Kimmelman's "In France, It’s Vive Le Cinéma of Denial" (NYT, 3 November 2008) prompted me to write this post, instead of an irate letter to the editor. This is Kimmelman's picture of French cinema: escapist, self-indulgent, "intellectual." He bemoans an absence of political films, comparing it with the situation in Hollywood:
Well - just maybe - with simultaneous wars going on throughout the world, US directors have plenty of raw material not available to French directors. I haven't seen any of the GWOT/Iraq War films he mentions, not for lack of interest in the subject, but because my reading of the reviews sent me in other directions.
Notably, in the direction of some decidedly offbeat, but wildly original films from the periphery of la Francophonie: Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada. The latter is a stretch, but the co-director and co-star of "Rumba" is a Canadian, Fiona Gordon.
Home
The trio of films I have in mind - Rumba, El Dorado, and Home - all have elements of the burlesque and the surrealistic, and could be described as "road movies." Indeed, Ursula Meier's Home has been described as "a road movie in reverse," in this interview with the director in Cineuropa:
It is a contemporary family tale; it is about isolation turning into madness. There are quite strong intimate ties between the characters, which will be revealed by the highway. It becomes the place where each one of the characters projects their own neurosis. It is also a mirror of the world – violent, aggressive, and polluted – which enters the homes of people who thought they would be able to live alone, set apart from society.
The "Home" of the title is on the edge of an expressway, suddenly completed and opened to traffic after years of dormancy. Meier - whose film has garnered critical praise - is making her feature film debut with "Home," the idea for which came from her casual observation of people living along expressways in Belgium and France. Veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert's depiction of a mother on the edge is matched in its manic depression by Belgian Olivier Gourmet (Cannes Best Actor 2002).
Rumba
Rumba, my second choice in the quirky category, has some plot turns that could be downers in any
other hands: car accident leading to amputation and memory loss, house burning and homelessness. But in the hands of Belgian Dominique Abel and Canadian Fiona Gordon, it's just more grist for their hyperactive imaginations. In another Cineuropa interview, they reveal their approach to film:
Our relationship with film has nothing to do with realism; we would never use a sound in order to give the impression of reality. We come from a more theatrical world; we’re used to imagining situations and if a sound is present, it’s because of its musicality. We could compare the soundtrack to our films with the clear-line drawing style in comic strips. Hergé said he would never draw a telephone on a desk if the telephone wasn’t going to ring.
You can't come out of Rumba feeling anything but admiration for this Tati-esque couple who aren't dancers, but who "like to move." Minimal dialogue, maximum visuals, and great Cuban rumba soundtrack. Pure joy.
Eldorado
The last in my trio, Eldorado, is the only literal road movie. It doesn't matter that Belgium is the size of Maryland and that director/star Bouli Lanners' gas-guzzling Chevy never leaves the kingdom. He's behind the wheel of car with a taciturn young hitchhiker, and what might have been a short ride from A to B becomes a meandering detour via all that is strange on the back roads of le plat pays. Lanners, bewildered, hirsute and in shorts, also bears an uncanny resemblance to The Dude of Big Lebowski fame. You see where I'm heading.
Maybe I've lived in Europe too long, but I think that if you like the films of the Coen brothers, Tim Burton, or Emir Kusturica, you will appreciate this trio of quirky francophone films. Which brings me back to Michael Kimmelman's complaint about French films. Okay, none of my trio are purely French films from France, but I have seen numerous films coming out of France in recent years that are excellent stories, played by top actors, on subjects that - while they may not reach Kimmelman's criteria of political relevance - treat the human condition with intelligence and subtlety.
Oh, and Mr. Kimmelman, what's this about:
I guess Kimmelman's French interlocutors forgot to mention Karl Zero and his "Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac" (shown while Chirac was still in office), not to speak of his superior (to Oliver Stone's "W.") "Being W.," as effective a "skewering" as any applied by Michael Moore.
French - and neighboring francophone - cinema is alive and well, and if it indulges in escapism from time to time, well, who's to deny them that?