read my lips/sur mes lévres
god is great, i'm not/dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
wimbledon stadium/le stade de wimbledon
cet amour-là
the pornographer/le pornographie
inch'allah dimanche
chaos
loin
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READ MY LIPS / SUR MES LÉVRES
Jacques Audiard, France, 2001; 115m
Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) is a long-time employee of a property
development company; hard-working and well-informed, she'd like to move
up the ranks, but her own timidity, caused largely by a serious hearing
problem, always holds her back. One day in walks Paul Angeli (Vincent
Cassel), a new, completely unskilled trainee, just out of jail, who's
assigned to work with Carla. Soon, she learns to use him to channel her
own aggression and ambitions; meanwhile, he finds a way to make Carla a
player in his own plots and efforts at revenge. Jacques Audiard (A
Self-Made Hero, NYFF 1996), has crafted a fascinating, emotional mano a
mano, as Carla and Paul continually circle around each other, looking
for ways to use the other to their own advantage while being drawn ever
more deeply into each other's world. Devos and Cassel work splendidly
together.
NOTE: the 6:15 show on March 8 and the 1:30 show on March 9 are SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Fri March 8: 1 & *6:15; Sat March 9: *1:30
GOD IS GREAT, I'M NOT / DIEU EST GRAND, JE SUIS TOUTE PETITE
Pascale Bailly, France, 2001; 95m
The luminous Audrey Tautou (star of Amélie, the biggest French film of
2001) here plays Michèle, a twenty-year-old model who fears her life is
entering into a rut. Work is steady, and all her friends are loyal and
supportive, but something seems to be missing. So she decides to give
Buddhism a try; it feels fine, but still is incapable of stemming the
rage she feels against her mother and mother's boyfriend. She meets
François, a decidedly secular Jew, and thinks perhaps he holds the
answer to what ails her. Soon, she's nailing mezuzahs to doorposts and
dragging him to religion classes - and meeting his parents. GOD IS GREAT…
is a wonderful example of a kind of comedy at which the French
are especially skilled, in which a character's madcap energies
increasingly take on darker tones. Pascale Bailly's debut feature offers
a provocative portrait of a generation whose search for answers seems
overwhelmed by the possibilities available to it.
NOTE: the 3:30 show on March 8 and the 3:45 show on March 10 are SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Fri March 8: 3:30; Sun March 10: *3:45; Wed. March 13: 1
WIMBLEDON STAGE / LE STADE DE WIMBLEDON
Mathieu Amalric, France, 2001; 80m
Mathieu Amalric, the acclaimed actor in Desplechin's My Sex Life and
Assayas' Late August, Early September, directs his second feature film,
based on a novel by Daniele Del Giudice. A young woman (Jeanne Balibar)
sets out to try to understand the life of a famous Trieste intellectual
- to discover why a man so clearly influential in the work and lives of
many writers, himself chose not to write. According to Amalric,
"WIMBLEDON STADIUM is about letting chance take its course. It's the
story of a traveler and a writer who had given up writing. I shot it in
Trieste, during the course of a year and a half, with three or four
months between each trip - just as in the novel. …The film is about
renunciation, but also goes further than that. Maybe it's about the fear
of emptiness."
NOTE: the 9:15 show on March 8 and the 4:15 show on March 9 are SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Fri March 8: 9:15; Sat March 9: *4:15;
Mon March 11: 3:30
CET AMOUR-LÀ
Josée Dayan, France, 2001; 98m
Marguerite Duras was one of France's greatest 20th-century
personalities. Author, filmmaker, scriptwriter, essayist, and political
commentator, she was renowned, respected and loved. Yann Andréa was the
young man who moved into Duras's life for its last chapter. He was an
unabashed fan who wrote her numerous letters without having met her. She
was not looking for a relationship when he knocked on her apartment door
in Brittany one day. Award-winning director Josée Dayan is best known
for her television adaptations of some of France's greatest literary
classics, including The Count of Monte Christo and Les Misérables, as
well as an acclaimed series based on the life of writer Honoré de
Balzac. In CET AMOUR-LÀ, Dayan has lovingly brought the last years of
Duras's life to the screen in a film that concentrates on a relationship
that the sixty-five-year-old Duras began with a man less than half her
age. It was a relationship that would last for sixteen years.
"What Josée Dayan and I wanted, was to go beyond a precise
reconstitution. That would have been a betrayal. This story is timeless;
it is the story of a scandalous passion. We have to be precise, but it
is to get to the essential emotions and, for an actor, that has to come
from within, not without." - Jeanne Moreau
NOTE: the 6:45 show on March 9 and the 1 pm and 9 pm shows on March 10 are SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Sat March 9: 6:45; Sun March 10: 1 & 9; Friday March 15: 11:30
THE PORNOGRAPHER / LE PORNOGRAPHE
Bertrand Bonello, France, 2001; 108m
New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud gives a marvelous performance as Jacques
Laurent, a film director who achieved notoriety in the 1970s as the
maker of several popular porn films. Strapped by debts, he decides to
return to the porn industry he had abandoned long ago, but finds that
decision gets in the way of his attempt at a rapprochement with his son,
Joseph, from whom he's estranged. Jacques imagines that if he can just
stabilize his life perhaps then he can finally get to work on a long
dreamed-about project that would reveal his true vision and artistry.
Director Bonello convincingly recreates the porn industry milieu (with a
cast that includes a few explicit scenes and real-life porn stars), in a
touching and wryly humorous portrait of man's attempt to reconcile his
vocation with his love for his family.
NOTE: the 9:30 show on March 9 and the 9 pm show on March 12 are SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Sat March 9: *9:30; Tue March 12: 3:30 & *9
INCH'ALLAH DIMANCHE
Yamina Benguigui, France, 2001; 98m
In 1974, the French government announced a new policy whereby the
families of Algerian men working in France may emigrate to join them.
Zouina (Fejria Deliba) arrives with her three children and
mother-in-law, and soon they're whisked off to the house that her
husband Ahmed has rented for them. Very soon, Zouina discovers that this
house is about as much of France that her husband intends for her to
see. Forbidden to go out, far from her own family and friends, and more
than ever under the control of her mother-in-law, Zouina feels the world
closing down around her. Her only salvation is on Sunday - "Inch'Allah
dimanche!, Thank God for Sunday! " - the day her husband takes his
mother out for daytrips, allowing her and the children to escape for a
few hours and discover some surprising things about this new country of
theirs. The past decade has witnessed a steady stream of films about
France's emigrant communities, yet what so distinguishes Yamina
Benguigui's first feature is the rich, clearly personal texture of the
work. One always feels that this is a story being told from within this
community, not merely about the community. As Zouina, Fejria Deliba is
sensational, expressing both her character's awful vulnerability and
surprising sources of strength.
NOTE: the 6:15 show on March 10 is SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Sun March 10: *6:15; Tue March 12: 1 & *6:15
CHAOS
Coline Serreau, France, 2001; 109m
Malika, a young prostitute, is savagely beaten and left for dead on a
lonely corner of Paris. Paul and Hélène, an upper-middle-class couple,
watch this happen from the safety of their car, but do nothing about it.
Ashamed of her choice not to get involved, Hélène later tracks down
Malika to the hospital where she lies in a coma; her devotion in helping
Malika recuperate causes her to eventually estrange herself from her
husband and son. But the men who had beaten Malika have no intention of
letting her live, and soon she becomes part of a vicious underworld
struggle she once could have scarcely imagined. One of France's most
consistently successful directors, Coline Serreau has a special gift for
peeling away her characters' layers of social respectability until they
finally discover new sides and energies within themselves. As Hélène,
Catherine Frot does a remarkable job in capturing her character's
essential transformation when confronted with some uncomfortable truths
about the world and her place within it.
NOTE: the 6:15 show on March 11 and the 1:30 show on March 17 are SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Mon March 11: 1 & *6:15; Sun. March 17: *1:30
LOIN
André Téchiné, France, 2001; 120m
"Shooting in digital video has allowed André Téchiné to give this story
of a young and confused Moroccan truck driver a gritty, realistic
quality that suits its subject matter perfectly; DV lets Téchiné get
inside his tale with an intimacy that serves his film well.... Serge is
a driver working for a company that moves a variety of legal and illegal
goods across borders between Spain and Morocco. He is desperately in
love with Sarah, a Moroccan Jew who is trying to cope with the funeral
of her mother and the arrival of a brother who wants her to emigrate to
Canada. To get Sarah to come back to him, Serge strikes a bargain with a
young boy named Saïd: If Saïd can convince Sarah to heed Serge's pleas,
he promises to smuggle him out of Morocco to Europe, where a brighter
future would be possible. . . . Techiné balances the demands of a love story
against the larger and deeply serious backdrop of illegal smuggling and
immigration." - Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival
NOTE: the 8:45 show on March 11 is SOLD OUT; there will be a standby line.
Mon March 11: 8:45; Sat March 16: 1:30; Sat. March 16: 6:45
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