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Presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance Film, The French Film Office/Unifrance Film USA, together with The French Cultural Serives.
Rendez-vous with French Cinema Today is sponsored by Chanel. Additional support has been provided by The Florence Gould Foundation and Air France.
Thanks to Catherine Verret-Vimont, Antoine Khalife, Maria Manthoulis and The French Cultural Services for making this program possible.
A number of directors and actors featured in Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today will be present during the program, to introduce and discuss their films.
about the program
L'ENNUI
Cédric Kahn, 1998; 120 minutes
Martin, a philosophy professor (Charles Berling), has fallen into a deep depression since his wife left him--but then he meets Cecilia (Sophie Guillemin), an inarticulate, almost uncouth creature who has apparently driven a well-known painter (Robert Kramer) to suicide. Utterly fascinated, Martin assumes the role of the painter, plunging into the mystery of this enigmatic woman's carnal and emotional power--while his ex-wife (Arielle Dombasle) witnesses his fall with a kind of bemused sympathy. Adapted from Alberto Moravia's novel La Noia, L'ENNUI mesmerizes us as we watch as an intelligent, attractive man willingly sows the seeds of his own destruction. One recalls Godard's Contempt (adapted from a Moravia novel) and Visconti's Ossessione (scripted by Moravia).
Fri Mar 12: 2 pm and 6:40 pm
Sun Mar 14: 9:20 pm
LA CLASSE DE NEIGE / CLASS TRIP
Claude Miller, 1998; 96 minutes
A shy boy plagued by illness and terrible nightmares, Nicolas (Clement Van Den Bergh) joins a class skiing trip --despite his overprotective father's considerable concern about letting him go. Befriended by a bully (Lokman Nalcakan), with whom he shares his graphically horrific dreams, Nicolas comes up with tales of kidnapping and murder when a little boy disappears. When the child turns up dead, a teacher (Emmanuelle Bercot) and a ski instructor (Yves Verhoeven) realize that Nicolas is harboring secrets no child should have to keep. Based on a novel by Emmanuel Carrere (who co-wrote the screenplay) and directed with great skill, sensitivity and intelligence, this gripping psychological melodrama about a cruel coming of age recalls Ponette.... (Winner, Jury Prize, 1998 Cannes Festival)
Fri Mar 12: 4:30 pm and 9:20 pm
Sat Mar 13: 2 pm
ONLY GOD SEES ME / DIEU SEUL ME VOIT
Bruno Podalydès, 1998; 118 minutes
Albert Jeanjean is 30 and a sound engineer, a job that allows him to listen in on the world but to keep entirely to himself. Ingenuous and pathologically indecisive, he tends to throw up when he's emotionally overloaded. At the local elections, Albert volunteers to count votes, so he can use the opportunity to "cock a snoot at" (thumb his nose at) his childhood friends and to ogle women's legs. Though our complex hero jealously guards his right to equivocate--endlessly--he finds at last that he cannot avoid taking action forever. Even more dauntingly, he will have to stand up to three very strong-willed women!
Sat Mar 13: 4:15 pm
Mon Mar 15: 4 pm and 8:30 pm
LUCK OR COINCIDENCE /
HASARDS OU COÏNCIDENCES
Claude Lelouch, 1998; 121 minutes
The renowned director of the Academy Award-winning romance A Man and a Woman again explores the realm of love in this story of a woman who lets her heart lead the way. Myriam is a dancer who leads a fairy-tale life, traveling all over the world to perform on stage and screen. She has all the riches she wants, but the one thing she's missed out on is true love. Rogues and mentors have passed through her life, but all of them have been possessed by selfish interests. Myriam offers herself up to chance and coincidence to find her heart's desire, faithfully following up on every sign in hopes of discovering the one man who will care about her above all.
Sat Mar 13: 6:45 pm
Sun Mar 14: 2 pm
Tues Mar 16: 4 pm
SOMBRE
Philippe Grandrieux, 1998; 112 minutes
A daring stylistic experiment on a familiar theme, SOMBRE tells the story of a monster abroad in France, lugging puppets and a wolf disguise, leaving a trail of brutally murdered women behind him. His existence is gray, banal, meaningless until this horribly isolated soul meets a virgin who loves him. Blending avant-garde techniques and imagery within a narrative film, director Grandrieux draws us into a hypnotic nightmare, where the conventions of the serial-killer genre are transcended so as to propel us into even more complex and disturbing territory. As the angst-ridden murderer, Marc Barbé is superb, but Elina Löwenstein, familiar as a self-contained Hal Hartley heroine, steals the show entirely.
Sat Mar 13: 9:20 pm
Sun Mar 14: 4:30 pm
Tues Mar 16: 2 pm
THE NEW EVE / LA NOUVELLE EVE
Catherine Corsini, 1998; 94 minutes
Camille (Karin Viard, proving herself here to be an important new star in French cinema!) is 30, single, happy, and intends to stay that way. Alexis (Pierre Loup Rajot) is married, the father of two children, and a militant member of a political party. Following a chance meeting, the rebellious Camille falls in love with him. She has only one desire: to see him again, to bring about further encounters and have him fall into her arms. For Alexis, the disaster is just beginning. How can he survive the storm when he feels the same way?
Sun Mar 14: 7 pm
Mon Mar 15: 2 pm and 6:15 pm
THE ICE RINK /
LA PATINOIRE
Jean-Philippe Toussaint,1998; 105 minutes
In this fall-down-laughing comedy, a movie auteur tries to cope with his frantic producer, too-amorous actors, and a disaster-prone crew as he rushes to get his deeply symbolic hockey movie Dolores done in time for the Venice Film Festival. THE ICE RINK celebrates the French gift for physical comedy, as everyone loses his or her footing in the rush to finish Dolores! With Bruce Campbell, of Evil Dead fame, and Dolorés Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter in her feaure-film debut.)
Wed Mar 17: 2 pm and 6:30 pm
FOR SALE /
A VENDRE
Laëtitia Masson, 1998; 117 minutes
A P.I.'s best friend gets ditched at the altar (and robbed) by an enigmatic and unconventional beauty (Sandrine Kiberlain)--so the angry detective (Sergio Castellittto) decides to track down the runaway bride. Digging into her life, he discovers a strange pattern: France deliberately couches every relationship in terms of monetary exchange, fleeing at the first sign of love freely given. Eventually, the recently divorced P.I., seething with rage at the loss of his family, and the woman committed to a convoluted form of existential independence come to recognize each other as secret sharers. This potent psychological drama about the cost of love shares provocative territory with great films such as Klute and Marnie; and the freckled, long-limbed Kimberlain, with her homely-beautiful Modigliani face, is nothing less than mesmerizing. With Chiara Mastroianni.
Fri Mar 19: 4:15 pm and 9:20 pm
Sat Mar 20: 2 pm
THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN /
CEUX QUI M'AIMENT PRENDRONT LE TRAIN
Patrice Chéreau, 1998; 122 minutes
"It's a mistake to force a distinction between cinema and
theatre...." -- Patrice Chéreau, leading theater director & filmmaker
Painter Jean-Baptiste Emmerich (Jean-Louis Trintignant, seen in flashbacks) once opined that "those who love me will take the train," and sure enough, when the artist dies a dozen friends and relatives embark on a four-hour journey to Limoges for his funeral. Lovers, couples, Emmerich's estranged spouse, his brother (a second role by Trintignant) and nephew, and other assorted pilgrims all have ample opportunity for wonderfully dramatic emotional sparks and epiphanies, which Chéreau catches on the run by means of superb handheld camerawork, with music ranging from James Brown to Jim Morrison.
Thurs Mar 18: 2 pm and 6:45 pm
Sun Mar 21: 4:30 pm
THE OCTOPUS /
LE POULPE
Guillaume Nicloux, 1998; 100 minutes
"Le Poulpe," aka The Octopus, the hero of a popular series of crime novels created by Jean-Bernard Pouy, is a kind of investigator--outside the law, but neither a detective nor a righter of wrongs, just an ordinary though unusually inquisitive citizen. In this "waterfront western," The Octopus (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) drops anchor in a shipbuilding port where seaside murder and dockside frolics go hand in hand. Aided by his liberated girlfriend Cheryl (Clothilde Courau) and his sidekick Pedro (Aristide Demonico), the Octopus plunges into the tragicomic drama of a harbor town in which everything seems to revolve around a
mysterious freighter and a gang of night-roaming thugs. Director
Nicloux says he was reaching for David Lynch ambience, though
LE POULPE has also been compared to Godard's Pierrot le fou and even the westerns of Sergio Leone.
Thurs Mar 18: 4:30 pm and 9:20 pm
Sat Mar 20: 4:30 pm
ROMANCE
Catherine Breillat, 1998; minutes
Be aware that this film contains explicit sexual imagery.
Breillat possesses Kathryn (Blue Steel) Bigelow's gutsy grasp of filmmaking that pulses with violence and sensuality, as well as her own strong insights into the nature of love and lust between the sexes. Her tough, uncompromising talent first surfaced with 36 Fillette (1988 NYFF), a film about an unflappable 14-year-old bent on sexual experimentation. Her Sale comme un ange, shown at the WRT in 1992, promised a French New Wave of sexual authenticity on screen, and Parfait Amour!, screened in 1997's Rendez-Vous program, continued to push the boundaries of dangerous passions. In ROMANCE, Breillat's latest work, an obsessed woman so loves a man she is forced to be promiscuously unfaithful to him, so hungers to devour him utterly her appetite must estrange them, and so brutally fights for her own space within this suffocating attachment she ends by using up all the emotional oxygen in the affair.
Fri Mar 19: 2 pm and 6:40 pm
PLACE VENDÔME
Nicole Garcia, 1998; 117 minutes
In this elaborate, elegant suspense film, Marianne (Catherine Deneuve) finds herself facing a life-crisis when her husband, a prominent jeweller (with a rather shifty rep) located on the posh Place Vendôme, meets an untimely death. A promising young broker herself before her marriage, Marianne has since sunk into alcoholism, but finds her taste for business revived after discovering seven magnificent diamonds her dead husband had stashed and soon finds herself enmeshed in a dark, dangerous web of intrigue, unraveling in boardrooms, rooms full of gem-cutters, and the hotels, cafes, and diamond markets of Paris and Antwerp. Garcia's second feature, Le Fils Préferé, was featured in 1996's Rendez-Vous; here she keeps the widescreen action taut, juggling a complex clutch of characters whose loyalties are always suspect. With Emmanuelle Seigner, Jacques Dutronc, et al.
Wed Mar 17: 4 pm and 8:30 pm
Sun Mar 20: 6:40 pm
VENUS INSTITUTE
Tonie Marshall, 1998; 105 minutes
A new film from the director of Pas tres catholique, a favorite in our 1996 Rendez-Vous. The idea for VENUS INSTITUTE arose one November day when Marshall caught a glimpse in passing of a beauty-parlor window--a rose-and-blue-colored world she likened to "an image by Demy." Imagining the Venus Institute--a soothing world of creams, elixirs, cosmetics,
tanning beds--on film, Marshall staffs her shrine with owner Nadine (Bulle Ogier), and her three beauticians: Angèle (Nathalie Baye), at home in the Institute's peace, but a lost soul when it comes to love; Samantha (Mathilde Seigner); and Marie (Audrey Tautou). Lovers come and go in the real world, but the Venus Institute endures, and in Marshall's words, "mines truth out of appearance: the passage of time, the solitude of death, of love....There is no solution, only the small miracles, the reasons that one goes to the Venus Institute." With eternal beauties Micheline Presle and Emmanuelle Riva.
Sat Mar 20: 9:20 pm; Sun Mar 21: 7:15 pm
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