Gallic SYMBOLS

At a time when American independent cinema is rapidly becoming the staple diet for diligent arthouse addicts, the sad demise of the French Film Festival (ah, sweet memories!) has left a gaping hole in the lives of many, though most of us have been able to carry on living perfectly fulfilling existences. Happily for all, this year s Cinefrance initiative at the IFC (in association with the French embassy) goes some way to redressing le balance.

The Festival will open at 8.40pm on Thursday November 23rd with a screening of Est-Ouest, which marks director Regis Wargnier s second collaboration with the grande dame of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve. A harrowing look at Stalinist repression, the film focuses on a couple of Russian refugees who lured home by Uncle Joe s 1946 post-war amnesty leave France and return to facilitate the rebuilding of the USSR. Our protagonists optimism is swiftly shattered upon arrival in Odessa, where they are confronted with the choice of immediate execution or a stretch in a labour camp. Not a bundle of fun, and not meant to be.
Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of the line-up is a retrospective of the work of director Claude Chabrol, who has cranked out over fifty films since starting out as a stalwart of Cahiers du Cinema, during those halcyon days when film critics were gods among men rather than mouthpieces for a giant Hollywood publicity machine. Chabrol is, undoubtedly, one of the most prolific directors of the age though many wonder if he s losing the plot somewhat, such is the unredeemed tedium that has disfigured his last two works (La Ceremonie and Rien Ne Va Plus). His most rewarding work dates from the late fifties and early sixties the godlike Les Bonnes Femmes is probably the one you most urgently need to catch, and it will be screened on Tuesday November 28th at 3pm. Ludicrously underrated and largely ignored at the time of its release, when it was accused of bad taste and excessive cynicism (if such a thing could exist), Femmes presents what some might perceive as a sharply jaundiced view of ordinary Paris and ordinary Parisians. In short, it is a bleak vision of the city as hell on earth. Combining an unsparingly misanthropic worldview with a sense of genuine compassion for its characters, the film makes for a macabre and genuinely disturbing experience.
Other Chabrol confections worth your while include Les Cousins, a sardonic observation of Parisian student life which goes out at 3pm on Sunday 26th and A Double Tour, a murder mystery which marked the director s first big commercial success (relatively speaking). The latter will screen at 3pm on Monday 27th.
As an additional attraction, Jean-Marc Barr (who shot to fame after his turn as a diver in Luc Besson s The Big Blue) will be introducing a selection of his own work as director. Having a long-time relationship with Lars von Trier, it comes as no surprise that Barr s directorial debut, Lovers, is the fifth film to be issued under the Dogme manifesto. It stars Elodie Bouchez (Clubbed To Death, The Dream Life Of Angels) as a girl who works in a bookstore and embarks on a passionate affair with a Yugoslavian painter. Full-blown doomed romance filtered through the Dogme sensibility, this makes for utterly engrossing if hardly light-hearted viewing, which you can check out for yourself at 7.15pm on Saturday November 25th.
More fascinating still is Too Much Flesh, a project Barr co-directed with Pascal Arnold, which deals with the freedom of sexuality. It stars Barr himself as a 35-year-old husband maritally chained to his sour-spirited fundementalist wife, before he commences an affair with a passing stranger (Bouchez, again). Today, say Barr and Arnold, the notion of physical pleasure is often portrayed by a sexual attitude or behaviour that is expressed in the extreme. We have chosen to illustrate it through the portrait of an innocent character who approaches sexuality on the simple basis of sharing pleasure, whose senses are keen in his carnal discovery, and who is playfully greedy with his impulsive appetite.
If the filmmakers evaluation of the film sounds a teensy bit pretentious, the film itself is a joy, and goes out at 5.15pm on Sunday 26th.
Another Dream Life of Angels veteran its co-writer Virginie Wagnon makes her directorial debut with Le Secret, an inter-racial, feminist revisiting of Last Tango In Paris territory. Shot in documentary style, the film focuses on an apparently-content wife, mother and encyclopedia-peddler, Marie (Anne Coesens). When hubby starts pushing for another kid, the rot sets in and she soon finds herself in a torrid psychodramatic affair with a black man(Candyman s Tony Todd). There is no butter scene on offer, but it s still compelling stuff, and screens on Saturday 25th at 9pm.
Now, for those of you interested in a truly bleak cinematic masterpiece, look no further than L Humaniti, director Bruno Dumont s follow-up to La Vie De Jesus. Like its predecessors, this is gritty uber-realism, using bleak landscapes and non-professional actors (two of whom, nevertheless, received awards at last year s Cannes Film Festival). Its hero is a lonely police officer, now separated from his wife and child and forced to live with his tyrannical mother. When he begins an investigation into a rape and murder, his psychological disintegration is as rapid as it is bizarre to behold. Hardcore stuff, but cast-iron confirmation of Dumont s genius status, this goes out at 2.20pm on Saturday 25th. b
All the Festival information you need is available from the Irish Film Cenre, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar. Tel: (01) 679 3477, or visit the website at http://www.fii.ie Membership is required for all screenings. Have fun!