The State of French Cinema
by Nicole Wallenbrock
- French Cinema in 2008, at the César awards.
My expectations for the 2008 César awards were high. Since the French make better films, dress better and speak a better language, surely their Academy Awards would be superior. What’s more, I was suffering from cinema depression; a week earlier I had watched the Oscars, grimacing at Hugh Jackman’s song and dance numbers and feigning surprise when Slumdog Millionaire slam-dunked best picture in a year of mediocre Hollywood. I needed cinema affirmation.
Initially, I thought my expectations were met when 2008 President of the César Awards, Charlotte Gainsbourg – pencil-thin in black glitter with a luscious pout and long disheveled bangs – introduced the ceremony with all the style and elegance of her model mom and rock-star dad. However, as soon as the epitome of chic left the stage her foil appeared, Antoine de Caunes, comedian and TV personality, speaking in a high-pitched Muppet voice – you know the French love Jerry Lewis! Unfortunately, though I had survived the Hugh Jackman and Béyoncé butchering of the musical into a Oscar medley the week before, I now found myself watching a budget-cut French version of the same routine; de Caunes cockled “Singin’ in the Rain” with his strangled-chicken voice, while gleefully splashing in puddles of stage-rain.
Why sing a song from an American musical in English at a French film award ceremony? France prides itself on inventing film, n’est-ce pas? Perhaps the answer could be found in the camera constantly panning American stars Dustin Hoffman and Sean Penn. In fact, as soon as de Caunes took his raincoat off and yelled in English “the musical is back!” he informed the audience that the Sean Penn was present. The audience then applauded even more than they had for his wet chicken song when de Caunes interrupted (in English again) to say “Yooo air so fucking grrrate man!” Yes, Hollywood and its Oscars were never far away from the César award ceremony, and as Gertrude Stein once said, “An award ceremony is an award ceremony is an award ceremony…”
And is Hollywood far enough away from contemporary French film? French cinema in 2008 was dominated by gender: the gangster film (Public Enemy No. 1 and The Death Instinct) and the fragile female sanity of a maid (Sassarine). That is to say, the year’s most celebrated films did not break any formal rules and primarily repeated clichés established across the pond. In fact, the most liberating French film of 2008, came from a director of yester-year. Founding New-Wave left-bank director, Agnès Varda, made Les plages de Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès) to celebrate her life, loves, and career to mark her 80th birthday.
Les Plages d’Agnès
Les Plages d’Agnès won the César for best documentary, though the film defies categorization. While Varda revisits nearly all of her films in the 110-minute feature with clips and commentary, she also reflects on her life’s pleasures, sorrows, dreams and fantasies. Several times she makes old photographs new on film by finding actors to play herself as a child and as a young woman. She then interacts and poses with them in New Wave style – never shying away from showing the director directing, or revealing the camera to the camera. This approach is not a jarring demystification of cinema as it was in the 60s. By tracing Varda’s artistic evolution, the mise-en-abyme welcomes the audience and then holds them deep inside a rich imagination. In this way, Les Plages d’Agnès liberates cinema from common formulas and paradigms, and offers Varda the ultimate expression. Mortality is especially present in several of the film’s most poignant moments; while Varda throws single red roses at photographs she took in the 50s of great actors from the National Theater she sobs. “Although the photographs give others happiness, they bring her a sense of sorrow,” she explains, “these great actors once young and beautiful are now dead and gone.” The death of her late husband, Jacques Demy, from AIDS is a recurring source of sadness in the film, and the viewer feels the stark loneliness of turning eighty alone. However, Les Plages d’Agnès spirals and circles through reality and art, past work and celebrity encounters, never dwelling on death or its proximity. Agnès Varda, the wise fairy, guides us through a self-portrait of her creativity, celebrating the joy of life and its pains in equal measure.
Versailles
Though Varda speaks of her sejours in Cuba and China shortly after their revolutions in Les Plages, she hardly mentions the Algerian War (1954 – 1962) the war that began and ended during one of Varda’s most celebrated periods of creativity. In general, directors in the French cinema of 2008 were political, but less than recent years: Caché (2005), Les Indigènes (2006), L’ennemi intime (2008). This year directors allowed viewers to make associations without forcing an ideology. Versailles, Pierre Schöeller’s first film examines poverty in France, but primarily received attention due to the surprise death of leading actor, Guillame Depardieu. (Guillame, son of Gérard, had a motorcycle crash in October and could not recover due to drug and alcohol abuse.) In fact, French critics discussed Depardieu’s performance, which won a César nomination and the film’s subtle cinematography, but did not grapple with the film’s social commentary.
The first half of the narrative of Versailles centers on the destitute taking shelter in the woods surrounding the palace of Louis XIV. Homeless Nina (Judith Chemla) wanders aimlessly through the Versailles forest with her young son (Max Baissette de Malglaive) when she finds Damien (Depardieu) dressed poor but Calvin Kleinish (are they the same thing if you wear all black?). He warmly welcomes the mom to his shack to shack up. However, when Damien awakes from post-coital slumber he finds Nina has left him alone with her excessively cute pre-verbal son. After the boy’s adorableness wears Damien down, he figuratively becomes the boy’s father and decides to leave the squatter camping lifestyle for a prodigal return to his middle-class beginnings. As it turns out, Damien’s homeless romp was part of a rebellious, angst-ridden phase.
Although other homeless campers are featured in the film’s first half, Damien’s middle-class roots prompt a larger question: Is squatting simply a way to challenge the capitalist system? Or is it in fact endemic in a society with a 10 percent unemployment rate? Homelessness and unemployment are a choice – at least for the young attractive white French characters that represent the homeless in Versailles: when Nina abandons her son, she easily finds a respectable job caring for the elderly and after Damien returns and gains employment in construction he puts on a backpack and abandons the child. Schöeller enforces this understanding of poverty as rebelliousness by casting Guillame Depardieu, who was rumored to have a temper and drug problems long before his death. The actor has the intimidating presence of his father, with a much slighter frame, and his anger and frustration at parenting the foundling and at his own parents’ bourgeois lifestyle, demonstrate the predictable but believable acting style characteristic of the Depardieu family. It is the sublime cinematography of nature in the first half of the film that is more interesting than the acting or the storyline. The Versailles grounds offer Julien Hirsh plenty of opportunities to boast his understanding of natural light, which he also demonstrates in Pascale Ferran’s superb film of 2006, Lady Chatterley.
L’instinct de mort (The Death Instinct) and L’ennemi public no.1 (Public Enemy Number 1)
Even though Guillame Depardieu died in the year he was nominated for best actor, he still failed to win the César over Vincent Cassel’s performance as Jacques Mesrine. The most popular French films of 2008, L’instinct de mort (Death instinct) and L’ennemi public No.1 (Public Enemy Number 1) together form a bio-pic of France’s most famous criminal, a bank robber at his peak in the 70s, who increased his fame by escaping twice from prison and interviewing with top-selling magazines such as “Paris Match.” The films are based on Mesrine’s autobiography but heavily adapted by screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri who also directed the tv series “La commune,” depicting life in a violent ghetto. The films follow a gangster formula, complete with car chases, gunfights, and suitcases of cash, but also takes on the prison-escape genre.
Both of the films glorify Mesrine, but with frequent allusions to the Algerian War that seek our attention. L’instinct de mort begins where Mesrine learns to kill in the Algerian War. Mesrine as a soldier, follows orders to torture and execute supposed FLN members in prison, but shows his gallant side when he kills a male Algerian instead of a female. When he returns from war, Mesrine is bored by his employment possibilities and enticed by the money and women of the gangster lifestyle. He begins killing for mob boss Guido (Gérard Depardieu), who incidentally is part of the OAS (Organization of the Secret Army) and they shoot Arabs together while jeering racist insults. Near the end of the second film, L’ennemi public no.1, Mesrine decides to kill a right-wing journalist who has contradicted him. With another prison escapee who is also a left-wing activist, Mesrine meets the journalist at a cave entrance, and then baits the journalist inside, by offering an interview. After verbally assaulting him, Mesrine strangles the journalist with a scarf saying, “You want to know what I learned in the Algerian War? I’ll teach you.”
The symbolism of the sequence is overt; the French killed many Algerians who were hiding in caves with bombs, and strangulation was a common torture technique. Thus the murder of the journalist completely subverts the racism against Arabs demonstrated in the first film, and ensures the audience’s forgiveness. If Mesrine kills Arabs by order or for money in Part I, before the end of his life he does penance by torturing and assassinating a xenophobic nationalist mouthpiece. Mesrine does not suffer for the crimes he committed during the Algerian War, but takes vengeance on their interpretation in the years following Algeria’s liberation. The likes of this journalist and his politics, which recall the National Front, could easily be found in contemporary French media. This makes the brutal murder more engaging for the 2008 public, and doubles their respect for the mindless violence of the hero.
Cassel interprets Mesrine’s bow legged confident swagger and fast-paced Parisian slang with the bravado indicative of his character’s criminal career. Cassel’s duty to the role was so intense that he physically transformed himself by gaining a pot belly, which is apparent in several pretzel love scenes. This achievement garnered Cassel the César for best actor, and Jean-François Richet, in charge of the impersonation and all the action editing, a César for best director. However, though the Mesrine features were the most successful films at the French box office in 2008, they did not win the board’s selection for best picture. It was Mesrine’s alter-ego Séraphine (Yolande Moreau), an early twentieth century maid cum primitive artist, who walked the stage for best actress, and her film (Séraphine) which stole the best film trophy from the bank robber. In this instance the César committee did yield to the Hollywood pressure of the action film, but transgressed the box office to award a lesser-known biographical film on a lesser-known artist.
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As an endnote, I saw all of these films and four more at “Rendez-vous with French Cinema.” Uni-France, the association of French film producers, and French cultural services, bring together a bouquet of French cinema annually at Lincoln Center and IFC. Usually directors attend their films for an introduction and Q&A after the screening. I recommend the festival highly.
