Movies I Failed to Post About
Mon, Jul. 30th, 2012 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scarlettinaThe Intouchables (trailer), based on a true story, is a French film about a rich quadriplegic (Francois Cluzet) who hires, as his caretaker, a young Senegalese man from the projects (Omar Sy), and how the relationship changes each of their lives. The film is both charming and moving with excellent performances by the leads. It's the largest grossing film ever in France and has won awards and acclaim all over the world. It is, I understand, even being remade in English by the Weinstein Company. Variety found the film offensive, saying that it "flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens." There's something of the "magic Negro" about the story, along with at least one grossly unfortunate stereotype during a party scene. But I still enjoyed the adventure of these two people getting to know each other and changing each other's lives. (The Stranger gave it a starred review. Rotten Tomatoes shows it at 76% fresh, most of those positives showing up in their Top Critics filter.) Interestingly, the true story isn't about a Frenchman and a black man, but a Frenchman and an Arab; I'd be curious to see that film made for an American audience. The truth is that this film is in a no-win situation for an American viewership because the race issue is generally so toxic here that any positive message about the things people everywhere share in common allowing us to transcend our differences will be lost in the shouting. My takeaway--Cluzet and Sy give terrific performances and I enjoyed the film hugely.
I've been wanting to see A Cat in Paris (official site) since I saw the trailers for it at SIFF last year and couldn't make the screenings. It's a sweet little film about the double life one cat leads. By day he's the cuddly companion of a little girl whose father was murdered and whose mother is a police inspector. By night, he's the stealthy, slinky partner of, fittingly, a cat burglar. The mother is seeking the crime kingpin responsible for her husband's death, who also happens to be plotting the theft of a major work of art. When the girl and the burglar inadvertently cross the kingpin and his gang, well, the story takes off from there. The animation is terrific and the story quite a bit of fun (though you can't analyze the ending too closely without asking some questions).
Farewell, My Queen is a French film that follows three days in the life of Queen Marie-Antoinette's reader--the woman who reads to her when she wants entertainment--on the cusp of the French Revolution. Told from the perspective of the servants' quarters at Versaille and through the eyes of Sidonie Laborde, the reader, the viewer is shown a very different view of the glittering world of French royalty, plain and work-a-day, but nevertheless a place where information is currency, where loyalties are ever changing, and where privilege is measured in access and intimacy--little different from the court. The film is beautifully made; Lea Seydoux's performance as Sidonie is quiet and understated. Diane Kruger (National Treasure) plays a beautiful, flightly, distracted Marie-Antoinette. Her request to Sidonie, at one point, to map her an escape route is a clever prefiguring of Marie-Antoinette's actual fate (getting lost in Paris in her escape attempt because no one would contradict her directions). Sidonie's fate lays in the Queen's desires, and she goes to it with clear conflict and strength; the end leaves the viewer to speculate--which is just fine because the journey is an interesting and revealing one.
I've been wanting to see A Cat in Paris (official site) since I saw the trailers for it at SIFF last year and couldn't make the screenings. It's a sweet little film about the double life one cat leads. By day he's the cuddly companion of a little girl whose father was murdered and whose mother is a police inspector. By night, he's the stealthy, slinky partner of, fittingly, a cat burglar. The mother is seeking the crime kingpin responsible for her husband's death, who also happens to be plotting the theft of a major work of art. When the girl and the burglar inadvertently cross the kingpin and his gang, well, the story takes off from there. The animation is terrific and the story quite a bit of fun (though you can't analyze the ending too closely without asking some questions).
Farewell, My Queen is a French film that follows three days in the life of Queen Marie-Antoinette's reader--the woman who reads to her when she wants entertainment--on the cusp of the French Revolution. Told from the perspective of the servants' quarters at Versaille and through the eyes of Sidonie Laborde, the reader, the viewer is shown a very different view of the glittering world of French royalty, plain and work-a-day, but nevertheless a place where information is currency, where loyalties are ever changing, and where privilege is measured in access and intimacy--little different from the court. The film is beautifully made; Lea Seydoux's performance as Sidonie is quiet and understated. Diane Kruger (National Treasure) plays a beautiful, flightly, distracted Marie-Antoinette. Her request to Sidonie, at one point, to map her an escape route is a clever prefiguring of Marie-Antoinette's actual fate (getting lost in Paris in her escape attempt because no one would contradict her directions). Sidonie's fate lays in the Queen's desires, and she goes to it with clear conflict and strength; the end leaves the viewer to speculate--which is just fine because the journey is an interesting and revealing one.