French Farce

One of the pleasures of last year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema was the charming Orchestra Seats. Now with a tweaking of title to Avenue Montaigne, the film was France’s choice for the Oscars, and will open on February 16. An interweaving of stories (in the manner of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts) involving characters: actors, chanteuses, concert pianists, art dealers, café workers intersect on this one Parisian street to seriocomic effect. Interviewed recently the director Daniele Thompson said her inspiration came from Woody Allen as well as others. In this good year for the foreign language Academy Awards, despite disappointment over the non-nomination of Volver, the film made the semi-final nine, only to be cut for the final five. Needless to say Thompson was disappointed.

         

           She shouldn’t be, really. Oscars usually go to films with a certain je ne sais pas quality of monumentalism: A political context as in The Lives of Others and Pan’s Labyrinth, as I’ve already told you; or, the epic specter of war as in Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood’s movie contending for Best Picture), or Days of Glory, the Algerian film opening on February 16 that tells the story of North Africans fighting in World War II alongside the French to free France of the Nazis. This fine film is hugely resonant in terms of the racism that feuled the riots in Arab immigrant neighborhoods of  Paris last year. Even the sturm und drang of the Danish film After the Wedding with a stunning performance by Mads Mikkelsen, (the worthy, sexy villain to Daniel Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale), has a largeness to it.

            

          On the feel good level, Avenue Montaigne is sure to do well. French in the best sense, Americans will identify with contemporary themes: romances happy and gone awry, performance angst and bravado, family ties Freudian and other. One of the funniest scenes is the actress Valerie LeMercier, playing a diva-ish angst-ridden star of soaps and Feydeau farces attempting to convince the American director played by a real American director Sydney Pollack to cast her in her first drama, in the role of Simone de Beauvoir. Fuck Sartre, he says offering her the part. Meantime Le Mercier is a really big deal in France, I’d say unknown here. When she visited  New York for last year’s Rendez-Vous, publicizing this film and the festival’s opening film Palais Royale, (she starred with Catherine Deneuve and also directed), I told her she reminded me of Lucille Ball. She had never heard of Lucille Ball and so had no idea of the high praise I was giving. So I asked, who of American comics did she like: Vince Vaughn. And her favorite film: Wedding Crashers.

          

           What’s French for DUH?                                             Regina Weinreich

Comments

[Alex Nicco]

Thanks for sharing