Netflix’ great series Call My Agent put me in the mood to hear as much French as possible. While the sophisticated, cultured patter of this hugely popular Parisian-set series does not speak for all of France, now Lincoln Center’s annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema, in collaboration with Unifrance, is in full swing, expanding the French experience. The festival is once again virtual as it was last year when the pandemic disrupted plans to see the films at the Walter Reade and hobnob with the actors/ directors in person. Still, kicking off with the tender documentary, Little Girl, this year’s Rendez-vous offers many pleasures.
The opening night documentary, Little Girl, features Sasha, born a boy, who affirms himself a girl despite the raised eyebrows of school authorities. Director Sebastien Lifshitz follows the family for a year, through Sasha’s routines, her balletic pirouettes, and visits to a psychoanalyst. Sasha’s mother is unofficially the film’s hero. Her support for Sasha’s true self brings tears to the eyes, that yes, Sasha can live in her true body.
Always a showcase for fascinating French cinema, Rendez-vous as a theatrical experience is especially missed this year, as so many of the guest clients of Call My Agent came to New York in years past to promote and celebrate their films. (Jean Dujardin for one, campaigned hard for his Best Actor Oscar in the The Artist (2011), not a Rendez-vous movie. But his satiric spy films as OSS 117 were.) In last year’s Rendez-vous, in Quentin Dupieux’ Deerskin, Dujardin starred as a filmmaker obsessed with an animal skin jacket he thought to have “magical” powers. I wondered at the connection with his Call My Agent episode: he’s an actor so identified with a role, he wants to live in the woods, hirsute in his skin. Ooh la la, fetish comedies are so . . . French!
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