Films français diffusés au Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

Du 18 au 28 février 2010

With the support of the Embassy of France in Ireland
 

Kristin Scott Thomas Tribute

Never shying away from challenging roles and determined not to repeat herself, Kristin Scott Thomas’ body of work is an extraordinary collection of acclaimed film, television and theatre performances.

Scott Thomas was born in South West England, and in her teens enrolled in drama schools at Paris’s Ecole nationale des arts et techniques de théâtre. 

Notable credits include an Oscar-nominated performance in the late A. Minghella’s The English Patient and BAFTA winning role.

Fluent in French and a resident of Paris since she was 19, Scott Thomas appeared in numerous French films.
 
Kristin Scott Thomas at JDIFF 2010:

• I’ve Loved You So Long: Monday 22 February / Screen / 4.00 pm
• An Unforgettable Summer: Thursday 25 February / Screen / 4.00 pm
• Special presentation, Partir : Saturday 27 February / Cineworld / 6.40 pm - Kristin Scott Thomas will attend this screening

 

An Unforgettable Summer

• Principal Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Claudiu Bleont, Olga Tudorache, Marcel Lures
• Director: Lucian Pintilie
• Origin: France / 1996

Film - 25 Feb 2010 - 16:00 (82 mins) at Screen Cinema. €8.00

1925, in Dobroujda, an area of Romania on the Bulgarian border, populated by a variety of nationalities: to an isolated army garrison come Captain Dumitriu (Bleont) and his wife Marie-Therese (Scott Thomas). To avenge the massacre of frontier guards by Macedonian bandits, Bleont takes Bulgarian villagers hostage; but when he’s ordered to shoot them, encouraged by his wife’s humane sympathy for their captives, he refuses. Firmly rooted in history, this is far more than just another costume drama; the insane savagery of the conflict depicted inevitably recalls more recent Balkan hostilities and ‘ethnic cleansing’.

It’s a tough, unsentimental film, fuelled by a hatred of nationalistic delirium and tribal aggression, its anguish wonderfully incarnated by Scott Thomas’s characteristically fine performance.

 

I've Loved You So Long

• Principal Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill
• Director: Philippe Claudel
• Origin: 2007 / France

Film - 22 Feb 2010 - 16:00 (115 mins) at Screen Cinema. €8.00

As Juliette, Kristin Scott Thomas is first seen in closeup without makeup, her hair lustreless, her expression blank but tense. Juliette has completed a prison sentence of fifteen years for committing the unimaginable crime of murdering her six-year-old son. Her kid sister, Léa (Zylberstein), a literature professor at a university in Nancy, nervously lets her into her own family, where Juliette remains in an uneasy state of semi-silence. Written and directed by the novelist Philippe Claudel, the movie asks whether anyone who has done something so extreme can be welcomed back into the human community. And does she want to be welcomed back? Claudel dramatizes Juliette’s slow reawakening with an infinite number of small, sharply etched details. The secrets that are finally revealed have the curious effect of making one want to see the movie again immediately, in order to study Scott Thomas’s immaculate performance.
David Denby, The New Yorker

Partir

• Principal Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi López, Yvan Attal
• Director: Catherine Corsini
• Origin: France / 2009
• Info: Actress Kristin Scott Thomas will be in attendance at this screening.

Film Gala - 27 Feb 2010 - 18:40 (90 mins) at Cineworld. €10.00

When an unhappy housewife tries leaving her husband for another man, she runs into even unhappier times in this brooding tale of explosive amour fou. Tightly wound and crafted, with robust performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and Sergi López, the film offers a rough, no-frills take on a story as old as France itself.

There’s little spice left in Suzanne’s (Scott Thomas) highly bourgeois marriage to physician Samuel (Attal), so it’s no surprise when she jumps at the chance to hook up with Ivan (López), an ex-con hired to fix up her chiropractor’s office. When she finally decides – despite two children and various creature comforts - to leave Samuel for good, hubby launches a plan of revenge and blackmail.

Although a cliffhanger prologue lets us know where things are headed, it remains fascinating to see how Suzanne’s combination of naiveté, stubbornness and willpower pushes things toward the anticipated conclusion.

Jordan Mintzer, Variety

 

Brand New Life

• Principal Cast: Kim Sae-ron, Park Do-yeon, Ko An-sung
• Director: Ounie Lecomte
• Origin: 2009 / France / South Korea
• Info: Director Ounie Lecomte will be in attendance at this screening

Film - 23 Feb 2010 - 18:00 (92 mins) at Cineworld. €10.00

Striking a perfect balance between the vague, distant memories of childhood and the accuracy of a rigorous script, Ounie Lecomte’s directorial debut is a remarkable film. Lecomte’s warm approach to directing envelops this bare, ascetic story of an abandoned youth with sincerity as genuine as it is devastatingly moving. A brand new pair of shoes shines on the feet of nine-year-old Jinhee (Sae-ron). Little does she know that those shoes are destined to walk her into a new life: the next day Jinhee will be taken to an orphanage and unceremoniously abandoned there in the hope somebody will adopt her.

A Brand New Life is endowed with striking intensity and effortless sincerity. From her luminous happiness in the beginning, to the disbelief and overwhelming sadness of her days at the orphanage, Kim’s stern little figure will dwell in the audience’s consciousness for a long time.

Giovanna Fulvi, Toronto International Film Festival Programme

 

Eccentricities Of A Blond-Hair Girl

• Principal Cast: Ricardo Trêpa, Catarina Wallenstein, Diogo Dória, Julia Buisel
• Director: Manoel de Oliveira
• Origin: 2009 / Portugal / France

Film - 24 Feb 2010 - 16:30 (64 mins) at Screen Cinema. €8.00

For his 100th birthday, director Manoel de Oliveira decided to give us a present with this marvellous adaptation of a novel by his Portuguese countryman Eça de Queiroz, a wry, moving tale of a pure, if frustrated, love. A young, Lisbon accountant, Macario, tells the story of the greatest but most tragic love of his life: A young woman he would often see sitting by a window fanning herself. Soon the two are soon engaged, yet the match is opposed by his uncle and the wedding called off. Years later, Macario returns again intent on marriage — but will fate this time deal him a kinder hand? Using his trademark, highly theatricalised style, Oliveira brilliantly juxtaposes the rigor of Queiroz’s prose with seething passions lurking beneath his story. “Romance,” according to Macario, “begins in art and reality.” Here Oliveira chronicles how memories become fiction and occasionally, art.

Júlia Buisel, New York Film Festival Programme

 

Enter The Void

• Principal Cast: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta
• Director: Gasper Noé
• Origin: France / 2009

Film - 19 Feb 2010 - 20:00 (150 mins) at Light House Cinema Smithfield. €10.00

Gaspar Noé’s ‘psychedelic melodrama’ is a provocative yet contemplative exploration of life, death and sexuality, an avant-garde journey into the mind of low-level drug dealer Oscar (Brown). Oscar and his sister Linda (de la Huerta) lived apart for years in foster homes, but finally reconnect in Tokyo. Brother and sister are torn apart again, however, when Oscar is shot and left to die on the grimy floor of a nightclub bathroom. And here the story truly begins…. To enhance the cyclical nature of the narrative, Noé utilizes rhythmic shooting techniques, stroboscopic visuals, complex soundscapes and ambitious computer effects, creating a truly hypnotic atmosphere, as explicit sex and intense violence are intertwined with abstract montages of colour and light. Experimenting with new technology that seamlessly enhances his visual style, Gasper Noé delivers another boundary-pushing experience that is sure to be talked about for years to come.

Colin Geddes, Toronto Film Festival Programm

 

Eyes Without A Face

• Principal Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Ailda Valli, Edith Scob
• Director: Georges Franju
• Origin: 1960 / France

Film - 26 Feb 2010 - 18:00 (88 mins) at Light House Cinema Smithfield. €10.00

A welcome 50th anniversary outing for one of the great European horror films: at once ghastly and lyrical, Georges Franju’s luminescent mad doctor saga has had an immeasurable influence on the last half century of shock cinema. Dr. Génessier (Brasseur) is a brilliant surgeon who lectures on the experimental process of live tissue transplants. With the help of his daughter Louise (Valli) he has been kidnapping young women and removing their faces to graft onto that of his other daughter, Christiane (Scob), who has been horribly disfigured in a car accident. While her father and sister commit atrocities in her name, Christiane glides through their palatial house like a ghost, hidden behind a plastic, expressionless mask. Visually haunting and deeply unsettling, Les Yeux sans Visage is the missing link between Jean Cocteau and John Carpenter, and a vivid reminder that horror and high art are not mutually exclusive.

Derek O’Connor, JDIFF

 

Father Of My Children

• Principal Cast: Chiara Caselli, Louis-Dode Lencquesaing, Alice de Lencquesaing
• Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
• Origin: 2009 / France

Film - 25 Feb 2010 - 20:40 (110 mins) at Screen Cinema. €10.00

Mia Hansen-Løve made an impressive debut with her 2007 feature Everything Is Forgiven. Her follow-up is a striking leap forward – confident, sophisticated and emotionally insightful. The film is inspired by the life and tragic death of revered French producer Humbert Balsan: the Balsan figure here is Grégoire (de Lencquesaing), whose chaotic wheeler-dealer lifestyle masks a profound devotion to the cause of uncompromising art cinema. The film’s first half shows the chain-smoking Grégoire tirelessly troubleshooting projects for his beleaguered company, including a collaboration with a high-maintenance Swedish auteur. But when Grégoire’s reserves, financial and emotional, reach a dramatic cracking point, his wife Sylvia (Caselli) and three daughters are forced to cope with the outcome. This is, quite simply, one of cinema’s finest tributes to its own virtues and vicissitudes – and also, without a doubt, one of the most moving.

Jonathan Romney, London Film Festival Programme

 

Hadewijch

• Principal Cast: Julie Sokolowski, Yassine Salime, David Dewaele
• Director: Bruno Dumont
• Origin: France / 2009

Film - 20 Feb 2010 - 20:30 (100 mins) at Screen Cinema. €10.00

In one of his most uncompromising works to date, Bruno Dumont (Life of Jesus) undertakes a topical exploration of the psychology of religious extremism and martyrdom. Expelled from a convent for her overzealous faith, teenage Céline (Julie Sokolowski) reluctantly returns to a life of comfort and privilege as the daughter of a French government minister. Back in Paris and farther from God, she makes a new friend, an Arab boy who introduces her to the cités, housing projects full of Arab and African immigrants, an alien world but one where faith exerts a familiar sway. As hard-headed and at times as enigmatic as its unforgettable heroine, Hadewijch is a movie on a quest: at once a sincere theological inquiry and a provocative political meditation.

New York Film Festival Programme

“… an austere, deeply questioning examination of a devout young woman having an intense crisis of faith… the film is exquisitely molded, dramatically parched and entirely sincere…”

Justin Chang, Variety

 

L'affaire Farewell (Farewell)

Principal Cast: Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, Willem Dafoe
Director: Christian Carion
Origin: France / 2009

Film - 19 Feb 2010 - 18:00 (114 mins) at Cineworld. €10.00

Moscow, 1981: KGB spy Sergei Grigoriev (a brooding, layered performance by filmmaker Emir Kusturica) has decided to leak documents to the West. Pierre Froment (Canet), a French engineer working in Moscow, has no connection to espionage until his boss draws him into a dangerous game. Grigoriev will pass the documents to Froment, who will relay them to French intelligence. Divulging proof of how deeply the KGB has infiltrated the West, the Russian hopes to precipitate an American reaction, and with it the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is not a car-chase spy thriller: L’affaire Farewell probes the impact of the spy-versus-spy atmosphere on these two men and their families, as director Christian Carion (Noël) handles the high-stakes narrative with deft skill. A superb supporting cast includes Willem Dafoe as the head of the CIA and Fred Ward (!) as Ronald Reagan.

Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival Programme

 

La danse

• Director: Frederick Wiseman
• Origin: 2009 / US/France
• Info: Screening with short film, Rialto Twirlers

Film - 28 Feb 2010 - 16:30 (158 mins) at Light House Cinema Smithfield. €10.00 

Documentary master Frederick Wiseman’s 38th film in a career that has spanned more than that number of years, turns his attention to one of the world’s greatest ballet companies, the Paris Opera Ballet. John Davey’s camera roams the vast Palais Garnier, an opulent 19th century pile of a building: from its crystal chandelier-laden corridors to its labyrinthine underground chambers, from its light-filled rehearsal studios to its luxurious theater replete with 2,200 scarlet velvet seats and Marc Chagall ceiling. La Danse devotes most of its time to watching impossibly beautiful young men and women — among them Nicolas Le Riche, Marie-Agnès Gillot, and Agnès Letestu — rehearsing the choreography of Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor, Rudolf Nureyev and Pina Bausch. For balletomanes and the curious alike, La Danse serves up a scrumptious meal of delectable moments, one more glorious than the next, made even more precious by their ephemeral nature.

 

Lourdes

• Principal Cast: Sylvie Testud, Leá Seydoux, Bruno Todeschini, Elina Löwensohn
• Director: Jessica Hausner
• Origin: 2009 / Austria/France/Germany

Film - 22 Feb 2010 - 20:30 (99 mins) at Screen Cinema. €10.00

How would we honestly react if we witnessed a miracle? That’s the question on Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner’s lips as she casts a deeply ironic eye over the ties between commercialism and spiritual healing in this brilliant and satisfyingly illusive Francophone thinkpiece. It sees Testud’s paraplegic pilgrim looking to the divine for physical welfare and achieving unexpectedly life-changing results. The subdued and slyly comic register of the performances and the gorgeous, deadpan shooting style (reminiscent of Kaurismäki) are the only tools Hausner gives us to decipher her tale, leaving you to decide whether modern religion is a sham or a saver of souls.

David Jenkins

‘With pitch-perfect sincerity, filmmaker Jessica Hausner nestles Lourdes between religious satire and redemption story… As one woman ponders, “If God is not in charge, who is?”, to which a friend replies, “Do you think there’ll be a dessert?’

Sundance Film Festival Programme

 

Retour de flamme

Special Presentation - 26 Feb 2010 - 20:30 at Light House Cinema Smithfield. €18.00

Described as the ‘Indiana Jones Of The Moving Image’, we are delighted to welcome Serge Bromberg to Dublin to present his acclaimed stage show, Retour de Flamme (Saved From the Flames). Presenting an eclectic programme of silent films with live musical accompaniment, Retour de Flamme sees Bromberg showcasing some of his recent treasure-hunting finds. Among the celluloid wonders on tap at this particular edition: Artheme Swallows His Clarinet, a fragment of a 1912 slapstick short made by the Eclipse production company, a mere dozen of whose more than 2000 productions still survive; Le Papillon Fantastique, a hand-colored print of a previously unknown 1909 film by French cinema pioneer George Méliés; Gregor and His Gregorians (1929), the earliest known musical sound film made in France (discovered by Bromberg in the rubble of a demolished film lab), which offers an early glimpse of a then newly unemployed silent film pianist – Stephane Grappelli – trying his hand at the violin; and another musical short, Jazz Hot (1938), featuring a significantly more advanced  Grappelli and the only known film footage of guitar great Django Reinhardt. Just seeing these films is a rare enough treat, but Bromberg is more than a mere presenter; he’s a vaudevillian showman in his own right, bounding enthusiastically about the stage, lighting a strip of nitrate film ablaze, and providing his own piano accompaniment. Expect surprises aplenty!

Scott Foundas

Retour de flamme at JDIFF will include:
Artheme avale sa clarinette                                               Pour la fête de sa mère
(Artheme Swallows His Clarinet)                                         France / 1906 / Drama
France / 1912 / Comique                                                      Production: Pathe
Production: Eclipse
Direction: Ernest Servaes
Actors: Ernest Servaes
Papillon fantastique                                                          Grégor et ses Grégoriens
(The Spider And The Butterfly)                                           (Gregor And His Gregorians)
France / 1909 / Scene A Trucs                                             France / 1930 / Jazz
Production: Star Film                                                            Direction: Roger Lion
Direction: Georges Méliés                                                    Actors: Stéphane Grappelli

Jazz Hot                                                                             Gertie The Trained Dinosaur
England / 1939 / Jazz                                                           Usa / 1914 / Animation
With: Django Reinhardt,                                                       Production: Vitagraph
Stéphane Grappelli, Emmanuel                                              Direction: Winsor McCay
Soudieux, Joseph Reinhardt,                                                 Actors: Winsor McCay,
Pierre “Barro” Ferret                                                          Georges McManus