Anne Fontaine is back -- with another terrific, timely and important film -- NIGHT SHIFT

If I had to pick one of the most under-rated filmmakers currently working, I would suggest, at the top my list, the Belgian-born, César-winning writer/ director Anne Fontaine (shown below), who, over her nearly 30-year career, has given us a wonderful variety of fascinating and varied movies of differing genres (often mashing genres together to unsettling and unusual effect) that are as thought-provoking as they are entertaining. 

From Dry Cleaning (which was the first of her films that I saw) and How I Killed My Father through The Girl From Monaco, Coco Before Chanel, My Worst Nightmare, Adore, Gemma Bovary, The Innocents and now NIGHT SHIFT (Police was the film's original French title), Ms Fontaine consistently upends our expectations while sucking us into stories that entertain, surprise and unsettle.

How, at this particular point in time, might a filmmaker induce her audience to feel sympathy for, of all things, the police? Yet by the finale of Night Shift, TrustMovies felt as though no movie he could remember had enabled him to empathize more fully with the three members of the Paris police force -- two men and one woman -- whom we meet here.

Who these three are, their relationship to each other and to the man (Payman Maadi, above) they must escort to the airport (he is a political prisoner seeking refuge who is now being sent back to his home country to face possible torture and death) is all that we learn during the film, but the details of character and background, as well the events we witness, keep us glued as well as constantly adjusting our perspective, just as do these very human and even humane police.

The three officers are played by the excellent actors Virginie Efira (above, left, and most recently seen here in Sibyl), Grégory Gadebois (below, right, whom I've seen previously in smaller roles; he's the standout here), and Omar Sy (above, right, and currently turning heads and hearts as the star of the Netflix series Lupin). All three are quite wonderful in their roles, as they slowly and very surely reveal their lives and their complexity via mostly quiet scenes of work life and home life -- the latter affecting the former despite each officer's attempts to prevent this.

It's that work life, however, that nails it for the audience, as our three "heroes" meet the prisoner they are about to escort and have to piece together the "facts" of the situation. Yes, he could be a terrorist, but he is most likely not. So what next? By this time, we know enough about these three "workers" to fully understand and appreciate the conundrum in which they find themselves. 

How all this plays out also plays to Ms Fontaine's particular filmmaking strengths. Her movie is remarkably satisfying in the manner that it refuses to make anything too easy. It leaves open so many doors and yet allows us to use our own imagination in ways both broad and small so that what might happen and what does may not be impossibly far apart. This is a consistently engrossing, surprisingly humane view of a situation horrendously difficult, despite its being increasingly commonplace.

From Distrib Films US and distributed on DVD via Icarus Home Video, the movie hit the street this past week -- for purchase (and eventually, I hope, for rental, too). 

The movie of the year? Anne Fontaine's amazing THE INNOCENTS might very well be it.

Feminist in a whole new way, Anne Fontaine's latest triumph, THE INNOCENTS, is also her finest, most important and most encompassing movie so far, not least because it takes that feminism, for which this movie-maker has long been noted (in my book, anyway) so far beyond the usual or typical that it expands into a grand and embracing humanism.

Said to be based on real events, the movie will make clear to any thinking person who knows history and the aftermath of World War II, that what happened at the convent here in Poland probably happened at many other convents around the world -- during wartime and afterward. But so horrifying are these events that "civilized" folk like us would prefer not to imagine such things.

One of the great strengths of Ms Fontaine (shown at left) as a director and often adaptor is that -- from Dry Cleaning through Nathalie..., The Girl from Monaco to Adore -- whether she is working in comic or dramatic mode (sometime both simultaneously), she insists on putting us in touch with feelings and actions we'd prefer to keep buried. (Sometimes she does this with a light comic touch, as in last year's delightful Gemma Bovery.)

With The Innocents (post-viewing, you may want to consider to whom that title refers), Fontaine is working in firmly dramatic mode. There's little humor here. What surfaces is provided by an ironic, been-through-hell-and-back doctor (very well played by Vincent Macaigne, below, left, of 2 Autumns 3 Winters) who works with our heroine (the lovely Lou de Laâge, below, right, of L'Attesa and Breathe) for the French Red Cross in post-war Poland.

Initially, once we learn what has happened at the convent, the movie seems to be mostly about rape and its awful consequences. Fontaine, her co-writers and her cast bring this home with a ferocity and reality that is striking. Yet we have not seen the original horror but instead experience it via the condition of the nuns, as we meet and grow to know them.

And then the filmmaker serves up a double whammy, as our heroine experiences her own introduction into the condition of these nuns. And we're with her during every step of this, the movie's single violent scene.

But then, slowly, The Innocents turns its attention to the idea and experience of faith -- how it works and what it can or can't accomplish. I have no idea whether Ms Fontaine is a person of faith (I would guess she is not, as I am not) but she certainly gives faith its due here. She is able to see events and personalities from angles that allow us viewers to enter the lives and minds of these nuns, each of whom is differentiated surprisingly well, so that we understand and feel their viewpoints.

Soon, however, Fontaine's film becomes less about rape or faith and more about life (and death) and parenting and what all this might mean to a group of nuns -- of whom, by now, we have grown hugely fond and protective -- just as has the character played by Ms de Laâge.

Granted, this is one humdinger of a tale to begin with, but I can't credit too highly the manner in which Fontaine has told it so that we encounter viewpoints that conflict enormously and yet we are made to fully understand and appreciate them all. As my spouse said, while the end credits rolled, "What a tolerant movie this is!" Indeed. For us to understand the shocking actions of certain characters here, we must enter into ideas quite foreign to what we would ordinarily encounter.

The filmmaker's great accomplishment is that she helps us do this with no lecturing or hectoring, simply by allowing us entry to as many viewpoints as necessary to make the leap. In the remarkably varied and equally talented cast, those with the most screen time are two Agatas: Agata Buzek (above), who plays the nun who initially translates and then becomes the most helpful to our heroine, and Agata Kulesza (below), as the convent's Abbess, whom foreign film fans will remember as the title character's helpful but depressed aunt in the Oscar-winning Ida of two years back.

Dramatically, Fontaine's film is aces all the way. From the initial scenes that are a mystery (and clearly an urgent one) to a finale that, in terms of how this movie began, is rather like moving from hell to heaven, the filmmaker keeps us glued both intellectually and emotionally. And the feel-good we experience at the end of this film seems utterly "earned," bringing us back to the movie's opening scenes in a manner most surprising and genuine. If a better film than The Innocents hits theaters this year, I'll be surprised -- but grateful. (Below is the lovely Katarzyna Dabrowska, as one of the nuns.)

From Music Box Films and running just under two hours, the movie opens this Friday, July 1, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark. In South Florida, look for it on July 8 at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, Miami, and The Classic Gateway, Fort Lauderdale. On July 15 it hits The Living Room Theaters and the Regal Shadowood in Boca Raton, and in Delray and Lake Worth at the Movies of Delray and the Movies of Lake Worth. Over the weeks and months to come, The Innocents will open in across the nation in some 60 cities and theaters. Click here and then click on THEATERS on the task bar midway down to view all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed.

Fontaine and Luchini are back with GEMMA BOVERY-- and our Emma is all the better for it

That endlessly bored bourgeois young woman, Emma Bovary, returns to the screen this week in the first of two new incarnations. While the second, starring Mia Wasikowska, opens mid-June and is said to hew much closer to the Flaubert novel on which it is based, Anne Fontaine's new comedic twist on the tale has given me and my spouse the most enjoyable time we've had at the movies so far this year.

Fontaine, shown at right, both directed and co-wrote (with Pascal Bonitzer, from the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds) the film, and her surprising and engaging stamp is all over this delectable little movie. This is a filmmaker who loves to tease her audience, setting us and our bourgeois notions up for a fall, often in the most hilarious and provocative ways (see Adore, My Worst Nightmare, The Girl from Monaco, and Dry Cleaning for a nicely varied taste of Fontaine's offerings).

Here she takes a number of Flaubert's notions about character, class, women, men, economics and sexuality, and whips them into a frothy, bubbling delight. What's particularly new and wonderful is how she uses the novels (Simmonds' and Flaubert's) to hold a mirror up to some of the differences between British and French society.

In Fontaine's tale Madame Bovary becomes Gemma Bovery (note the change of an "a" to "e"), an English lass recently married to a man who restores antiques (how nice to see Jason Flemyng, above, in a big, solid role again), with the two of them now coming to live in the charming French countryside.

As Gemma, British actress Gemma Arterton (above) does yet another bang-up job in a role that seems absolutely made for her. From St. Trinian's through Tamara Drewe to the more recent Byzantium and The Voices, this fine, young and very beautiful actress keeps using her major skills and looks in increasingly diverse roles. This, along with Tamara Drewe, may be her best performances to date. The actress seems looser, freer, yet much more complex here than most of her roles have so far allowed.

Ms Fontaine's other ace-in-the-hole, as often of late, is the performance of her ex-main-squeeze, Fabrice Luchini, shown above and below, in the film's actual leading role. Luchini plays a local baker so smitten with Flaubert's masterpiece that he finds himself falling in love with Gemma, even as he himself becomes a kind of Bovary character --bored with his own provincial life and struggling to latch on something better.

One of the France's finest actors and always a joy to watch, I would say that Luchini outdoes himself here -- except that you could say that about every one of his performances, from Claire's Knee onwards to the more recent Paris, The Women on the Sixth Floor, In the House and Bicycling With Moliere. To name but a few.

As bubbly, fun and funny as the film consistently is, there of course remains that dark side (as there always is in a Fontaine film, as well as -- in spades -- the original Flaubert). We know from the beginning that Gemma is deceased. How and why, however, remain a mystery that is solved -- wonderfully, wackily, sadly, ironically -- only at the finale.

Meantime, we get a supporting cast made up of some terrific performers, chosen and directed with superb flair and finesse. Look for Elsa Zylberstein, Pip Torrens, Isabelle Candelier, Niels Schneider (above, left), Edith Scob and Mel Raido, each of whom does a fine job of bringing to life, often with very little screen time, the character in question.

Lots of ideas scatter and fly from the screen as the movie unfurls, chief amongst them, perhaps, is that of woman as sacrificial lamb to male desire. But don't let me turn you off with too much weighty theme, for that is but an added inducement in a film that has everything: romance, sex, intelligence, charm, humor and sublime deftness. Ms Fontaine maintains a tone here -- light, satiric, tricky and consistently surprising -- that could hardly be bettered.

Gemma Bovery, from Music Box Films and running a sleek 99 minutes, open this Friday, May 29. In New York City, you'll find it at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Landmark's Sunshine Cinema. In Los Angeles, look for it at The Landmark in West L.A, as well as at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5.  Soon it will be playing all around the country. Click here and scroll down to see currently scheduled playdates, with cities and  theaters.

Anne Fontaine tweaks social conventions yet again in her most entertaining ADORE

Golly, that French gal's doin' it again! Yes, Anne Fontaine, she who has given us those movies that shove conventional bourgeois attitudes against the wall and then push just a bit more until -- whoops! -- the wall falls (I'm talking Dry Cleaning, Natalie, The Girl From Monaco) is back with a new movie that perhaps most aggressively of all her films flouts conventional society and conventional wisdom. (Even her Coco Before Chanel did this via -- not so much the movie itself but -- the character of Coco, who was nothing if not a woman who challenged convention.)

In ADORE (formerly titled, and for the better, I think, Two Mothers), Fontaine (pictured at left) and her writing collaborator Christopher Hampton take on Doris Lessing's novella, The Grandmothers. In the film two women, best friends who have grown up together since early childhood and have now seen each other through the death of one's husband and the upcoming separation from the other's, begin affairs with each other's adult son. This happens fairly early in the film and you cannot discuss the movie intelligently, I think, without also giving away at least this spoiler. How and why each couple's affair begins, however, is quite different, and that difference is what makes the film work--and very well indeed.

The cast could not, I think, be better, down to the smallest roles, though it is that front-and-center quartet -- plus one -- that nails the movie. The two women, Roz and Lil, are played respectively by Robin Wright (above, left) and Naomi Watts (above, right), both of whom are at the top of their game these days. They are partnered surprisingly well by two young hunks who can also act -- Xavier Samuel (below, right, as Lil's son, Ian) and James Frecheville, (below, left, as Roz's son, Tom) -- both of whom prove adept at double duty, playing at once sons and lovers. We expect this sort of skill from actors as seasoned as Wright and Watts, but Samuel and Frecheville, though called upon to feel and understand less, due to their callow youth, match the women in precisely the right way.

What makes the movie work so well (and what will probably drive the more bourgeois moviegoers crazy) is the matter-of-fact quality the film imparts, when dealing with this unusual four-way. After the press screening TrustMovies attended, one of his compatriots noted that, although the premise here is "melodramatically subversive, the actors are at times tasked with uttering lines better suited to a toss-off on whether to fix eggs sunnyside up or down." Exactly.

Once the affairs take hold, rather than give in to the expected melodrama, this crew treats it -- among themselves only: They realize they must keep this sort of thing "in the families" -- as expected behavior, which it quickly becomes. I found this smart, liberating and actually quite believable, given both the history of the two families and the location in which the film is set: a vastly beautiful and underpopulated Australian seaside town where no one locks a door and neighbors are few and even further between.

The fifth wheel here is Roz's husband, Harold, played by the fine Ben Mendelsohn (above, right), who acted opposite Mr. Frecheville in 2010's Animal Kingdom. Harold's acceptance of a better job in Sydney gives the foursome the space and freedom they need to further bond. Only when son Tom is also offered the opportunity to do some theater in Sydney do cracks begin to form in the quartet's little slice of perfection. (That's Jessica Tovey -- below, right -- playing a late-comer to our little group, and it's a mark of how extreme the situation and provocation of Ms Fontaine's film that it is an actress who begins an affair with her theater director who acts as our stand-in for conventional society.)

How things change and what these four do to keep somehow "on track" makes up the remainder of the film, which grows more intense and interesting as it moves along. Aging and age difference rear their heads, as does the need for procreation among the younger generation. At heart, though, the film is about passion and how to handle it when its strength trumps all convention.

I don't see how the performance of either Ms Watts or Ms Wright could be bettered. Mr. Samuel (shown three photos below), who starred in one of the best shark movies of the new millennium, Bait, and had a nice supporting role in Anonymous, registers here as strongly as I've yet seen. As for Mr. Frecheville, right, you'll hardly recognize him from either Animal Kingdom or his odd-but-effective turn in the under-seen The First Time. I suspect this young actor is a lot more versatile than we first imagined.

You can expect huge discord from the major critics a propos this film, which should have an effect on our more conventional male critics -- and some females, too -- in a similar manner as that ground-breaking film The Ledge had on those who must insistently believe in the existence of a god.

Ms Fontaine's films often end badly for those who go up against societal norms. The woman is a realist, after all; unconventionality has a price to pay. This time, however, we may have a kind of tie, or maybe stalemate. In the final moment, as the camera draws up and up, we see that our friends are exactly where they want to be. But at the same time, they are utterly cut off from the world.

What Ms Fontaine has given us here is above all else an "entertainment" (as Graham Greene might have called it): a movie that is sensual, sexual and surprising, featuring beautiful people in a setting gorgeous enough to take one's breath away. For this alone, it's must viewing. And all those thoughtful provocations? Think of Adore as a lovely, fresh-fruit cocktail laced with Aquavit.

The movie -- via Exclusive Media -- opens across the country this Friday, September 6, in theaters and on VOD. Click here, then scroll down, to locate the theater nearest you.

Huppert & Poelvoorde score in Fontaine's latest delight, MY WORST NIGHTMARE

As much as I admire much of the world of French filmmaker Anne Fontaine, I am not sure I'd have believed you had you told me her latest offering would be a kind of feel-good, screwball comedy about class barriers that, in addition, would turn Isabelle Huppert into an actress seemingly born to make us laugh. No, I wouldn't have believed you. But please believe me: It's all true.

Though a number of Ms Fontaine's films (The Girl from Monaco, Coco Before Chanel) involve excursions into class differences (the director is shown at right), one of her earliest -- Dry Cleaning -- took on the attempted melding of the bourgeoisie with lower-class "artists" that proved sensual, scary and memorable. In her latest, she does it again, this time melding an haut bourgeois couple with an even lower-class jack-of-all-trades (this would be a career-defining performance by Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde, below, except that just about every performance this guy gives would qualify as such) and the result is as funny and frolicsome as Dry Cleaning was dark and dirty.

MY WORST NIGHTMARE is often silly and obvious but it is almost always remarkably entertaining, thanks to the smart screenplay and dialog (by Ms Fontaine and Nicolas Mercier) that keeps the initially somewhat unbelievable situation just off-kilter enough to work. Couple this to performances that do exactly the same thing (they keep surprising us and stringing us along) and you have a not-too-slick but pleasantly fast-paced almost-farce.

Along with Poelvoorde and Ms Huppert -- (above) who does her ice queen thing to a fare-thee-well before melting ever-so-slightly but quite believably as she learns to experience a new side of life -- the cast includes the ever-game, André Dussollier (below with Huppert, and recently seen in Téchiné's Unforgivable), who appears to be having the time of his life making this movie. His surprise and enjoyment are quite contagious.

The fourth wheel on this swift and svelte little contraption is an actress new to me named Virginie Efira, shown at far left, who plays the necessarily bureaucratic but kindly social worker (with quite a thing for nature and trees) who becomes involved in this little menage. Ms Efira manages to be pert and beautiful, while also appearing to possess a good deal of intelligence and originality -- an arresting combination, I must say.

Also on board are two young near-teenagers, one belonging to Huppert & Dussollier (Donatien Suner, at left, above), the other to Poelvoorde (newcomer Corentin Devroey, above, right), and their characters and situation are handled with enough care, compassion and sense to give the movie an extra lift.

The film looks good but also looks as though it was shot on video, perhaps for speed and, well, cost, of course. In any case, the whole thing adds up nicely, and while every one of the actors is working at full capacity, it is Mr. Poelvoorde's performance that makes this a don't-miss movie.

My Worst Nightmare, from Strand Releasing and running a fleet 99 minutes, opens this Friday in New York City at the Quad Cinema and on Friday, November 9, in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex and Playhouse 7.

Hey, Laemmle: Why won't the site for your Monica 4-Plex ever turn up for me? I can access the remainder of your theaters just fine, but not this one, and not for some weeks now....