With GUY, French actor/writer/director Alex Lutz has created a marvel of a mockumentary

Before viewing GUY (or Guy Jamet, the full name of the character shown on the poster above), TrustMovies had never heard of Alex Lutz, an award-winning French actor, comedian, writer and director. Post-viewing, however, he will remember this man and his one-of-a-kind work for, well, in perpetuity, he hopes.

Guy Jamet, I must tell you right off the bat, does not exist. Nor does the music he sings, the people he interacts with, nor really anything we see and learn about this aging pop idol. Yet Guy and the entire world around him has been imagined and researched so beautifully and then brought to life so remarkably well in this supposed-to-be-a-documentary movie about him that, even though you know -- from the press materials and too-much-information coverage of the film -- that what you're seeing is "fake," so real, so complete does it seem that you're likely to be amused, delighted and greatly moved by it nonetheless. (That's Mr. Lutz, above, shown pretty much as he is now, and on the poster, top, and below, playing the role of the 72-year-old aging pop star. The performer, by the way, won this year's coveted César Award for Best Actor in this role.)

So, yes, Guy is what is most often called a mockumentary. Yet mockumentaries are supposed to mock. But this one, while almost always witty and sometimes satiric, is so rich, warm, and human, full of emotion and sadness at the passing of time, missing of opportunities and the knowledge of our own inability to head off our worst impulses that it leaves you with more of a sense of reality and worth than do many of the actual documentaries and narrative bio-pics I've seen over the years.

Further, I haven't even gotten into the amazing skills with which, Mr. Lutz manages to create and inhabit the elder self (he also plays the younger version, though it is mostly that 72-year-old with whom we're spending our time). Everything -- from his movements to the superlative aging make-up and/or prosthetics applied -- seems nothing short of perfection. Mr. Lutz is quite something.

And when, along the way, we see, intercut with each other, the younger and older versions of Guy and one of his "loves," (above, with Élodie Bouchez, and below, with French icon Dani), the effect is mesmerising and moving in equal measure. Here, an entire cultural history opens up before us, and while the events and characters, the times and the songs may seem initially rather ordinary, something happens as they wash over you. Eventually it all gather the importance and feel of real life.

About the music: While it seemed to me captured to near perfection, "Isn't this sort of mediocre?" my spouse asked, mid-way along. And, yes, the songs here are absolutely of their time and place. Yet by the point at which the end credits rolled, "Boy, this song has really grown on me," spouse noted. I felt quite the same.

The movie is organized around the idea of a young filmmaker named Gauthier -- Tom Dingler, above -- getting Guy to agree to making this film about him by, among other things, telling him what a huge fan of his was Gauthier's mom. In reality, his late mother has informed Gauthier via letter than Guy is actually the young man's birth father. So the film is fraught with unspoken father/son issues throughout, some of them funny, others more telling. Probably the most emotional-yet-reticent scene of all involves Guy's lunch with the son he knows of and has recognized, shot by Gauthier at a discrete distance so that neither we nor he can hear what is being said by the father and his recognized son, even as the unrecognized one films it all.

While I am certain that many of the movie's more subtle and satiric barbs were lost on this American viewer, what remains was still so special, unconventional, surprising and alternately amusing and moving that Guy takes it place for me as one of this year's best films. It's an original -- and then some. (Above, right, is Nicole Calfan, very good as our hero's publicist; below, right, is Pascale Arbillot, playing his current squeeze.)

Without a theatrical release, all the more thanks is due Icarus Home Video and Distrib Films USA for making this gem available to us. Guy hits the street on DVD (digital will eventually arrive) this Tuesday, June 4 -- for purchase and (I hope) rental. Do find a way to see this one.

César-winning animation from France: Omond and Solotareff's WOLFY: The Incredible Secret

Want to see what award-winning French animation looks like? Then, for your own interest -- not to mention that of your pre-teen kids or grandkids --  take a look at WOLFY: THE INCREDIBLE SECRET (Loulou, l'incroyable secret), a film out just now on DVD, digital and VOD, that makes a nice low-key change from some of the multi-multi-million-dollar, uber-flashy animated stuff out of Hollywood. This one's got a lot of charm and creativity going for it, along with off-kilter animation that's fun to view.

I have to admit that my just-turning 10-year-old granddaughter left the room around halfway along, but my just-turning-seven grandson couldn't get enough of the film and pronounced it "really good" and one that he intended to view again. (I suspect that if the leading character, Wolfy, has been female rather than male, my grandkids' interest level would have reversed.) For my part, I found it enjoyable to sit back and watch the work of filmmakers Eric Omond (show above at extreme right) and Grégoire Solotareff, (shown standing, center right), while observing the manner in which the younger generation reacted to the film.

The movie takes on a little oddity from its beginning, as its two main characters (and fast friends) turn out to be a rabbit and a wolf (above). There's no explanation for how this happened -- they just grew up together --  but the movie's plot (along with that :"incredible secret" of the title) has to do with the "history" of Wolfy and his family, and exactly what kind of a wolf he really is.

Due to an bizarrely arranged meeting between wolf, rabbit and a strange bird that morphs into a fortune teller (above), our two friends set off on an adventure to a far-away kingdom where Wolfy's "family" resides.

What makes the movie fun for both generations is the animators' take on various animals and how they play into the tale. Everything from wolves to hedgehogs, moles, cats, dogs and more have their chance to shine (or not). The animation itself is flat line with wonderful colors and a lot of imagination given over to odd angles and charming exaggeration (note the rabbit's ears, just above and three photos above).

Though the threat of harm befalling our heroes is ever-present, this is not a deal-breaker (only once did my grandson scoot over closer to me on the couch at a particularly exciting moment: "You getting scared?" I asked, and he nodded, yes).  Instead the movie mostly keeps its thrills in check to its charms.

There are fine chases (one in the car, above, another throughout the castle), a odd kind of "love" interest (the femme fatale/fashionista fox, below), a reunion with someone long missing, and a budding romance.

Mostly, though, there's that economical animation -- full of smart and clever moments and scenic set-pieces. With a running time of only 80 minutes, Wolfy: The Incredible Secret -- relatively swift and very colorful -- should capture the attention of kids, while leaving their parents in pretty good spirits, too.

The film -- dubbed in English by an OK voice cast, so those kids don't have to read subtitles -- is available now from Random Media & Cinedigm -- on DVD, VOD and via Digital Media.

MESRINE, the Richet-Cassel, two-part, two-ticket, César winner opens at last

When TrustMovies first saw the film under consider here, the month was March of 2009, the event was the FSLC's annual Rendez-vous With French Cinema, and MESRINE (Parts One and Two) had just won César awards for both its star Vincent Cassel (below, center) and director Jean-François Richet (who co-wrote the films with Abdel Raouf Dafri).  TM wasn't bowled over by the movie (or movies) at that time -- it/they seemed alternately entertaining and overlong, interesting and cliched  -- but with 18 months between now and then, he's disposed to give the film(s) a little more of what we call "the benefit of the doubt."

Comparisons to our own Godfather series have been made, and while I was never overly enamored of those three films, either -- as usual when American filmmakers tackle the Mafia, they glamorize it, though The Godfather, Part Two rises above even that caveat -- other than the movies all being about criminals, Richet's film is not particularly comparable in any important way to Coppola's trio, except perhaps in its French/French-Canadian box-office take. In any case, here below is my slightly edited original assessment of Mesrine: Killer Instinct (part one) and Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (part two) -- viewing theatrically the whole of which will set you back around $25. And don't expect, even at that price, 3-D.

MESRINE begins with a series of split-screen views of a couple of chary characters apparently on the run. These are accompanied by Marcus Trumpp's music, composed to ratchet up suspense. Ratchet it does. And then pushes, and pumps, and ratchets some more. By the time the sequence ends (see above, with what looks suspiciously like the climax of this entire four-hour movie), you may have realized, as did I, that instead of actually being suspenseful, this few minutes has succeeded only in working very hard to appear so. If you buy into the "suspense," however, then you'll probably buy the remainder of this super-violent, bloody, action-packed but sometimes tedious film. TrustMovies didn't buy, but he managed to rent (or maybe sublet) off and on, over the movie's very long running time.

Jacques Mesrine (according to this film, he pronounced his name May-reen, with a silent "s") was, by the end of his nearly 43-year life, Public Enemy Number One (the French subtitle of Part Two of the film) in both France and Canada, a feat he achieved after being a very nasty nuisance in Part One (subtitled, in the original French, The Instinct for Death). Richet's film catalogs his rise and rise in ways that, kindly put, are rather clichéd by now -- unless Mesrine is among the first gangster epics you will have seen. Do we really need to hear Edith Piaf regretting nothing inserted into the soundtrack toward the finale? Would we not groan aloud were Sinatra's My Way to find its way into, say, the concluson of The Godfather trilogy?

By the end of Part One, my biggest question was "Who the hell is this guy Mesrine?" He manages to "off" (in a particularly brutal sequence, below) a nasty thug/pimp who has beaten and disfigured Mesrine's ladyfriend/whore, whom our hero, in any case, has already dumped. Later, after proclaiming his ardent love, he beats and threatens his own wife with something similar. Is he perhaps bi-polar? His actions and words toward his father indicate a similar diagnosis.

For explanation, the movie nods toward Mesrine's service in the art of torture/murder as part of the French military during the Algerian War. Well, many Frenchmen were implicated in this without their becoming gang lords. Unfortunately the most interesting aspect of Mesrine's character lies either on the cutting room floor or in the blank space between Parts One and Part Two, the latter of which introduces us to a whole new guy -- a kind of Bonnie-and-Clyde-like folk hero, who still does a few too many very bad things. (In its way, the entire four-hour movie seems as bi-polar as its lead character.)

For all Cassel's manic negative energy on display, this is nothing we've not seen before -- and often: from Hate through Brotherhood of the Wolf, Birthday Girl, The Reckoning, Eastern Promises and particularly Sheitan (now there's a film in which this guy is really scary!). By the end of the movie, while we're left with another instance of Cassel doing his thing, we're barely a step or two closer to understanding M. Mesrine. So it goes with most of the other characters on display. Take Cécile De France, shown above, for instance. If you recall her from films such as A Secret, The Singer, Avenue Montaigne or Russian Dolls, you may have trouble even recognizing her here. She gives a great one-or-two-note performance without providing us with much character detail at all. First she's hard as nails, then -- boom -- she's soft and sad. It's mostly the same with the other characters: Given only a few scenes or moments, the actors make the most of them but can't begin to probe or bring much subtlety to the goings-on.

And so events typical of the film biography march, as if in lockstep, before our eyes: entry into the criminal life, adoption by the big boss, a killing here, a killing there, imprisonment (complete with nasty guards and cruel warden), the prison break (there's one in Part I and Part II, each handled well), troubles on the home front with the little woman, a later reconciliation with a child, and on and on. It's not that this is so poorly done (it's serviceable and sometimes more than that) but we've seen it all rather often over the years. And nothing here, save the violence, is given much weight. Pasting a real-life character onto these events (along with a starry cast including Mathieu Amalric (shown below, left, with Cassel), Gérard Depardieu, Canada's Roy Dupuis (above), Elena Anaya, Michel Duchaussoy, Ludivine Sagnier and others) makes the film a bit more interesting, perhaps (Mesrine's foray into the Front de libération du Québec is particularly so) but it does little for the overall arc of the story -- or its meaning and importance. I would guess that France found the film fascinating, since all but its younger generation or two lived through this and should remember it well. For some of us, however, it's mostly the usual blood-and-guts.

Note for completists: An earlier Mesrine film appeared 25 years ago, written and directed by André Génovès, and a French TV movie and documentary have popped up along the way. Though originally set to be released by a company called Senator Entertainment, for which I could at the time find no proper link and has since ceased doing business here in the States (its film division, at least), the two Mesrine movies have now been picked up for release by the smart Music Box Films, a company that has so far exhibited a canny regard for movies (the "Girl" trio) that may make some money in the art film/foreign film market.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct (Part One) opens this Friday, August 27, in a large-considering-it's-limited nationwide release.  Click here -- then scroll down for playdates, cities and theaters. Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (Part Two) will open in similar fashion the following Friday, September 3.  Click here -- then scroll down for playdates, cities and theaters.  In the weeks following, Music Box promises that more locations will be announced. (That's the film's director,  Jean-François Richet, shown at left.)