Heartbreaking/groundbreaking nostalgia in Catherine Corsini's best so far: SUMMERTIME

Taking place in France in the 1970s, among a group of early feminists pushing the boundaries of the French in ways -- women's rights, gay rights, abortion -- for which the French were unprepared, Catherine Corsini's newest film is up there with her best, which would include for my taste The New Eve (1999), La répétition (2001), Leaving (2009) and Three Worlds (2012). In fact, I think SUMMERTIME (La belle saison) is her best yet. It takes us back to a period that the older of us will remember well (even if we weren't in France at the time, what occurred there was simultaneously going on throughout much of the western world), and Ms Corsini captures both events and characters with a hand as deft as it is subtle & cinematic.

The filmmaker, shown at left, casts her films especially well, too -- sometime surprising us with her choice of stars. Emmanuelle Béart made a fine impression in La Repetition, and more than any other of Karin Viard's films, The New Eve helped place this supporting actress on the map to stardom. Kristin Scott Thomas is always fine, but Leaving gave her one of her strongest roles, while Three Worlds offered Clotilde Hesme and Raphaël Personnaz characters that brought out new richness and depth in both performers.

Corsini tends to tackle themes involving both class issues and "the other," with the latter sometimes hinging on one's sexual orientation. So it is again with Summertime, in which a beautiful young farm girl, Delphine (a glowing performance from Izïa Higelin, below), after enduring her parents' constant pushing her into marriage with some local boy and when a secret lesbian affair goes south, takes off for the big city in an attempt to discover another life. Which she manages -- in spades.

In Paris, Delphine falls into an activist women's group, where she meets Carole (another knockout performance from César-winning actress Cécile De France, shown below),  and a relationship blooms.

How this happens is presented believably on both an emotional and societal level, with genuine feeling and attention given to Carole's male partner (beautifully nuanced by Benjamin Bellecour) whom she must give up for Delphine. The same feeling and caring is provided the young man in Delphine's farm community who has been in love with her since childhood (a wonderful, heartbreaking performance from Kévin Azaïs. below, right).

The only other major character is played by that fine French actress, Noémie Lvovsky, below, who brings enormous strength and anger to her role of Delphine's mother, who cannot begin to accept anything but the standard straight-and-narrow sexual relationship for her daughter. Ms Lvovsky has one of the film's strongest and most difficult scenes, and she wipes the floor with it.

But Corsini's movie rightly belongs to her two lead actresses, who play with and off each other quite beautifully throughout. Ms De France's versatility is by now well known. Here we view more of her physically than we ever have, and she proves something to see. As does Ms Higelin (this film should ramp her career into high gear), who has such a buoyant and contagious liveliness than viewers of any gender or preference should easily fall for her -- either/both sexually and/or aesthetically. She is something special.

Corsini's strength here is in bringing us equally close emotionally to the highs and lows of the relationship, as well as making us understand and feel the social/societal difficulties implicit in such a bonding back in the distant 1970s. Both these strands come together to deliver a richly textured, marvelously empathetic movie. Don't miss it.

Summertime -- from Strand Releasing (this independent/foreign film distributor is on one hell of a roll lately!) and running 105 minutes -- opens this Friday, July 22, in New York City (at the IFC Center and Film Society of Lincoln Center) amd in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7 and Claremont 5), and then in another half dozen or more cities in the weeks to come. Click here, then click on Screenings on the tool bar halfway down the screen to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Class, choice, guilt and circumstance: Catherine Corsini's rich THREE WORLDS; plus a short Q&A with filmmaker and star

How rare it is to find a film -- these days, even a foreign one -- with a meaningful and important theme, let alone several of them. Catherine Corsini, a filmmaker who ought to be better known worldwide and certainly here in the USA, has done all this in her newest movie, THREE WORLDS, and managed it so well that her themes and seams blend effortlessly into a brilliant whole. In preparation for this review, I watched the film a second time the other evening with a couple of friends who had not seen it. We were all impressed; I even more so on this repeat viewing.

Ms Corsini, shown at right, who directed and co-wrote this original screenplay, has imagined an event -- an accident that turns into a hit-and-run -- the ramifications of which bring to the surface issues of immigration, class, money, love, guilt (in several forms) and commitment (I may have left out a few other themes) involving nearly a dozen characters -- all of whom get their time in the sun to become fully understandable people, complete with needs and desires, often counter to those of others in this mix. The fact that Corsini achieves all this succinctly and economically within a time frame of 101 minutes is impressive. That we don't in any way feel short-changed is even more so.

Primarily, we have the driver of the car, Al, played by up-and-comer Raphaël Personnaz (above, right), who was so good in last week's The Stroller Strategy and is ever better here, as the pivotal character around whom all else revolves. This would include his fiancee (Adèle Haenel, above, left, also excellent in another of last week's openers, Aliyah) and her father, M. Testard (Jean-Pierre Malo, below, left), who owns the automobile dealership where Al works and is about to gift his new son-in-law-to-be with the title to the firm.

Also in the mix are a couple of Al's co-worker pals, who are with him at the time of the accident; his mom, who for years worked as a cleaning woman at the company; the young woman who witnessed the accident but could not identify the driver (played by Clothilde Hesme, below) and her boyfriend.

Finally there's the victim himself (an illegal immigrant, who remains initially comatose), his wife (Arta Dobroshi, below), family and friends. These people are not connected in the currently popular happenstance manner of movies like the witless and overdone Crash or the recent and much better Disconnect. No -- the connections here are immediate and profound for everyone concerned, and the movie is all the stronger because of this.

Once our protagonist begins having trouble living with himself and what he has done, these connections light up and begin firing on all cylinders. As usual, the less said about plot so as not to spoil surprises, the better -- but the fact that it all hinges not only on unfolding events but on character is paramount.

Ms Corsini also manages to avoid melodrama, no mean feat in a tale like this one. As sad and surprising as the movie becomes, what happens always seems real and understandable, given the people with whom we are dealing.

Performances are everything they need to be from every actor, leads on down. Details are exhibited smartly, too: they register but are never hammered home. (Note the final scene between Al and his father-in-law: heated and angry but with a very sudden and moving moment.) Corsini -- who has already given us the excellent Leaving, Les ambitieux, La répétition and The New Eve -- is a smart and graceful filmmaker, and Three Worlds is her best I've seen to date.

The movie, another very fine one from Film Movement, opens this Friday, June 21, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and at the Sacramento French Film Festival (who knew?!) and in the month following on July 28 at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills. To see currently scheduled playdates, click here and scroll down a bit.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE! One of the film's stars, 

Arta Dobroshi, will be present for Q&A's on Friday 6/21 

and Saturday 6/22 following the 7:15 show.

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When, last March during Rendez-vous With French Cinema,  TrustMovies met with both Catherine Corsini and Raphaël Personnaz, I recorded the conversation (some of which was offered last week, with my reviews of The Stroller Strategy). This week, because I'm away from home with only my laptop and not my trusty desktop, on which that interview is stored, I must simply recall the highlight with both the filmmaker and her star.

My biggest question for Corsini, above, having now seen five of her films and having liked them all was: What is it, aside from each film's strong interest in the lives of women (Three Worlds is different by virtue of its male protagonist) that links your films? Or is there anything specific?  To which the filmmaker immediately replied, Yes: in each, the character is trying to find his or her place, his or her identity, within the world that he or she inhabits.

I thought about this, recalling the various films, and sure enough, they all have this feature in common -- and yet so subtle but incisive a filmmaker is Ms Corsini that this does not jump out at you as you watch. Her films are filled with interesting people and ideas and situations, and so you're pretty much enveloped in all of this as you watch.

For M. Personnaz, at right and below, after the rest of our talk (which you can find at the end of the former post here), I wondered aloud if I could ask a somewhat personal question that would involve his past history. A very likeable and gracious guy, he immediately smiled and said, "Of course."

Of these three worlds that the film depicts -- that very fragile world of the illegal immigrant, the lower/working class world of his best pals, and the haute bourgeoisie to which his character aspires -- into which one does he place himself most securely? Obviously, I tell him, you're not an illegal immigrant (at this point, he outright laughs), so which of the other two?

Personnaz smiles again (and what a smile he has!) and tells me that he has actually been pretty firmly embedded in both those worlds. He was a kid from a lower-middle class family in which his dad labored (I believe he said) in the construction industry. After awhile, the family made some money and found themselves living in a higher class in a very different world. But then, he shrugged and grew a bit philosophical, things changed once again. Times grew difficult, the economy suffered, and the family was back again in a less good place.

It was very interesting, noted the now quite successful actor, to see which of his so-called friends stuck with him. Many simply bailed. "We call these "fair-weather friends'," I told him. The actor thought about this phrase for a moment, then smiled again.

"Exactly."

Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi López and Yvan Attal power Catherine Corsini's LEAVING

A performance as stops-out, emotional and driven as any that Kristin Scott Thomas has ever given guides home LEAVING, the new film from French co-writer (with Gaëlle Macé) and director Catherine Corsini. We are most often used to seeing Ms Scott Thomas, shown at right and below, in buttoned-down roles, which she can handle with the best of them (and will do again next week, when the John-Lennon-as-a-teenager movie Nowhere Boy opens). It is something of a surprise, which then becomes a kind of joy, to watch this fine actress let go and give her all in the pursuit or a love that is clearly the most passionate her character has ever felt.

Those of us who've experienced this kind of all-out passion will perhaps nod and reflect (or maybe relive it a bit). Others who have not yet experienced this can only wonder at the level of emotion (which leads to some shocking actions) and either wish for something like this to befall them or be supremely grateful that it has not. Either way, thanks to a fine script that begins near the finale and circles back, the filmmaker crafts a movie of amazing immediacy that should leave you both jolted and thoughtful at its finale. Corsini chooses carefully the right steps to show how the affair takes off, together with the correct amount of detail to pull us in, build up a good deal of suspense but never sate us, and then tops off the script with alert direction that captures precise moments from this woman's work life, family life and lovemaking,

Ms Corsini (shown at left) has given us over the years a number of successful films -- La nouvelle Ève, La répétition, Les ambitieux, and now this one -- that remain interesting and exploratory, particularly where the role of woman is concerned (and by extension, man: With most filmmakers, especially men, it's the other way around). Corsini never excludes the guys. She gives them their due, as she does the attitudes and feelings of the teenage children involved. Yet it's the woman (or women) at the center of her stories that interests her most. And in all cases that TrustMovies has seen, she (together with the actresses involved) makes these women comes fully, sometimes alarmingly, alive.

Ms Scott Thomas has always been an actress to breathe great life into each of her roles. Last year, in I've Loved You So Long, even as a broken woman suddenly free after a long prison stint, she managed to radiate enough inner intensity to keep us enrapt. Here, as a relatively happy if somewhat bored housewife with a slightly too self-satisfied and controlling husband (the sex scenes between wife and husband and wife and lover bring this point home in spades), once she allows passion to have the upper hand, there's no turning back.

Casting Yvan Attal (above) as husband and Sergi López (below) as lover would seem to go against the natural grain of so many of their past performacnes.  Still, Attal was splendid as the controlling businessman/hubby in this past year's Rapt, and López, in his many villain roles from Sólo mía to last year's Ricky, always manages to add passion, strength and sometimes several dollops of caring to his creeps. In any case, the casting works beautifully, and both men register strongly and believably.

The film's ending should and will cause talk.  The movie ends, all right, but you certainly could't call it "wrapped up."  Or could you?  I'd love to talk to Ms Corsini about this....  In any case, Leaving is risky, thought-provoking movie-making.

Leaving, distributed via IFC Films, opens this Friday, October 1, at the IFC Center in NYC and will also be available from IFC On-Demand beginning October 27.  Click here to determine if you can get it in your area.