Blu-ray, DVD & Digital debut for Bertrand Blier's classic, GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS

You might not think it possible, but even though GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS (Préparez vos mouchoirs) won the Oscar back in 1979 for Best Foreign Language Film, this movie seems more timely-- shocking, even -- in today's crazy climate in which Me2, Trigger Warnings and an America President who prides himself on grabbing pussy all vie for our constant attention.

What goes on in this film will set so many minds on fire (of persuasions both far right and far left) that this new 40th anniversary restoration ought to have arrived with its own special warning label attached.

The writer/director of the film, Bertrand Blier, is by now an old hand at blowing up bourgeois values and exploring other possibilities (from Going Places and Buffet Froid to Ménage and How Much Do You Love Me?), yet what he achieves here goes up against our very dearest values about protecting minors from sexuality. And how Blier achieves what he does is so subversive, funny and full-out/dead-on that, well, there's no turning back.

The film begins in a nice restaurant, as the clientele dines, and one couple -- played by Gérard Depardieu (below, left) and Carole Laure (below, right) -- discuss their problems.

Or at least he does. She is mostly silent, as he becomes further and further convinced that she needs the attentions of another male. To that end, he accosts the single male diner (Patrick Dewaere, above, center) and slowly convinces this man (who is indeed attracted to the beautiful Ms Laure) to become "involved."

From here the movie goes places that you will expect and then takes a turn, and further and further turns, that you will not, ending up in a kind of pitch-perfect black comedy vein that works on a number of levels.

The two males here are so clueless about so much that Get Out Your Handkekrchiefs proves a wonderful, almost-faux comedy about the sort of male entitlement that becomes a kind of prison. TrustMovies suspects that M. Blier would be the last male filmmaker to pretend to understand the female mind, body and psyche. But damned if he is not utterly fascinated with these, and intent on exploring them just the same.

In Ms Laure, he found the perfect specimen to befuddle in extremis his male protagonists. The actress is quiet, centered and finally quite happy indeed. How a very young fellow played by Riton Liebman (below, with Ms Laure, and above, covered in rice pudding), figures into that happiness is a large part of the filmmaker's achievement. M. Liebman centers a couple of scenes in the film, the likes of which have not been managed before nor since.

Also involved and quite good indeed are Michael Serrault (below, left), playing a neighbor initially objecting to loud music played at 3am, and Eléonore Hirt (below, right), as young Liebman's easily swayed mother.

How this movie won (deservedly) Best Foreign Language Film way back in 1979 can mostly be attributed to the huge shake-up in Hollywood that the freedom-loving 70s provided. I cannot believe it could do the same today, in an era when Matt Damon can rightly suggest that perhaps touching and rape are not quite the same thing and then be pilloried for it.

In any case, thanks to the Cohen Media Group, you can discover (or rediscover) the film now, as Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, running 108 minutes, in French with English subtitles, hits Blu-ray (in a serviceable-but-nothing-special transfer, with a nice Bonus Feature introduction by Richard Pena), DVD and digital this coming Tuesday, August 27 -- for purchase and/or rental.

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.

DALIDA: Lisa Azuelos' beautiful-to-view (and hear) biopic gets L.A. debut prior to VOD

Quite a bit better than the run-of-the-mill, musical celebrity bio-pic, DALIDA, tracking the life and career of one of, if not the most popular European singers of the 20th Century, is a gorgeous movie to both behold and listen to. With the actual Dalida singing many of her most popular songs (along with those of some other greats of that century) and, spanning as it does the 1950s through the 1980s, filled with scrumptious (if sometimes tacky: remember the 70s?) period detail, and filmed with a eye for interesting composition and ace cinematography (Antoine Sanier), the movie is a consistent joy to view.

As written and directed by French screenwriter/ filmmaker Lisa Azuelos (shown at right) and adapted from the book by Orlando (Dalida's brother) and Catherine Rihoit, the movie begins with a look at our heroine, brought to surprisingly nuanced life by Italian actress Sveva Alviti (shown above and below), who looks enough like the singer to more than pass muster, and who also lipsyncs and performs the songs with a physicality that mimics the original's own style and grace (you can compare the two by watching various videos).

TrustMovies admits that some of his great enjoyment of this film may have come because he knew next to nothing about Dalida before sitting down to view the movie. He knew her name and that she was hugely successful in France, but that's it. (His spouse, who follows the music scene more thoroughly, had never heard of her at all.) Consequently, this icon's story was new and held quite a bit of interest for him, though how die-hard fans of the singer reacted to this bio-pic, he can't say.

Ms Azuelos begins her tale in media res, with some quick, sharp moments during which Dalida leaves Paris for somewhere that it is clear her family and friends don't want her to go. It's to meet a lover, and so we spend some time between the sheets, philosophizing and making love. Suddenly, we're confronted with the singer's suicide attempt, which happened mid-career.

As Dalida slowly recovers, Ms Azuelos moves us back and forth in time, picking up bits and pieces of her family history, early career (above), love life and more. One of the cleverest methods of exposition here is done via her post-suicide psychologist's interviews with the various important people in her life, as he and they try to collectively get our girl back on track. This allows us to not only learn about Dalida, but better explore the character of those giving testimony.

Certain critics have complained about the lack of depth of character in Dalida herself, but this strikes me as simply wrong-headed. What Azuelos has given us instead is a portrait of celebrity and the woman who gladly buried herself under that alluring but unwieldy and very heavy mantle. Nearly every important decision we see her make has to do with maintaining that celebrity and career -- from how she handles her lovers to why she has the abortion that will render her sterile. (That's Brenno Placido, above, as the young student by whom she becomes pregnant, and Niels Schneider, below, as a Polish prince with whom she has earlier become involved.)

Occasionally, the woman beneath all that celebrity surfaces and her needs make themselves known. But always career comes first. Interestingly enough, there are no villains here. The movie doesn't need them, since Dalida is pretty much her own worst enemy, even if she herself seems to be a relatively kind and decent person. With an unhappy childhood to deal with, even given her wonderful voice and great physical beauty, the gain did not finally outweigh the pain.

Dalida's choice of lovers would appear a bit suspicious, too. When three of the several men with whom you're involved take their own life (not to mention Dalida's own suicide attempt and then its consummation), there's clearly a problem at hand. (Above, left, is Jean-Paul Rouve, as the man who discovers her, whom she eventually marries, and who later suicides; below left is Nicolas Duvauchelle, as one of her later and most narcissistic lovers who also takes his own life.

While the movie refuses to offer any tidy explanations for any of this, the feeling we're left with, despite the talent and beauty on hand, is one of sadness at the waste of it all. (Below is pictured Alessandro Borghi, as would-be singer Luigi Tenco, the first of Dalida's suicidal amors.)

Our heroine even has something of a movie career, too; at one point, the famous Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine has her star in one of his films (below), and once the disco craze hits, she becomes a gay icon -- in France, if not here in the USA.

Along the way, in addition to the wonderful period detail, we get a raft of good music -- mostly snippets, granted, but they're certainly enjoyable ones -- and enough biographical material to complete yet another sad tale of great musical celebrity gone to disarray.

From Under the Milky Way -- in French, Italian and Arabic with English subtitles -- and running  a long but consistently interesting 127 minutes, Dalida will get a one-night-only theatrical appearance in the Los Angeles area as part of the Laemmle Culture Vulture series, this coming Monday, October 23, at 7:30 pm at four Laemmle theaters: Claremont 5, Playhouse 7,  Royal 3 and Town Center 5. Click here for more information and/or tickets.

In addition the film will also be the opening night, November 3, presentation at the ARPA International Film Festival at the world-famous Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.  And if you aren't located in the L.A. area, despair not: Dalida will be released on all major VOD platforms across the country on Tuesday, December 5.

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.

The French Connection, as seen from the French view, in Cédric Jimenez's THE CONNECTION

Same decade, same drugs, but mostly a different location (though we do get one scene that takes place in New York City), THE CONNECTION (called La French in its home country) takes us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear (Marseilles, 1975) as a single French police magistrate (played by Jean Dujardin) attempts to get the goods on a prime drug trafficker (Gilles Lellouche). Messieurs Dujardin and Lellouche have worked together several times now -- most uproariously and cleverly in The Players, which can be streamed digitally via Netflix and elsewhere -- and they make quite a team: French hunks who also possess a load of talent, with the former here portraying the good hunk, and the latter the bad.

As co-written (with Audrey Diwan) and directed by Cédric Jimenez (shown at left), this 135-minute movie does not exactly speed along but neither does it lag. The Connection simply lays out its tale, stringing together incident after connected incident, until at last the payoff arrives. If it is much less gritty (though a half-hour longer) than its American counter-part, The French Connection (the new film is said to be telling a similar tale from the European viewpoint), it is also much less flashy, though full of more beautiful scenery. Both films are fairly "surface" -- a necessity, I think, when dealing with this particular sub-genre (drugs) of the crime movie.

In between the various set-ups and "hits," we get an occasional few moments of "feeling" -- as when our magistrate (Dujardin, above) tries to get one of his drug-fueled informants to go straight and later pays his respects to her family, post-overdose. For his part, Mr. Drug King (Lellouche, below) has a few thoughtful moments, too, though not enough nor as deep to make him actually question his life-style or from where and how he obtains same.

There's a scene -- not particularly believable, but fun -- midway along in which our twosome face each other down only to bid each other adieu until a later day. The fact that these two actors look look so similar -- in body type, hair and skin coloring, even somewhat facially -- makes their pairing much the more interesting, and they and their director use this similarity quietly but effectively.

While this is, of course, mostly a man's movie -- that's Guillaume Gouix, above, as the clever law-enforcement rookie -- the females are given their minor moments, with Céline Sallette (below), as Dujardin's long-suffering wife (as usual in this genre) and Mélanie Doutey as the barely-seen spouse of our drug lord.

Prominent in the cast is another French notable, Benoît Magimel (below), who seems to have gone from a hot and sexy, young leading man to a first-class character actor in what looks (to us in America, at least) like the blink of an eye. Here, Magimel plays "The Wolf," whose unrestrained libido and violence, not to mention his surprisingly bullet-resistant body and head, helps bring things to a boil.

As I say, if you appreciate a decent policier/thriller, by all means take a look at The Connection. Full of lovely scenery, interesting architecture and camera angles, crack performances and enough violence to sate the current mainstream art crowd, it'll get you where you want to go.

The film's handling of its time-frame -- the 1970s -- is very well-done, too. Most everything, from the cars to the clothes to the large and clunky mobile phones with the long antennae (below), seems correct without having to scream "nostalgia!", as certain movies prefer to do it.

One thing you may wonder throughout, however -- particularly if you've watched as many Italian Mafia/drug movies as I -- is why, since we are dealing with some Italian mobsters here, they have not simply and more promptly wiped out their law enforcement antagonists. Well, this movie takes place mostly in France, where this is not, perhaps, quite so easily done. Never fear: By the end of our journey, France has become much closer to Italy in ways we might prefer were otherwise.

The Connection -- from Drafthouse Films, in French with English subtitles -- makes its American theatrical debut in Santa Barbara at the Plaza d'Oro this Wednesday, May 13, then opens in New York City and Los Angeles at, respectively Landmark's Sunshine Cinema and The Landmark on Friday, May 15. Over the weeks to come it will open all across the country. Click here and scroll down to see currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.  

SOMETHING IN THE AIR: Olivier Assayas' buoyant look at post-'68 protest in France

It bubbles, it flows, it rarely stops moving, and it's full of youthful French passion for... well, all kinds of things from sex to politics to philosophy to protest to travel. With his new movie, SOMETHING IN THE AIR, critically acclaimed (and sometimes even popular) French filmmaker Olivier Assayas captures part of, maybe the heart of, the student rebellion that first hit France in 1968 and then exploded around Europe and America.

Assayas' film is set in the very early 1970s, when he himself was a teenager. Perhaps this is why (and about as well as I have seen it done) the filmmaker, shown at left, is able to capture the kind of shimmering spirit of that time in this film full of characters that appear, act, speak and connect, then disappear, only to (sometimes) appear again and reconnect. Or not. Something in the Air is full of near constant movement and incident but (as a compatriot of mine pointed out immedi-ately after the screening) almost zero "interiority." This lack was not a criticism of the film, either, as the kids we see and whose activities we follow are full of youthful zest and plenty of ideas -- most of them unformed. But they certainly feel things. And so they act, but for god's sake, don't ask them why. They'll figure that out later, maybe in a decade or two.
If they live that long.

Most of these kids, it appears, are scions of the French bourgeoisie, so protest, along with their next meal, comes pretty easily. This is not to say they are not committed. It's just that their commitment might change or move around a bit. Is it to the ideas of Lenin? Or Trotsky? Or simply to art? Or to each other? And how much, finally, does this even matter?

We don't necessarily learn the answers. Nor do the kids. But we're there, with them, as these questions crop up. Assayas begins his film in the middle of things, and he ends there, too. This will annoy viewers who insist on comfortable beginnings and some nice closure at the finale. Yet there is so much going on in this film, that events themselves render boredom impossible. Stylistically, the film is almost consistently pleasurable. And if you have even a lick of interest in or experience with protest, I think the movie will grab you where it hurts (where it thrills, too).

Many of the characters we see flit by too fast and remain surface-only to care much about, and this is perfectly all right somehow. The quintet who count most register strongly, and that's enough. These would include our hero, Gilles (played by Clément Métayer, above, right); his friend, Alain (Félix Armand) and his girl (India Salvor Menuez, below, with red hair); and our two heroines, Christine (played by Lola Créton, above, sleeping, and recently seen in Goodbye First Love and earlier in Bluebeard) and Laure (gorgeous newcomer Carole Combes, shown at bottom).

Music is near-constant here and a lot of fun to hear, for the musical choices are indeed choice. Along the way, our little group is faced with its own choices: will it be art or commerce, painting or politics, commitment or forget it? Gee, maybe one can manage both. We bourgeoisie usually prefer it that way.

Something in the Air, from Sundance Selects and running 122 minutes, opens this Friday, May 3, in New York (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and IFC Center) and in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal Theater). The film will also be available come May 9 nationwide via Sundance Selects’ video-on-demand platform, available to over 50 million homes in all major markets.