A Coline Serreau movie and live comedy from Patrick Timsit highlight FIAF's coming week

Unfortunately, the movie I most wanted to see in the entire current CinéSalon series at FIAF proved unavailable to be viewed in advance with English subtitles. It is by one of my favorite French directors, Coline Serreau (her Pourquoi Pas! and Chaos are two of the films I most love). FIAF attendees will be able to see the English-subtitled version in a 35mm print at the two screenings, however, so I will simply offer the description, below, sent to me by FIAF's very helpful publicist:

La Crise 
Tuesday, January 31
at 4 & 7:30pm
shown in 35 mm, 1992,
in color. 95 min.
written & directed
by Coline Serreau
With Vincent Lindon, Patrick Timsit, Zabou Breitman, Maria Pacôme. In French with English subtitles.

When thirtysomething Victor loses his wife and job in a single day, he sets off in search of a friend to comfort him but soon comes up against the bottomless self-absorption of his contemporaries. A random encounter with the annoying but oddly engaging barfly Michou finally provides Victor with companionship and an opportunity to take a hard look at himself.

While it may be dispiriting to note that this 1992 comedy of manners’ critique of egocentrism and consumerism is as relevant as ever, its gallery of hilarious characters serve as potent reminders that laughter is the best medicine.

 “The portraits are well chiseled, words gush out and several skits are irresistible. Always anxious to capture society’s pulse. Coline Serreau takes hold of economic and moral crisis to make a satirical comedy. Everyone is raked over the coals and Serreau does a good job of unearthing the selfishness and snobbery hidden in all of us” —Télérama

Click here for further information and/or to purchase tickets.

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One of the stars of La Crise, Patrick Timsit, will be performing at FIAF later in the week with his popular one-man comedy show.

Patrick Timsit : 

On ne peut pas rire de tout

Friday and Saturday, February 3 and 4 at 7:30pm

FIAF, Florence Gould Hall

$40 FIAF Members; $45 Non-Members

Beloved French actor and award-winning comedian Patrick Timsit returns to FIAF this February with his acclaimed new show On ne peut pas rire de tout. No topic is too risqué as Timsit brings his signature style and caustic humor to show that people really “can laugh at everything.” Testing the limits with his biting wit and brilliant commentary on politics and society, Timsit was recently named “today’s funniest comedian” (Express Styles).

Click here for further information and/or to purchase tickets.

Guillaume Gallienne's ME. MYSELF AND MUM returns to FIAF for its current comedy series

When the César-winning Best Film of the Year, ME. MYSELF AND MUM, first appeared at FIAF back in 2014, TrustMovies suggested a look-see at this stylish, funny and oddly ground-breaking-yet-cliched look at the perception of being gay in France today (or, at least, fairly recently). The multi-award-winning movie is back again this year as part of FIAF's  new CinéSalon series, Comedy on Film: What makes the French laugh?

If you did not take a gander at the film first time around (or if you did, you might just want to take another look), please do so, because it has probably aged well and may prove even better on repeated viewings. M. Gallienne (shown above), who not only directed the film and adapted it (with a couple of co-scribes) from his successful stage play, also stars in it, playing both himself (as everything from schoolboy, below, left, to adult, above) and his very bizarre mother (shown at bottom, left).

I covered the film at length when it made its FIAF debut three years ago, so I won't take up too much more space now (you can read that original review by clicking here). But what Gallienne accomplishes proves not just very funny but bracing and thought-provoking regarding how our perceptions, true or not, so often limit and/or change the lives of those around us.

Me, Myself and Mum (its much better French title is Les garçons et Guillaume, à table!) will play FIAF's CinéSalon this coming Tuesday, January 17, at both 4pm and 7:30, with pleasant conversation and free wine and beer after both screenings. To see about venue and/or ticket availability, click here.

FIAF hosts U.S. premiere of Guillaume Gallienne's César multi-award-winner ME, MYSELF AND MUM

The big winner at this year's César awards (the French Oscars, as they are sometime called) with ten nominations and five wins -- Best Picture, Best First Film, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing (yep, most of the big ones) was the little movie that could: Guillaume Gallienne's ME, MYSELF AND MUM, in which M. Gallienne portrays both himself and his mother, as he tells what appears to be an autobiograp-hical tale of his days growing up as the fel-low who doesn't fit in.

The original French title of the film -- Les garçons et Guillaume, à table! -- translates as something like "Boys and Guillaume -- time to eat!", the joke of which of course is that Guillaume is a boy. So why the differentiation? Well, it's because Mum perceives him as different (read, homosexual) and so treats him as such, as do his brothers and dad. M. Gallienne, pictured at left, certainly does an admirable job of playing gay (one might say that he leaves no cliché unturned), whether it's learning to dance in Spain (below), failing and flailing at every single attempt at sports, or visiting a gay club to be nearly inaugurated into something quite naughty.

If the movie sounds likes every third coming-of-age gay film you've seen since puberty (well, for you younger viewers, at least), let me tell you that it is a good deal more sophisticated than that. If the behavior at the heart of the film seems sometimes standard, the packaging is anything but. Gallienne has adapted his film from an earlier stage piece of the same name, and even though he begins and ends it on that stage, the film is certainly not stage-bound. Instead it lifts off into the past and then the present, back and forth, taking Guillaume from late teenage years to young manhood and beyond and from France to Spain to England and finally to a high-end German spa. (Yes, that's Diane Kruger, below, as the lady who's about to introduce him to colonics.)

The actor pretty convincingly loses 20 years as the movie goes from his young self to older, while his performance as mom (below) is quite special, leaving her character part harridan, part muse, part mystery. (Stephen Sondheim will definitely want to catch this film.)

How Gallienne turns his somewhat typical tale into something special is what, in fact, makes his movie special. The style he brings to the enterprise, the way he and his editor (Valérie Deseine, who won one of those Césars) create magic from melded moments, and especially how his fleet screenplay (the movie lasts but 85 minutes) finds so many connections that resonate -- such as the huge, horse-like cock on the fellow (below) who presents himself to our hero, and how this takes Guillaume back to his failed horseback-riding lessons with, this time, a renewed desire to succeed and, as it were, conquer his fear.

There's a surprise to the story which may or may not reveal itself to you before our hero spills the beans. This changes everything on one level, and nothing on another. It should certainly give audiences -- gay and straight -- pause regarding gay-baiting and gay liberation.

Spoiler ahead: Don't read this paragraph until after you've seen the film. In the movie that won last year's César as Best Film, What's In a Name? (Le prenom), one of the film's ensemble characters that everyone assumes is gay, is revealed to be -- oh, my -- straight, to the surprise and consternation of all his friends. Now, this year, the same thing has happened again in the "Best Film." Twice is nice, but should this occur a third time I think we must declare a trend. But what does this signify? Of course it's about not pinning labels on people so easily. But it also may be showing us how much easier it is to welcome gay liberation when your character actually isn't. Which may also be why, after same-sex marriage was legalized last year in France, the outcry against it dwarfed that in any other country where it has been given legality, including here in the USA and even in Spain (land of the Catholic Inquisition!).

In any case, Me, Myself and Mum, is a lot of good, stylish fun, and can be seen at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise (FIAF) on Tuesday, April 8, at 4 and 7:30pm in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall. The 7:30pm screening will be introduced by renowned agent, producer, and founder of the Festival du Film Francophone d’Angoulême, Dominique Besnéhard. The two CinéSalon screenings are presented as the Closing Night of the Focus on French Cinema festival. The 4pm screening will be followed by a wine reception, and the 7:30pm screening will be followed by a festive Closing Night Party with delicious champagne and hors d’oeuvres. (As of now there are not many tickets left for the 7:30 screening, but the 4pm is still available. Click here to purchase.)

I don't know that this film has a U.S. distributor yet, 

though it's hard to image it not getting one. Eventually. 

There's a built-in audience, after all, though that audience 

may feel a little left-out at the film's finale.

Delaporte & de La Patellière's LE PRENOM: the European box-office sensation opens in the U.S.

It out-grossed The Avengers in Europe on opening weekend, yet it's actually a very intelligent movie (funny, surprising, moving and more). That's one of the differences between Europe and the U.S. -- culture-wise, at least. That a movie this smart -- LE PRENOM (which officially translates as "The First Name" but is being sold under the less good title of What's in a Name? -- could outdraw a super-hero blockbuster says some-thing about folk who go to movies over there, as opposed to those who attend over here. But as comparisons are odious, let's just stick with the film at hand.

Based upon the legitimate theater piece by Matthieu Delaporte (above, right), who co-wrote and co-directed along with Alexandre de La Patellière (above, left), the movie -- after an odd but funny start which seems, in addition to its humor, designed mostly to disguise the film's theatrical roots -- takes place in the apartment of a happily married couple with two kids who are planning a dinner party to be attended by her brother and his pregnant wife and everybody's best friend since childhood, a confirmed "bachelor" who plays trombone in the local symphony.

The dinner goes on, all right, but just prior to it, the subject of the first name of the upcoming newborn is raised. When that name (the prénom of the title) is unveiled, all hell breaks loose -- in increments that grow funnier and loonier as the evening progresses, leading to the kind of truth-telling among family and friends that so rarely happens and certainly not as hilariously and devastatingly as it does here.

Class, economics, religion, sexual preference and all kinds of other subjects taboo to polite conversation are unleashed, and the half-dozen major performers on view have a field day tearing into them. Everyone shines, but what a pleasure it is to see one of our favorite actors, Charles Berling (above), get the opportunity to be so funny.

Berling plays the self-satisfied hubby of the hostess, played by the late and award-winning Valérie Benguigui, of The Wolberg Family -- who, in a kind of untimely irony regarding that wonderful film, died from breast cancer just this year.

As the wealthy and mostly non-thinking catalyst of the evening, Patrick Bruel (below) has a role he seems born to play and he delivers every inch of it. It's a toss-up, and one of the funnier aspects of the film, which of its two alpha males is the more self-satisfied.

In the role of the the best friend is an actor new to me, though I actually had seen him years ago in films by Kieslowski and Ruiz -- Guillaume de Tonquedec, who brings a precise combination of charm and naive, open-heartedness to his role -- which is probably the best of his career so far and into which he fits like the proverbial glove.

Completing the picture are one of France's most lustrous aging stars, Françoise Fabian, below, who looks as gorgeous as ever as a senior citizen, and Judith El Zein (shown at bottom), properly annoyed and feisty, playing Ms Benguigui's late-to-dinner sister-in-law.

The filmmakers have fun with first names throughout, dropping all last names from the opening credits and giving us some delightful pictures of their cast as kids during the closing credits. Both they and their cast keep the pace moving speedily and friskily, despite a running time of 110 minutes. By film's end, you'll probably agree that this has been as smart and funny a time as you've spent at the movies in quite awhile.

The award-winning film, distributed in the USA via Under the Milky Way, opens this Friday, December 13, here in New York City at the Cinema Village. Elsewhere? Yes: word has just come in that it will play the Arthouse Cinema 502 in Ogden, Utah, from January 17-23 and at Theatre N at Nemours in Wilmington, Delaware, from December 27-29. And if you're not within driving distance of any of these theaters, you can also watch the film on VOD via iTunes. Click here to access the link.

Ozon's POTICHE opens; Deneuve, Depardieu, Lucchini and ensemble shine

French filmmaker François Ozon has many moods, and with his newest film, POTICHE, he is in perhaps his lightest and fluffiest since he began pointing a camera. (He’s a lot more grown-up now than in the days when he wanted to shock us with Sitcom.) Here also is Catherine Deneuve in as good a role – full, rich, one in which she truly “stars” -- as that icon of French cinema has had in several years (certainly since A Christmas Tale). Maybe best of all, here are the 1970s, French-style, with all the fab fashions and furnishings that we’ve come to love/hate.

Potiche is, beyond its many other pleasures, a visual treat. It tells the story of a wealthy family, owner of an umbrella factory, and what happens when labor unrest knocks the nasty father from his perch and allows mom (Ms Deneuve) to take the reins. The film is based upon a theatrical boulevard comedy, and its roots are apparent to some extent, but this does not do great damage. Ozon, shown at right, has opened up the movie's locations nicely, while keeping events moving in a sprightly manner so that his film remains for the most part funny, charming and sly.

Did I mention Gérard Depardieu (shown above with Ms Deneuve), Fabrice Luchini, (reclining below, center), Karin Viard (the redhead, center right), Judith Godrèche (at left) and Jérémie Renier (between Viard and Depardieu)? Yes -- and each is terrific. Comedy, romance, women’s lib, even the emerging rustle of gay lib. So what if it’s a bit predictable and sags in the center. It’s mostly delightful. Simply for its opening ode to Walt Disney (?!) I would, and will, watch it again.

Snapped up by Music Box Films for U.S. distribution, Potiche was the opening night attraction at the recent Rendez-vous with French Cinema series, and opens theatrically today in New York City, the Los Angeles area and in Irvine, California. Throughout April it will continue its nationwide roll-out. Click here (then scroll down) to find a city and theater near you.