Nicolas Silhol's compelling workplace drama, CORPORATE, gets New York debut at FIAF during Lambert Wilson week

If you have not yet heard of French filmmaker Nicolas Silhol, you surely will -- if, that is, his first full-length movie, CORPORATE, gets any kind of distribution here in America. The film will make its New York City debut this coming Monday, November 6, at FIAF, which leads off a seven-week period dedicated to French icon/actor Lambert Wilson and his idol, the late actor/singer Yves Montand. The following day, Tuesday, November 7, FIAF will host M. Wilson's one-man-show (plus band), Lambert Wilson Sings Yves Montand, followed by the six-week FIAF CinéSalon program Actor's Choice: Lambert Wilson & Yves Montand, during which will screen three of Montand's best films and three of Wilson's many that demonstrate the range and skill of this actor -- who combines talent with matinee-idol looks.

In Corporate, which M. Silhol (shown at right) has directed with a fine eye for behavioral detail, as well as for French corporate infrastructure and its ability to circumvent the law, M. Wilson takes a back seat to the film's two female stars, Céline Sallette and Violaine Fumeau. The former, shown below, plays Corporate's anti-heroine, Emilie, whose journey the film tracks with skill and persistence.

Emilie is the head of Human Resources in a department of a large and powerful corporation. As most of the western world now, I hope, realizes, Human Resources (as we learned nearly 20 years ago via Laurent Cantet's fine movie of the same name) is anything but human, the resources of which are most often used to downsize and otherwise make miserable the lives of those with whom that corporation wishes to dispense.

The filmmaker very smartly allows us to see how Emilie works, even before he lets us view her own family life -- husband, child -- and begin to sympathize with her, if only a bit. Work-wise she is a conniving bitch, a role she feels she must play in order to do the job for which she's been hired by her extremely charming, duplicitous and ultimately vicious boss, played to low-key perfection by M. Wilson, below.

When the death of an underling occurs -- which is thoroughly the result of corporate policy -- and the government begins its standard investigation (via the dogged, demanding woman-in-charge, played very well by Ms Fumeau, below), Emilie's facade and soon her entire work world begins collapsing around her. 

Ms Sallet treads an uneasy line that has us alternately empathizing and criticizing her actions, deservedly so -- which makes her character all too sadly human and fallible. Most of the film's characters are drawn this way, and Silhol is able to make them -- and his movie -- all the more believable because of this.

Normally I would have found the finale of Corporate too easy, obvious, even old-hat. But I must say that Silhol pulls it off with enough panache that I bought it. He also makes it clear that the ending, which indeed is somewhat "happy" could also have pretty dire consequences for Emilie. Do we, after all, reap what we have sown? Or does that only work for the underclass? See Corporate, and feel free to ponder a bit.

The movie will screen only once, this coming Monday, November 6, at 7:30pm at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall and will be introduced by Lambert Wilson in person. Click here for more information and/or tickets. For more info on M. Wilson's musical Montand homage the following evening, click here, and to see the entire schedule of the CinéSalon Lambert Wilson/Yves Montand movies, click here.

Life imitates art, quite beautifully, in Philippe Le Guay's enchanting BICYCLING WITH MOLIÈRE

French filmmaker Philippe Le Guay has had quite an interesting career, working successfully in various genres -- from his most recent hit, the nostalgic and socially-conscious rom-com The Women on the 6th Floor to his earlier and very dark movie about work and family, Nightshift (Trois Huit) and a very interesting and barbed look at how the French bourgeoisie lived back in 2003, The Cost of Living. All told, he's directed eleven films (theatrical and television) and written twenty-two. Now comes one of his best: BICYCLING WITH MOLIÈRE, the charming, classy tale of a classic piece of French literature attempting to be brought to exhilarating life by a pair of France's finest actors (Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson) -- who happen to be portraying a pair of France's finest actors.

M. Le Guay, shown at left, came up with the idea for this film along with M. Luchini (the two have collaborated several times), who is said to be an expert on the great playwright, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known by his stage name, Molière. Despite his great gift for comedy and farce, M. Luchini would seem to possess an intelligence both wide-ranging and deep, all of which is put to use by the actor and M. Le Guay in this new film. In it, Luchini plays Serge Tanneur (below, left), a well-respected actor who has given up his profession due to its pettiness and nastiness of the people who surrounded him. Into his now quiet life comes M. Wilson, as Gauthier Valence (below, right), another successful actor who currently is the hot TV star in what sounds and looks like a soapy series about a cosmetic surgeons who always seems to be saving lives. Gautheir wants to get back to his theatrical roots and so is set on having Serge join him in a new production of Molière's The Misanthrope.

But who will play Alceste, the meaty title role of the play? Gauthier wants it for himself, but Serge says no.  If he is to return to the stage, he must play Alceste. Well, maybe the two actors could switch roles periodically, giving both the chance to shine? Serge insists on a few days of rehearsal before giving his answer, and so the two begin to rehearse, as well as spend a lot of time together in the little seaside town where Serge dwells.

There they meet Francesca (Maya Sansa, above), an Italian divorcee who is initially angry at them and the world around her but then quickly (a tad too quickly, perhaps) warms up to our two chums.

The meat of the movie charts this growing relationship between the men, and theirs with both the play at hand and with this new woman, and it gives us a raft of small moments of jealousy and envy, as well as others that bring to the fore the actor's skill with this playwright and the playwright's great skill with words. Molière lovers will kvell. (Yours truly once played Philinte in a college production of this play, and even though I was far too young and green to appreciate even half of its genius, this opened the door to my enduring love for the playwright.)

Midway, there's a fine scene in which a young actress, keen to continue making porno films, takes a mother-induced meeting with our classic actors and reads a speech from the play. What begins as cringe-inducing, slowly turns into something lovely, as the character (and actress: newcomer Laurie Bordesoules, below) warms to the words.

The movie should also give lovers of The Misanthrope a field day, for it finds within the characters of the two men, and the woman, plenty of similar characteristics to those of Alceste, Philinte and Célimène and the rest of the play's cast of characters. In fact, there is one brilliant scene near the finale in which Serge looks over the entire galaxy of people involved in the upcoming production and sees... well, you'll see. This is a splendid few moments brought to fine life by Le Guay, Luchni and the rest of the cast.

If you know Luchini's work -- from Claire's Knee onward, you'll know that there is damn little he can't do. His work here is sterling; the man just gets better and better with age. M. Wilson, below, looks fabulously sexy (as he so often does) but here this is cleverly combined with that ever-so-slightly self-satisfied "star" quality that successful actors sometimes radiate.

Ms Sansa, below, about to be seen here in the USA in a terrific role in Bellocchio's Dormant Beauty, makes a lovely foil for our guys. Though it is pretty clear that the whole story was designed to explore actors, acting and Molière, the three leads do yeoman work at turning their "characters" into as close to full-blooded people as possible.

Le Guay might have spared us two falls off bikes and into the canal (though it probably seemed important that this happen to both Gauthier and Serge). Overall, though, the movie is one near-constant joy to see and hear, as it gives one of the world' great playwrights and his work yet another choice moment in the sun.

From Strand Releasing and running 104 minutes, Bicycling with Molière, gets its U.S. theatrical premiere this Wednesday, April 23, in New York City at Film Forum. In Los Angeles, look for the film at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7 on May 2, and at Laemmle's Town Center on May 9. Elsewhere? Let's hope. Otherwise, watch for it eventually on DVD and maybe Netflix streaming.

Xavier Beauvois' OF GODS AND MEN opens: the worthwhile uses of religious faith

If you follow this blog much, you'll know how little use TrustMovies has for religion of any kind -- or even a belief in what's-his-name. Yet TM was greatly moved, provoked and made to think and feel strongly by the new film from Xavier Beauvois, shown below, who a few years back gave us the fine Le Petit Lieutenant. His new movie OF GODS AND MEN is about faith: that experienced by a group of monks in Northern Africa who, for years, have ministered to the generally impoverished local people living around their hilltop monastery, and who, when civil war and terrorist acts threaten the lives of all foreigners in the area, must decide whether or leave Africa, as both the French and Algerian governments suggest/command, or  to stay and continue what they see as God's work and their job.

The monks' decision, how they arrive at it, and what follows shortly after is the meat of this two-hour movie, which is among the best of the year, from any country. In one of the unaccountable, and I am afraid rather typical (and for film lovers, shameful) acts of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences this year was to not even shortlist the movie for Best Foreign Language Film and instead nominate a piece of dreck boasting one clever idea with little follow-through (but lots of transgressive sex and other odd behavior -- Dogtooth -- in order, one assumes, to prove its ability to be meaninglessly au courant. Of Gods and Men, which, in addition to being a fine and artful film, actually rose to the top of the French box-office for several weeks when it opened in its home country last year. The French, of course, occasionally allow challenging films with ideas and gravity to trump comedies and those films with special effects -- as even we do when something like The Social Network comes along.

Of Gods and Men deals with the hastening threat to the lives of these Christian monks, shown above, as well as with their day-to-day activity helping the Muslim locals (below), and the peaceful co-existence of the two religions is heartening to see -- until it begins to fall apart, through no fault of either the locals or the monks. The film appears to put the blame nearly equally on the pro-fundamentalist, anti-Algerian-government forces -- and perhaps even more so on the failing Algerian government itself. What happened to these monks is now history but who did the deed (or ordered it done) seems less certain.

As the danger nears and grows, and the monks themselves argue whether to stay or go, you'll find yourself hanging on every word and being jerked one way, then another. Over time, and as the monks talk and think and pray, minds change and a more mutual understanding looms.

Meanwhile, the insurgents come to the monastery for medical help -- and being good Christians, the monks provide it. (That's the indispensable octogenarian Michael Lonsdale, above, as the monk most familiar with medicine.)

The leader of the group is played by the oft-seen, handsome leading man Lambert Wilson (above, left), and this role is perhaps his finest among many good ones. All the monks, as well as the few locals we come to know at all, are well cast and make their characters as memorable as possible under circumstances that shorten and darken as the movie proceeds.

What makes Of God and Men so special is that Beauvois and his cast treat faith as something from which acts -- not simply thoughts and feelings -- are fashioned, and so becomes as meaningful for the people who possess it as life itself.  The viewer need not even believe in the existence of a higher power to cheer these strong, frightened, torn and caring men. Their work, their lives prove reason enough.  The film -- from Sony Pictures Classics -- opens this Friday, February 25, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Landmark Sunshine, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark. Further cities and theaters will shortly follow.