Maïwenn's MY KING explores amour fou from a female viewpoint -- less crazy, more loving

The movies of French film-maker Maïwenn keep getting better and stronger. From Pardonnez-moi through All About Actresses to Polisse and now MY KING (Mon roi), she seems to have become more disciplined as she has grown more mature. Her films have always been fun -- their overwrought moments often their most enjoyable -- but in her latest she tackles the subject of amour fou with a directness and clarity that is at once sad and bracing.

The filmmaker, shown at left, has cast her two leads actors about as well as you could want. Her leading lady, Emmanuelle Bercot, who won a deserved Best Actress award at this past year's Cannes fest, is herself a fine film director (Standing Tall, On My Way, Student Services, Backstage), while her leading man, Vincent Cassel (below), always sexy and charismatic, simply tops himself here. He's phenomenal: glowing, growing, then exploding with energy and charm beyond measure. Our king, indeed. (He actually played one in another of his recent films, Tales of Tales.)

Maïwenn's film begins with a mother named Tony (short for Marie-Antoinette: royalty is all over the place here) about to ski downhill. The next scene takes us to the office of physical therapist who offers up some holistic-sounding psycho-babble that might send some of us out the door. But mom has had a bad injury, the healing of which will take us right through to the end of the film, as she (and we) think back to earlier days and how she met and stuck with and by the guy who will become the love of her life.

The filmmaker does her back-and-forth between the past and present quite gracefully, so that we're never jarred and easily know where we are. We meet the group of injured young people with whom Tony will rehab, and we also meet the most important people in her circle as she negotiates the trying and tricky years with Georgio (Cassel).

These include her brother, who, regarding the great love of his sister's life, seems the most rational in the bunch -- and as he is played by the usually quite irrational, Louis Garrel (above), you've got to credit Maïwenn's ability to bring out surprising new layers in her actors.

What makes My King succeed especially well is that the entire viewpoint and attitude are coming to us via the character of Tony -- who is, given all that she's going through, pretty rational herself. (She is certainly more so than Georgio.) We understand her and root for her, even when her decisions are the wrong ones.

For his part Cassel simply makes his character everything Tony wants -- and more (and finally less), with such sex appeal, charm and often great good humor that there is no question why these two keep trying to make it work. Even when Georgio cannot let go of an old model-gorgeous but unhealthily-clinging girlfriend (Chrystèle Saint Louis Augustin, below, right) who seems constantly in need of his help, Tony tries to look the other way.

How things resolve themselves -- and they do -- proves bittersweet and quite real, leaving us feeling the same caring for both these characters as we've felt all along, watching them change and grow, try and fail, and now maybe even succeed. But in a different configuration.

Thanks to the director, the writers (Maïwenn and Etienne Comar) and the performers, the movie works on all kinds of levels. It will stand the test of time, I suspect, as a simultaneous love story and cautionary tale, a character study, and a look at the way the French well-to-do lived and behaved at a certain point in human history. (Were the film to have dealt with the working class or the poor, I doubt it would have been made.)

From Film Movement and running a long but never boring 124 minutes, My King opens this Friday, August 12, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles on Friday, August 26, at Laemmle's Royal. Here in South Florida it opens in Miami at the Tower Theater, also on August 26, and in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters on Friday, September 9. Elsewhere? Absolutely. Click here and scroll down to see currently scheduled playdates, arranged alphabetically by state.

Maïwenn's child-protection movie POLISSE brings home the bacon -- and a little ham....

When POLISSE, the new film from actress/
director Maïwenn, is good, it's very, very good. And when it's -- I won't go so far as to say "bad," just maybe -- not so good, rather than destroy itself, as some have claimed, the movie simply deflates a bit before gathering steam once again. This up and down structure does weaken what could have been a brilliant piece of cinema, but Polisse -- that tracks daily life, at work and at play, of the police officers of a Child Protection Unit in France -- is still very much worth a watch, if only for the jolting immediacy of its subject matter, as well as its starry French cast.

As director and co-writer (with the smart and talented Emmanuelle Bercot, of BackStage and Student Services), Maïwenn (shown at right) uses a similar documentary-like approach that she tried in her earlier and much more humorous film Le bal des actrices. It works almost as well here, allowing us to seem to eavesdrop on these police, at home and on the job, seeing them at their angriest and most vulnerable.

The poster, shown at top, with its intelligent and symbolic image, captures perfectly how well these police identify with the young victims who come into their care. This has its up and down sides, meaning that the officers will usually do everything they can to ensure safety for their charges, but also that they will sometimes go too far - or go to pieces when it turns out that they, no matter what, can do nothing to help.

This is the case in one of the film's strongest scenes, in which an abusive father with heavy-duty political connections (a nasty, scary Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, above, center) is brought in for questioning. His cowed wife (another brilliant job from Sandrine Kiberlain, above, left) tries her best, but nothing equals the power of money and position, as the film makes quite clear.

In the film's most powerful scene, cop Fred (the filmmaker's main squeeze and preferred co-star Joey Star) tries his best to keep an illegal immigrant mother and her son together. Machinations ensue; the cops will try anything to keep humanity ahead of cold justice, and Mr Starr proves himself more than able to keep up with his better-known acting comrades. For these moments alone, the movie is indelible.

A baby born out of rape, a drug-addicted mom (Sophie Cattani, adding yet another excellent turn to her resume of bad mothers), Marcial Di Fonzo Bo as a problemed phys. ed. teacher, and the "rescue" of a caravan of gypsy children (above) perhaps being made poor use of by their caretakers all add to the film's resonance and strength.

The police themselves are played by a string of France's foremost acting royalty, among them Karin Viard, Marina Foïs, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Frédéric Pierrot (above, left, with co-writer Bercot, who does a fine acting job here, as well) and Jérémie Elkaïm. The give-and-take between officers -- particularly that of Viard (below, left center) and Fois (below, right) -- proves interesting and pointed, playing out eventually in ways powerful and unexpected.

The film's biggest problems arise in several scenes during which the cops are on playtime. We understand that these characters desperately need rest and relaxation, and that they have a hard time finding this or even indulging in it, once it's open to them. But in most of the scenes taking place off the job, it seems as if it is the actors -- not their characters -- who are having the fun and interacting so gleefully with each other. For a time this simply destroys whatever reality has accrued.

There is also, immediately after that rescue of the gypsy kids, a scene of everyone singing on a bus that seems utterly fake. Why this should be so, I don't know. Was the scene poorly prepared?  For whatever reason, it simply does not flow; instead it jolts. None of this kills our overall belief in the movie's message: that the pro-tection of children is paramount. But when Maïwenn learns to solve problems like these, she'll be on her way to even greater things.

Polisse, 127 minutes via Sundance Selects, opens this Friday, May 18, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark. Other cities and theaters are in the offing soon. Come May 25, the film will also be available via VOD. Click here to learn how you can get it in at home.

My FrenchFilmFest.com: Maïwenn's sweet-and-sour delight, LE BAL DES ACTRICES

Attention: film buffs-- particularly those who groove on French film and French actresses: A young actress and filmmaker with the one-word moniker of Maïwenn has made a movie that you will be sorry if you miss. It's showing now through January 29, as part of MyFrenchFilm
Festival.com, the online film fest you can download off the web for just a bit more than $2.50 per film, a bargain in this day and age. If you're a serious foreign-film buff, for about  $19 you can down load the entire package: eleven full-length movies and another ten short films.

The film in question is called LE BAL DES ACTRICES (All About Actresses is the English title) and it is one for the books. Posing as a documentary being made by Maïwenn (shown at right) about the state of being an actress in France today (even as such, it's pretty damn good), the movie begins with a "musical number, in which all the "stars" take part -- they play themselves throughout the film (or perhaps they're playing/parroting the way in which the French public perceives them) -- and continues with time spent with each star, as she tries to figure out her next career move. Each of these chapters has its own musical number that comments, in its way, on what we've just seen, on the actress, and on her desires. Finally, there's a "screening" of the finished documentary for the actresses to critique. Through all of this, the film is non-stop, thought-provoking fun that is also on-target satire that is sometimes quite moving.

 
The actresses include Jeanne Balibar (above, in black leather!), Romane Bohringer, Julie Depardieu, Mélanie Doutey, Marina Foïs, Estelle Lefébure, Maïwenn herself (her full name is Maïwenn Le Besco, and she's the sister of Isild), Linh Dan Pham (below, with her "movie" mom & dad), Charlotte Rampling, Muriel Robin, Karole Rocher and Karin Viard. If at least some of those names don't get your heart racing, you're not the Francophile you thought you were.

Representing the male set are Joey Starr, who plays Maïwenn's main squeeze, Nicolas Briançon as her producer -- and the likes of Yvan Atal, Jacques Weber, Pascal Greggory and Bertrand Blier, all playing themselves in director mode.

The film moves from ditsy and silly to frank and funny to rich and moving -- often on a dime. From Viard's cow-milking sequence on a farm (under Blier's helm) to Foïs (above, center) fooling around with Botox, from the actress as parent (in both birth and adoption modes) to the actress aging (Bohringer's section is simply amazing: Is this the reason why we haven't seen that much of this fine actress -- shown below, left -- of late?), the cast and crew take us inside each actress' head, heart and ego. It's an alternately beautiful, crazy and not-so-pretty place to be.

The filmmaker makes fine use of the fantasy element in movies -- in her musical numbers, as well as in the way in which these women sometimes perceive their world. Maïwenn colludes with them in their view, even as that view collides with realty as most of us know it. She's part of the game; she knows it; and she's smart enough to make this clear--never more so than in her finale, which bring all the women together and lets the filmmaker have her cake and eat it, too. Dare I suggest that you'll be wolfing it down, as well.

Le Bal des Actrices will play in MyFrenchFilmFestivasl.com through January 29.  You can access it here. (You can also vote for your favorite film in the festival -- something I've neglected to mention until now.)