DVDebut: Denis Dercourt's low-key but lovely and moving comeback tale, IN HARMONY

A dozen years ago French actors Cécile De France and Albert Dupontel delighted international audiences with their special chemistry and charm in Danièle Thompson's wonderful ensemble piece, Avenue Montaigne. How very nice to see these two fine actors together again in the leading roles of Denis Dercourt's 2015 film (just now getting a U.S. DVD release), IN HARMONY (En équilibre). This is one of those quiet, low-key movies about us humans that the French do so very well.

As directed and with a screenplay adapted (from the memoir of his career by stuntman/equestrian Bernard Sachse and Véronique Pellerin) by M. Dercourt (shown at right), the movie unfolds with an easy, graceful flow that never pounds home any point or moral, even as it keeps us wondering exactly where it might be going.

The same year that Avenue Montaigne appeared, M: Dercourt gave us a splendid and low-key psychological thriller about career and revenge entitled The Page Turner. That film, as does this one, also kept us guessing about outcome and motive -- though in a completely different genre.

After equestrian/stuntman Marc Guermont (played by Dupontel, above and below) is involved in an accident on a movie set, he is left in a wheelchair, with his stuntman career suddenly cut short. (Names have been changed here, either to protect certain reputations or to better make this a fictionalized account)

A visit from the woman from the insurance company (Ms De France, below) that represents the movie studio sets in motion a tale that encompasses everything from accepting responsibility to past and future career choices to making the best of a not-so-hot situation.

How the filmmaker weaves all this together -- loosely but lovingly, without pushing any moment or any moral too hard -- turns the film into a particularly quiet and thoughtful meditation on how our lives and careers, from generation to generation, find their way to fulfillment. It is also an odd kind of love story -- consummated only briefly and then left as memory.

The love of horses is deeply felt here, and those who feel the same should embrace the movie thoroughly. Ms De France has a lovely scene in which her character mounts a horse for the first time, and the actress is, as always, spot-on from moment to moment.

Dupontel, as ever the consummate man's man, brings his whole arsenal of feelings to the fore, even as music and piano playing enter the picture and help bring the movie's themes to fruition.

This is not a great film by any means, but it is a good, solid one -- providing 87 minutes well spent. From Distrib Films US with its DVD arriving via Icarus Films Home Video, In Harmony hits the street today, Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase or rental.

Small is beautiful: In HOME, JAMES, Jonathan Rossetti & Julie Gearheard spotlight Oklahoma

One of those increasingly numerous movies that, if they're lucky, get a week's theatrical release in a theater in L.A. and/or NYC and then disappear into the woodwork, HOME, JAMES is one of the better examples of American independent cinema to have come our way this year. It's a sweet little movie, but not a simple one, as it tracks the love story that develops between a photographer -- who, to make a living, chauffeurs late-night drunks home in their car as a kind of paid, designated driver -- and the young woman he first chaffeurs and then falls for.

Beautifully acted by its two leads -- Jonathan Rossetti and Kerry Knuppe -- and written with an ear for region and detail that rings wondefully true by Mr. Rossetti (above, right) and Julie Gearheard (above, left), both of whom play major roles in the film). Rossetti also directed the movie, making him a talented triple threat.

The filmmakers and actors -- especially the two leads (above and below) -- are just right about the level to which they can go in terms of intimacy and honesty of their relationship as it develops. They keep us with them at each new step of the game.

Mr. Rossetti is quite good at suggesting the demons of distrust in his own talent that crowd around most artists, while Ms Knuppe is sadness incarnate as the woman with a drinking problem who would like to be able to rise above it but knows she probably won't.

Ms Gearheard (above) is not quite so successful acting-wise as she is in the writing of the role of the comedic best friend of Rossetti's photographer. She pushes a bit harder than necessary, but she's close enough to the target not to spoil things.

Expecially good in the role of the art gallery owner is Kathleen Rose Perkins (A Short History of Decay); ditto Marshall Bell (above) in the role of the owner of the photo development shop where Gearheard works and Rossetti uses as his darkroom.

What makes the movie particularly enjoyable and resonant -- in addition to the fact that it was shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma (a location we seldom get to see on film or video), is how very smart it is about everything from photography (above and below) to careers, friendship, passion -- and liquor (James Ponsoldt would be proud).

Home, James -- from Devolver Digital Films and running just 83 minutes --comes out via Digital VOD on August 12. Don't let it get by you unseen.

CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT: Yung Chang takes another look at youth and careers in China

Among the facts that yours truly did not know: In 1959 Chairman Mao banned western-style boxing in China because it was too American and too violent. In 1989, that ban was finally lifted. Yung Chang, the Canadian filmmaker of Chinese descent who, a few years ago, brought us Up the Yangtze, is back again with a new film -- CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT -- that begins with a statement of the above facts and then, along with a most interesting backdrop (in the former it was the havoc wrought by the Three Gorges Damn, in this one it's boxing in China), manages to look somewhat closely at China's young people and the career choices they face and make. These are not much -- and probably much worse now than five years ago when Yangtze was made.

Mr. Chang, shown at left, manages in both films to look at two generations, parent and child; in addition, in this new one, he observes a boxing teacher, Qi Moxiang, who, if he had children, would fit easily into the parental mode. As a filmmaker, Chang keeps himself well out of the picture but his camera smack in the faces and bodies of his protagonists. He is not given to a lot of identification, so that sometimes, we're not always sure who's who and what's what. But eventually we figure most of it out. He and his camera wander and we follow along dutifully, observing some of the children who have "volunteered" and then been "selected" to participate in a program that just might offer up some new Olympic-style heroes, both boys and girls, chosen from the ever more impoverished farm communities found -- in this case, in the Sichuan province.

One young man in particular, Miao Yunfei (above, working on the family's tobacco farm, and below, wondering if he has made the right choices) has some talent -- and is clearly dying to get ahead fast -- but may not have the patience for long-term practice and devotion to the boxing life in China (Mike Tyson's his hero: yikes!). He is counseled by his coach to refrain from going "pro" until he really has the skills mastered. His mom wants him to stay on the farm, of course, but he clearly imagines that he's made for more glamorous stuff.

Coach Qi also longs for some of that old glamour; before we know it, he's in training for a "comeback" fight (he's shown below, left) in which he is outclassed, outmatched and outfought rather alarmingly. Throughout all this we get bits and pieces of the lives of these people, but nothing registers as strongly as it did in the filmmaker's Yangtze movie. I am not certain that my own lack of interest in boxing prevents me from fully appreciating Chang's film. Thught it's a sport I have long hated, I have still taken well to certain boxing movies now and again: The Set Up, Rocco and His Brothers, The Fighter. But by the end of this documentary, while I was somewhat moved by these people and their predicaments, I felt I could have been given a lot more information, considering the film's 94 minutes of running time.

Another student, He Zongli, below, appears more of a team player and a good Communist. What does that mean? While Chang would seem to leave "politics" outside the frame of his film, his inclusion of a short scene at a sporting event counters this quite tellingly. Here, the speaker announces the following: "There is no China without the Communist Party. Only Socialism can help develop China. This is an unchangeable truth..." Given what we see and hear in China Heavyweight, this seems but the reverse of the pro-Capitalism/
Hooray-for-Wall-Street agitprop meal we're constantly fed by The New York Post and Fox News.

The choices offered the young people we see here, as in Up the Yangtze, seem paltry at best, designed to help the state above all, while sucking the people dry. Little wonder that Miao hightails it to the big city and a dead-end construction job. The choice between growing tobacco and boxing (imagine two more smart, healthy, environmentally-friendly endeavors! -- unless you are Olympic-caliber, of course) is a lose-lose situation. And the economy -- here, there, everywhere -- just grows worse.

China Heavyweight -- from Zeitgeist Films -- opens Friday, July 6, in New York City at the IFC Center and will open in another ten cities around the country in the weeks to come. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed.