Class, choice, guilt and circumstance: Catherine Corsini's rich THREE WORLDS; plus a short Q&A with filmmaker and star

How rare it is to find a film -- these days, even a foreign one -- with a meaningful and important theme, let alone several of them. Catherine Corsini, a filmmaker who ought to be better known worldwide and certainly here in the USA, has done all this in her newest movie, THREE WORLDS, and managed it so well that her themes and seams blend effortlessly into a brilliant whole. In preparation for this review, I watched the film a second time the other evening with a couple of friends who had not seen it. We were all impressed; I even more so on this repeat viewing.

Ms Corsini, shown at right, who directed and co-wrote this original screenplay, has imagined an event -- an accident that turns into a hit-and-run -- the ramifications of which bring to the surface issues of immigration, class, money, love, guilt (in several forms) and commitment (I may have left out a few other themes) involving nearly a dozen characters -- all of whom get their time in the sun to become fully understandable people, complete with needs and desires, often counter to those of others in this mix. The fact that Corsini achieves all this succinctly and economically within a time frame of 101 minutes is impressive. That we don't in any way feel short-changed is even more so.

Primarily, we have the driver of the car, Al, played by up-and-comer Raphaël Personnaz (above, right), who was so good in last week's The Stroller Strategy and is ever better here, as the pivotal character around whom all else revolves. This would include his fiancee (Adèle Haenel, above, left, also excellent in another of last week's openers, Aliyah) and her father, M. Testard (Jean-Pierre Malo, below, left), who owns the automobile dealership where Al works and is about to gift his new son-in-law-to-be with the title to the firm.

Also in the mix are a couple of Al's co-worker pals, who are with him at the time of the accident; his mom, who for years worked as a cleaning woman at the company; the young woman who witnessed the accident but could not identify the driver (played by Clothilde Hesme, below) and her boyfriend.

Finally there's the victim himself (an illegal immigrant, who remains initially comatose), his wife (Arta Dobroshi, below), family and friends. These people are not connected in the currently popular happenstance manner of movies like the witless and overdone Crash or the recent and much better Disconnect. No -- the connections here are immediate and profound for everyone concerned, and the movie is all the stronger because of this.

Once our protagonist begins having trouble living with himself and what he has done, these connections light up and begin firing on all cylinders. As usual, the less said about plot so as not to spoil surprises, the better -- but the fact that it all hinges not only on unfolding events but on character is paramount.

Ms Corsini also manages to avoid melodrama, no mean feat in a tale like this one. As sad and surprising as the movie becomes, what happens always seems real and understandable, given the people with whom we are dealing.

Performances are everything they need to be from every actor, leads on down. Details are exhibited smartly, too: they register but are never hammered home. (Note the final scene between Al and his father-in-law: heated and angry but with a very sudden and moving moment.) Corsini -- who has already given us the excellent Leaving, Les ambitieux, La répétition and The New Eve -- is a smart and graceful filmmaker, and Three Worlds is her best I've seen to date.

The movie, another very fine one from Film Movement, opens this Friday, June 21, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and at the Sacramento French Film Festival (who knew?!) and in the month following on July 28 at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills. To see currently scheduled playdates, click here and scroll down a bit.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE! One of the film's stars, 

Arta Dobroshi, will be present for Q&A's on Friday 6/21 

and Saturday 6/22 following the 7:15 show.

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When, last March during Rendez-vous With French Cinema,  TrustMovies met with both Catherine Corsini and Raphaël Personnaz, I recorded the conversation (some of which was offered last week, with my reviews of The Stroller Strategy). This week, because I'm away from home with only my laptop and not my trusty desktop, on which that interview is stored, I must simply recall the highlight with both the filmmaker and her star.

My biggest question for Corsini, above, having now seen five of her films and having liked them all was: What is it, aside from each film's strong interest in the lives of women (Three Worlds is different by virtue of its male protagonist) that links your films? Or is there anything specific?  To which the filmmaker immediately replied, Yes: in each, the character is trying to find his or her place, his or her identity, within the world that he or she inhabits.

I thought about this, recalling the various films, and sure enough, they all have this feature in common -- and yet so subtle but incisive a filmmaker is Ms Corsini that this does not jump out at you as you watch. Her films are filled with interesting people and ideas and situations, and so you're pretty much enveloped in all of this as you watch.

For M. Personnaz, at right and below, after the rest of our talk (which you can find at the end of the former post here), I wondered aloud if I could ask a somewhat personal question that would involve his past history. A very likeable and gracious guy, he immediately smiled and said, "Of course."

Of these three worlds that the film depicts -- that very fragile world of the illegal immigrant, the lower/working class world of his best pals, and the haute bourgeoisie to which his character aspires -- into which one does he place himself most securely? Obviously, I tell him, you're not an illegal immigrant (at this point, he outright laughs), so which of the other two?

Personnaz smiles again (and what a smile he has!) and tells me that he has actually been pretty firmly embedded in both those worlds. He was a kid from a lower-middle class family in which his dad labored (I believe he said) in the construction industry. After awhile, the family made some money and found themselves living in a higher class in a very different world. But then, he shrugged and grew a bit philosophical, things changed once again. Times grew difficult, the economy suffered, and the family was back again in a less good place.

It was very interesting, noted the now quite successful actor, to see which of his so-called friends stuck with him. Many simply bailed. "We call these "fair-weather friends'," I told him. The actor thought about this phrase for a moment, then smiled again.

"Exactly."

Craig Zobel's problematic COMPLIANCE: What do we believe? Why do we believe it?

Phone scams are all around us, and -- who knows? -- probably have been since Mr. Bell gifted us with this form of communication. Have you been receiving, of late, call after call from some foreign-accented fellow who advises you that something is wrong with your computer (well, when isn't there?) and that he has been advised to call you offering help? Yeah, sure. (This happens so often now that I have taken to loudly shrieking obscenities in his ear before hanging up.) The phone scam central to COMPLIANCE -- the new film from Craig Zobel, director and co-writer of the (a little too) much-praised Great World of Sound from 2007 -- is a lot more insidious that this latest computer-fixing fraud.

Mr. Zobel (shown at right) takes the inspiration for his tale -- as do maybe two in five of the screenwriters working these days -- from "true events," changing those events as needed to serve his storytelling and his moral. The latter, which to my mind is timely and smart, wants us to understand how easily we believe what we hear and are willing to accept it and act on it -- when we imagine it is coming from a legitimate authority figure. The former, those storytelling skills, are where I have some problems with the movie.

Are you as alarmed as I by the stupidity of much of our country's population, by its inability to learn anything new or to hold an idea in memory for longer than a few minutes? Think about it: Nearly, perhaps more than, half of our middle and lower classes will vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket this fall, thus going against their own best interests in every way, cutting off their collective nose to spite their face. But the way the characters act throughout Compliance makes voting Republican seem, well, almost minor-league in the dumb department.

The situation is this: the female manager of one of the stores in a fast food chain receives a call from a man claiming to be a local police officer, asking her to help him by immediately questioning one of the manager's younger employees accused of theft. He mentions the manager's boss by name, and this is key, I think, in getting her attention and the fear factor going strongly enough to engage her help. Also, the manner in which he gets the manager (Ann Dowd, above) to identify the possible culprit/suspect (Dreama Walker, below) is psychologically astute on a number of levels.

So much for plot, so as not to give away any more spoilers. The fact that something very much like this scenario has already happened a number of times across the country indicates that this is a subject worth exploring. Further, unlike the situations found in the fine German films The Experiment and The Wave -- both based on real-life events that played out decades ago in Palo Alto, California, in which the subjects knew that they were taking part in some kind of "study" -- the people here in Compliance imagined that all this was absolutely "real-life."

Those people include various co-workers, called-in (or not) to help officiate, and finally even the boyfriend (Bill Camp, above) of our manager, who turns out to be the most "helpful" of all. Zobel allows us to see the actual villain (Pat Healy, below) at work during a good portion the movie, which adds to the suspense at times, but also comes at some expense. By cutting away from the present situation to the new "situation" on the other end of the phone line, the filmmaker risks removing us, along with our belief, from the true dilemma at hand.

In any case, for some of the audience, myself included, that belief was only partially ever there, due to the almost ridiculously sheep-like behavior of, first, the manager toward the "policeman", and then of the staff toward its manager. This is not a criticism of the premise, nor of the acting on display -- the entire ensemble is quite good -- but of the way in which Zobel handles the mounting credulity of the "scamees" and the rather incredible goings-on that follow. These produced occasional guffaws, mine among them, at the press screening I attended, and these were not the occasion of "nervous laughter" that sometimes accompanies suspense thrillers. Instead, they were full-out belly laughs of the "Come on, now! Really?" variety.

Zobel also withholds from us the pivotal scene between Mr. Camp and Ms Walker. And I do not mean the logistics of what went where. But seeing the expression on the faces of these two during that event could have done much toward revealing character and intention, while providing some of the depth and truth that seems to be missing here. Which is too bad, as the film's premise is a lulu, encompassing everything from our current economic times, which have people hanging on to whatever job they have for dear life, to our society, which seems ever more in danger of beco-ming robotic wage slaves who will say yes to just about anything.

For all its faults, Compliance is certainly worth seeing and discussing afterward. I just wish it were a better film. The movie, from Magno-lia Pictures and running 90 minutes, opens this coming Friday, August 17, in New York at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema. In the weeks following, it will open in another 25 cities across the country. Click here to see the complete listing of theaters and playdates.