Throughout, the general’s story is skillfully interwoven with the dual story of his family life, particularly that of his wife Yvonne (Isabelle Carré) with emphasis on the love they share for their young handicapped daughter Anne (Clémence Hitten). ‘Perhaps our two counties could become one?’, a French delegate suggests ‘Non, Monsieur’, came the swift response. Refusing to accept his government’s armistice with the enemy, the newly promoted General De Gaulle (Lambert Wilson) - wanting to change the course of history - flees to London to gain the support of Winston Churchill (Tim Hudson) and his government. They are tremulous days as the German army relentlessly approaches and crosses France, the French army collapses and the Nazis proceed to take over Paris. We know this because the dates come up regularly on screen marking each successive day and chapter. The stirring action in Gabriel Le Bomin’s De Gaulle takes place over just a few short weeks beginning in May 1940. The other two are Eiffel, the opening night presentation (yes, Gustave Eiffel and his tower), and Aline, a fictionalised biography based on Céline Dion. Three biopics are on offer with one of them, De Gaulle, being my brief focus here. There are more than a dozen dramas, a similar number of comedies, surprisingly fewer love stories, although the iconic (and newly restored) Breathless is reprised. French cinemas are still currently closed so we are seeing several of these before their French release. Like previous FFFs, the current showings are a mixed lot but we seem more than ready to take on this program of 38 films. The 2020 festival had just begun when, this time last year, we went into lockdown. That movie, an acclaimed comedy, is now on my list. ‘How was it?’ ‘Good, very entertaining’, was her reply. ‘Oh, it was Antoinette in the Cévennes’, she said. ‘What did you see?’, we asked one of the passing patrons. Her interactions with Bates are scenes from a marriage that has moved from disillusionment to pale acceptance.Just prior to going in to see The Man Who Sold His Skin at the 2021 Alliance Française French Film Festival, a large group suddenly flowed out of the adjoining cinema at Palace, James Street a full house it seemed, something not seen there for a while. Smith shines in one of her most memorable roles: she imbues Lois with a Katherine-of-Aragon impotent rage, as humiliated as she is powerless in the face of her husband's choices. "Yes," Lois replies with icy candor, "as a matter of fact."Īdjani won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her performances in Quartet: her Marya is a volatile compound of French schoolgirl and scorned mistress, veering between tremulous joy and hysterical outburst. "Is that all you're worried about?" demands an outraged Marya. The film explores the vast territory between the "nice" and the "good," between outward refinement and inner darkness: after one violent episode, Lois asks Marya not to speak of it to the Paris crowd. Lovers alternately gravitate toward and are repelled by each other, now professing their love, now confessing their brutal indifference - all the while keeping up appearances. When Marya's husband is put in a Paris prison on charges of selling stolen art works, she is left indigent and is taken in by Heidler and his wife: the predatory Englishman (whose character Rhys bases on the novelist Ford Madox Ford) is quick to take advantage of the new living arrangement, and Marya finds herself in a stranglehold between husband and wife. The film is set in the Golden Age of Paris, Hemingway's "moveable feast" of cafe culture and extravagant nightlife, glitter and literati: yet underneath is the outline of something sinister beneath the polished brasses and brasseries. T has been said that most great twentieth century novels include scenes in a hotel, a symptom of the vast uprooting that has occurred in the last century: James Ivory begins Quartet with a montage of the hotels of Montparnasse, a quiet prelude before our introduction to the violently lost souls who inhabit them.Īdapted from the 1928 autobiographical novel by Jean Rhys, Quartet is the story of a love quadrangle between a complicated young West Indian woman named Marya (played by Isabelle Adjani), her husband Stefan (Anthony Higgins), a manipulative English art patron named Heidler (Alan Bates), and his painter wife Lois (Maggie Smith).
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