Cinéfranco
Survival is the most basic drive that exists on the spectrum of human experience, which begs the question: what would you do to survive? When does our drive to survive take precedence over what we have been taught is morally wrong? These are all questions explored in the movie The Long Falling, a Belgian production being featured in this year’s Cinéfranco Film Festival, directed by Martin Provost and staring Yolande Moreau (Micmacs) as Rose Mayer. When we first meet Rose, she is a meek, sad, scared woman, living under the thumb of her drunken and abusive husband. Her life is...
Many people would be weary to watch another French silent movie after the success of The Artist. It would be easy to close the book on modern silent films and let that movie be the last good example of the genre. I am here to let all those naysayers know that there are still great, whimsical dialogue-free movies being made, and one of them is Holidays by the Sea. Holidays By The Sea is a French production directed by Pascal Rabaté and starring Maria De Medeiros (Pulp Fiction) and Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen). It is a direct homage to Jacques Tatis’...
When an actor gets behind the camera and decides to try his hand at directing, the results can either be spectacular or very disappointing. Thankfully, Headwinds is a formidable film that can stand up to any film, even those headed by seasoned directors. New to the director’s chair is Jalil Lespert, a French actor who was in such movies as The Young Lieutenant and Tell No One. Headwinds is his second foray into directing a full-length movie, his first being 24 Mesures, an experimental film about the bonds that connect strangers and how they can be interpreted. Headwinds stars Benoit...
Playing as part of the 2012 Cinéfranco Film Festival, You Don’t Choose Your Family (On ne choisit pas sa Famille) mixes slapstick with globalisation. Although its title sounds like the name of a rejected sitcom pilot from a few decades ago, this French comedy is deceptively contemporary. Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing particularly new here, except maybe the film’s topic. You Don’t Choose Your Family tells the story of a lesbian couple, Kim and Alex (Muriel Robin and Helene Noguerra), who meet an adorable orphan named Maily while Kim is working on a television set in Thailand. They want...
For those who hear “French cinema” and visualize black-and-white, shadowy Frenchmen in trench-coats, delete your assumptions now. Beur sur la ville, a French crime comedy playing tonight as part of Cinéfranco Film Festival, has zilch to do with the suave Euro-flavoured films that have come to define French cinema’s legacy. Beur sur la ville is France today. Starring the French-Moroccan comedian Booder (one-named, à la Cher), Beur sur la ville throws us into a murder plot set in an ethnic neighbourhood outside of Paris. Booder, who plays the dunce traffic cop Khalid, lives a happy-go-lucky life handing out speeding tickets and...
Have you ever had a job that you hated? Have you ever felt like your job could make you ‘go postal?’ Most people would be inclined to say ‘yes’. But what is it that makes a person snap and resort to violence as a solution to their problems? Early One Morning seeks to enlighten the viewer of the mindset of someone who violently acts out to solve his problems. Early One Morning is a French production with Belgian staff filmed in Paris. It was directed by Jean-Marc Moutout and stars Jean-Pierre Darroussin (A Very Long Engagement) as Paul, an investment...
All Our Desires (Toutes nos envies), which closes the 15th annual Cinefranco Film Festival, is a pathos-laden film. As you follow its interweaving, emotionally taxing subplots, however, you might wonder what’s beyond the pathos. Claire Conti (played by Marie Gillain) is young and attractive. A judge by profession, she is happily married and a mother. Her handsome husband, Christophe (Yannick Renier), works as a chef and loves her very much. Life looks ideal. One day, Claire is picking up her little girl from school. Another mother, named Celine, comes up to her, asking if she had given her daughter money...
On The Beat may seem like a typical dance film, but director Charles-Olivier Michaud and writer Caroline Héroux have crafted something more than that. The story follows Delphine Lamarre (Mylène St-Sauveur), an aspiring dancer who is at odds with her parents on her direction in life. They would like her to finish university, but Delphine is more interested in a career in dancing. With her current partner injured and an important audition coming, Delphine has to team up with Marc (Nico Archambault), another talented and attractive dancer. The film isn’t solely focused on Delphine and her dance career. In fact,...
Yann Samuell writes and directs the classic French tale War Of The Buttons, presented on March 25, 2012 as part of the Cinéfranco Film Festival. Two groups of boys from neighbouring villages carry on a play war that has lasted for generations. Lebrac (Vincent Bres) leads the boys from the town of Longeverne as they battle their rivals from Verlrans. All the boys look up to Lebrac but he begins to realize there’s more to life than the childish war as he’s faced with some tough choices after his father leaves. Some of my favorite films involve that moment between...
Director Annabel Loyola takes us on a journey from Langres, France to Montreal, Canada in A Mad Venture: In The Footsteps Of Jeanne Mance, screening March 29, 2012 as part of the Cinéfranco Film Festival. Loyola became fascinated by the lost memory of Jeanne Mance, a founder of Montreal who lived 1606 to 1673. As Loyola searches for what motivated Mance to travel across the world to help create Montreal, she also exposes the concept that drives many people to leave their lives behind and move to a new world. Unfortunately, not much is known about Jeanne Mance and her...
The opening film for the 2012 Cinéfranco Film Festival is the Dominic Desjardins directed La Sacrée. This is the story of François Lebas (Marc Marans), a professional con-man who is finally going to make it rich by marrying Sofia (Marie Turgeon), a fragrance queen. Before she says” I do”, Sofia wants to be pregnant. This poses a problem for François when he learns that he’s sterile. The solution waits for François in his hometown of Fort Aimable, in the form of La Sacrée, a beer that is said to be an aphrodisiac. The town is slowly fading away though, and...
The annual Cinéfranco Film Festival will be continuing into its 15th successful celebration of international francophone cinema this Friday, March 23 and continuing until Sunday, April 1. For all those lovers of francophone cinema, the event will take place at TIFF Bell Lightbox, and includes 16 North American Premieres, 5 Canadian Premieres and 7 English Canadian Premieres, for a total of 28 features, 2 documentaries and 11 shorts....
