Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as a flight attendant going nowhere in Zero Fucks Given
CinéSalon: ZERO FUCKS GIVEN (RIEN À FOUTRE) (Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre, 2021)
French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 4, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through October 25, 4:00 & 7:30
fiaf.org
Adèle Exarchopoulos is magnetic as a flight attendant with a loose grip on her life in Zero Fucks Given, the debut directorial collaboration between Paris- and Brussels-based cowriters and producers Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre. The film is screening October 4 at 4:00 and 7:30 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers 2022,” consisting of nine features and three shorts from up-and-coming and emerging French directors.
Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color, Mandibles) stars as Cassandre, a twentysomething woman who’s unable to commit to anything, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She considers herself a free spirit, but she doesn’t do much with that freedom. She is based at an airport in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and wants to get a better airline job in Dubai; she might travel the world, but she spends most of her time in airport hotels and nightclubs, swiping right and left on her cellphone for company. “I like people for two hours and then it’s goodbye,” she tells friends.
As a flight attendant for Wing, she downs vodka before takeoff, usually does the bare minimum at work, and regularly breaks the rules, which she thinks don’t apply to her; when she is offered a promotion, she asserts that she doesn’t want any more responsibilities. After partying, she often wakes up in a blackout about the night before. She might claim to not care, but she is clearly haunted by the death of her mother, who died in a horrific car crash. She has trouble communicating with her father, Jean (Alexandre Perrier), who was devastated by the loss and is trying to sue someone, anyone. When Cassandre — whose name references the Greek mythological figure who was cursed with the ability to prophesize doom that no one listens to — eventually has to return home, suppressed emotions bubble to the surface.
Zero Fucks Given has an infectious, freewheeling atmosphere; the cast includes nonprofessional actors and actual airline personnel, and Perrier, who plays Cassandre’s distraught dad, is one of the associate producers. Marre and Lecoustre (Castle to Castle) eschew rehearsals and encourage significant improvisation while shooting on location with extended breaks in between filming scenes. Exarchopoulos even does her own hair and makeup and wears her own clothing to give the film a more realistic feeling.
Cinematographer Olivier Boonjing zooms in on Cassandre’s face and body as she pretends not to care about what she’s doing, but there’s more to her than she’s allowing herself to acknowledge. “I’m rather lucky,” she says, but she’s going nowhere. She rarely has time to experience the ritzy cities she flies to, traveling back and forth in the enclosed space of airplanes, breathing recycled air. Her mother died in a roundabout, unable to get out of a traffic circle, a stark metaphor for how Cassandre is stuck in life. You might not give a fuck about Cassandre at the beginning, but by the end you’ll be giving more than a few.
“Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers 2022” continues on Tuesdays through October 25 with Audrey Diwan’s Happening, Martin Jauvat’s Grand Paris, and Lina Soualem’s Their Algeria.
Danish writer-director Lars von Trier has nothing less than the end of the world on his mind in his controversial 2011 drama, Melancholia, which is screening December 3 at 7:30 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Charlotte Forever: Gainsbourg on Film.” Yet another of Von Trier’s love-it-or-hate-it cinematic forays opens with epic Kubrickian grandeur, introducing characters in marvelously composed slow-motion and still shots (courtesy of cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro) as an apocalyptic collision threatens the earth and a Wagner overture dominates the soundtrack. Kirsten Dunst won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of Justine, a seemingly carefree young woman celebrating her wedding day who soon turns out to be battling a debilitating mental illness. Her husband, Michael (Alexander Skarsgård), is madly in love with her and does not know quite what he has gotten himself into, especially as the partying continues and Justine’s motley crew of family and friends get caught up in various forms of intrigue, including Gaby, her marriage-hating mother (Charlotte Rampling), Dexter, her never serious father (John Hurt), Jack, her pompous boss (Stellan Skarsgård), Claire, her married sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and Claire’s filthy rich husband, John (Kiefer Sutherland), who is hosting the event at his massive waterfront estate.
The FIAF CinéSalon series “Charlotte Forever: Gainsbourg on Film,” an eight-movie tribute to the ever-charming and captivating Charlotte Gainsbourg, continues November 19 with eclectic auteur Michel Gondry’s feature-length debut as both writer and director. The Science of Sleep is a complex, confusing, kaleidoscopic stew that is as charming as it is frustrating. Gael García Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, Mozart in the Jungle) stars as the juvenile but endearing Stéphane, a young man in a silly hat who has trouble differentiating dreams from reality. The childlike Stéphane becomes friends with his new neighbor, Stephanie (Gainsbourg), who still has plenty of the child left inside her as well. Stéphane has a job his mother (Miou-Miou) got him, toiling for a small company that makes calendars, alongside the hysterical Guy (Alain Chabat), who can’t help constantly poking fun at coworkers Serge (Sacha Bourdo) and Martine (Aurélia Petit).
The Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big! Costumes by Edith Head” series continues February 23-24 with the “’s wonderful, ’s marvelous” 1957 romantic musical comedy Funny Face. When Quality magazine editor and publisher Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) decides she’s after the next big thing, photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire playing a fictionalized version of Richard Avedon, who served as a consultant on the film and took the photos) asks, “Are there no models who can think as well as they look?” So they descend on a “sinister” bookstore in Greenwich Village, Embryo Concepts, to show the intellectual side of star model Marion (real-life model Dovima), but instead Dick believes that the bohemian bookstore’s mousy, idealistic sales clerk, Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn), might just be exactly what they’re looking for, a fresh face with “character, spirit, and intelligence.” Jo is steadfastly averse to the plan at first, until Dick convinces her that it would be a great opportunity for her to see Paris and go to a lecture by her favorite philosopher, professor Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair), the father of empathicalism. So Maggie, Dick, Jo, and their crew head over to France, where Jo will soon be strutting down the runway in a line specially created for her by superstar designer Paul Duval (Robert Flemyng). But once they get to the City of Lights, everything goes more than a bit haywire as haute couture battles counterculture chic.
