Tag Archives: CinéSalon

HAUTE COUTURE ON FILM: THE RULES OF THE GAME

Lisette (Paulette Dubost) and Christine (Nora Grégor) discuss love and fidelity in Jean Renoir masterpiece

CinéSalon: THE RULES OF THE GAME (LA RÈGLE DU JEU) (Jean Renior, 1939)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, May 5, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Festival runs through May 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

“We’ll have as much fun as we can,” Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio) says in Jean Renoir’s 1939 comic masterpiece, the madcap farce The Rules of the Game. And oh, what fun it is. Renoir, the son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, skewers love and lust among France’s idle rich on the eve of WWII, the haute bourgeoisie fiddling in their own self-defeating way while their country is about to burn. Banned by the government for being “too demoralizing,” The Rules of the Game follows a group of men and women, both servants and masters, as they jump from bed to bed, sometimes in full view of their spouse. It’s 1939, but even with war on the horizon, a fanciful coterie of friends and acquaintances have gathered for a weekend at Château de la Colinière, the country estate owned by Robert, who is married to Christine (Nora Grégor) but has been fooling around with Geneviève de Marras (Mila Parély). Christine, meanwhile, is being wooed by aviator André Jurieux (Roland Toutain), who has just flown solo across the Atlantic, and the dapper Monsieur de St. Aubin (Pierre Nay). Newly hired domestic Marceau (Julien Carette) has the hots for Christine’s maid, Lisette (Paulette Dubost), whose extremely jealous husband, Edouard Schumacher (Gaston Modot), is Robert’s game warden, prowling the grounds with a rifle he is ready to use. And in the middle of it all is Octave (Renoir), a bear of man who is friends with André and Christine and a former lover of Lisette’s. Borrowing elements from Alfred de Musset’s Les caprices de Marianne and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s Le mariage de Figaro, Renoir depicts French society as a bunch of silly, selfish fools, and even though in the credits, over delightful music by Mozart, he calls it “A Dramatic Fantasy” that “does not claim to be a study of manners,” he later referred to it as “an exact description of the bourgeoisie of our time.” Its truthfulness is what helped make the film a critical and popular failure upon its initial release, leading Renoir to cut nearly a half hour in a desperate attempt to save it.

André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) and Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio) fight over Robert’s wife in THE RULES OF THE GAME

“It is a war film, and yet there is no reference to the war,” Renoir wrote in his 1974 memoir, My Life and My Films. “Beneath its seemingly innocuous appearance the story attacks the very structure of our society. Yet all I thought about at the beginning was nothing avant-garde but a good little orthodox film. People go to the cinema in the hope of forgetting their everyday problems, and it was precisely their own worries that I plunged them into. The imminence of war made them even more thin-skinned. I depicted pleasant, sympathetic characters, but showed them in a society in process of disintegration, so that they were defeated at the outset, like Stahremberg and his peasants. The audience recognized this. The truth is they recognized themselves. People who commit suicide do not care to do it in front of witnesses. I was utterly dumbfounded when it became apparent that the film, which I wanted to be a pleasant one, rubbed most people up the wrong way.” The Rules of the Game was ultimately restored and reevaluated in 1959, being justly recognized as a misunderstood classic. Renoir and cinematographer Jean Bachelet use deep focus, long scenes, and carefully orchestrated close-ups to comment on luxury and class, brilliantly using metaphor as a storytelling device, particularly during the hunting scene at the château. The militaristic Shumacher is determined to catch the poor, disheveled Marceau poaching rabbits — first those sexually active animals on the grounds of the estate, then Shumacher’s wife inside. As the wealthy men and women fire at the rabbits, as well as pheasants, Renoir doesn’t turn the camera away, instead showing the creatures dying as the hunters cheer their success. It’s a painful scene to watch in a film otherwise filled with inventive slapstick and mayhem. It’s no wonder the French public initially booed the picture, which was essentially a rather unflattering mirror placed before their very eyes.

The Rules of the Game is one of the most important, and most entertaining, films ever made about love and class, about the relationships between the rich and the poor, both personal and professional. It’s no coincidence that it is Octave, played by writer-director Renoir himself, who says, “This world has rules — very strict rules,” which Renoir (Grand Illusion, Boudu Saved from Drowning) then tears down. The film still feels fresh and alive today, no mere museum piece, part “Love Stinks” by the J. Geils Band (“You love her / but she loves him / and he loves somebody else / you just can’t win”), part Upstairs, Downstairs, devastatingly funny and devilishly playful. And look for genre-redefining photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson as the English servant. Coco Chanel designed the dazzling “robes de la maison,” making The Rules of the Game a worthy selection for the French Institute Alliance Française CinéSalon series “Haute Couture on Film,” part of the larger “Fashion at FIAF” festival, where it is screening May 5 at 4:00 & 7:30; both presentations will be followed by a wine reception, and journalist Anne-Katrin Titze will introduce the later show. The series continues through May 26 with such other films as Jean Negulesco’s How to Marry a Millionaire and Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour. The third annual “Fashion at Fiaf” also includes talks with Kate Betts and Garance Doré and a gallery exhibit of the work of photographer Grégoire Alexandre.

HAUTE COUTURE ON FILM — DIANA VREELAND: THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL

Documentary about Diana Vreeland is a colorful look inside the High Priestess of Fashion

CinéSalon: DIANA VREELAND: THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL (Lisa Immordino Vreeland, 2011)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, April 21, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Festival runs through May 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
www.facebook.com

“There’s not many people like her. She’s unique,” photographer David Bailey says about his former boss, Diana Vreeland, in the DVD extras of the wonderful documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel. “You could easily put her in a list of people like Cocteau and, in a funny sort of way, Proust. She was very Proustian in a way. She loved the detail of things, the memory of things,” he adds. The 2011 film, directed and produced by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who is married to Diana Vreeland’s grandson Alexander, and codirected and edited by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt (Havana Motor Club) and Frédéric Tcheng (Dior and I, Valentino: The Last Emperor), is a fun and fanciful look inside one of the most important, and entertaining, fashion figures of the twentieth century. Immordino Vreeland focuses on her husband’s grandmother’s extremely influential years as editor of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue and then curating the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among those sharing stories about the rather eccentric, demanding, intuitive, opinionated, cultured, respected, feared, difficult, loyal, spontaneous, self-aware, critical, and always fashionable woman are designers Oscar de la Renta, Manolo Blahnik, Hubert de Givenchy, Carolina Herrera, Calvin Klein, Pierre Bergé, Anna Sui, and Diane von Furstenberg, models Marisa Berenson, Anjelica Huston, Lauren Hutton, Penelope Tree, and Veruschka von Lehndorff, and former Vreeland assistant Ali MacGraw. There are also marvelous archival clips of television interviews Vreeland did with Dick Cavett, Jane Pauley, and Diane Sawyer, as well as scenes from Stanley Donen’s Funny Face and William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Magoo?, both of which feature characters inspired by Vreeland. In addition, the film contains voice-over narration (performed by Annette Miller and Jonathan Epstein) based on 1983 recordings made of conversations between Vreeland and George Plimpton when the two were collaborating on her autobiography, D.V. About the only thing lacking in the film is more exploration of Vreeland’s personal life, although some of her children and grandchildren do admit that family did not come first with her. And oh, the photos, by Bailey, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bert Stern, and many others; The Eye Has to Travel is chock-full of amazing pictures that reveal Vreeland to be a consummate storyteller who changed the fashion world in remarkably prescient ways.

Documentary depicts Diana Vreeland as a superstar in her own right

Everyone has fascinating things to say about Vreeland — including Vreeland herself, who is eminently quotable, her bold, brash, insightful, and funny proclamations instantly memorable — so much so that the above David Bailey opening quotation was taken from the DVD extras so as not to spoil any of the gems in the film itself, which is screening April 21 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Haute Couture on Film,” part of the French Institute Alliance Française’s third annual “Fashion at Fiaf” festival; Immordino Vreeland will introduce the 7:30 show, and both screenings will be followed by a wine reception. The festival continues through May 26 with such other films as John Cassavetes’s Gloria, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Jean Negulesco’s How to Marry a Millionaire. “Fashion at Fiaf” also includes talks with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, Kate Betts, and Garance Doré and a gallery exhibition of the work of photographer Grégoire Alexandre.

HAUTE COUTURE ON FILM: FUNNY FACE

Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) is not happy about fashionistas taking over the bookstore where she works in FUNNY FACE

CinéSalon: FUNNY FACE (Stanley Donen, 1957)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, April 7, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Festival runs April 7 – May 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

The French Institute Alliance Française’s third annual “Fashion at Fiaf” festival kicks off April 7 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.

Audrey Hepburn is glamorous in Givenchy in classic musical

Partially based on an unproduced show by screenwriter Leonard Gershe called Wedding Bells — which was inspired by the real-life relationship between Avedon and model and actress Doe Nowell — and including four songs from George Gershwin’s 1927 musical, also called Funny Face (and starring Astaire and his sister, Adele), the film is an utter delight from start to finish. Despite an age difference of nearly thirty years, Hepburn and Astaire have genuine chemistry as their characters fall for each other. Unlike 1964’s My Fair Lady, in which Hepburn’s singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon, she does all of her own vocalizing in Funny Face, including a lovely solo on “How Long Has This Been Going On?,” and she uses her childhood dance training to fabulous effect in a stunning modern dance scene in a dark and smoky bohemian club. Astaire is a joy as Avery, particularly in the dazzling solo number “Let’s Kiss and Make Up,” performed with hat, raincoat, and umbrella. And Thompson, in her only major film role — she was already in the midst of her four-book children’s series about Eloise, the girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York City — gets things going with the glorious opener “Think Pink!,” her character inspired by Harper’s Bazaar editors Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland. Among the other songs by George and Ira Gershwin are “On How to Be Lovely,” “He Loves and She Loves,” “Clap Yo’ Hands,” and “Bonjour, Paris!” The costumes, of course, are spectacular, courtesy of Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy, as are Eugene Loring’s choreography and Stanley Donen’s direction as the story roams around many of Paris’s iconic locations. Everything about the film, which was nominated for four Oscars but came up empty, is fun and fashionable, including cameos by model Suzy Parker; Carole Eastman, who would go on to write Five Easy Pieces and The Fortune; Hepburn’s mother; and a group of girls dressed up like French children’s book favorite Madeline.

Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) want to kiss and make up with Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) in FUNNY FACE

Funny Face is screening April 7 at 4:00 & 7:30 as part of the FIAF CinéSalon series “Haute Couture on Film”; both screenings will be followed by a wine reception, and journalist Anne-Katrin Titze will introduce the later show. The series continues through May 26 with such other films as Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, John Cassavetes’s Gloria, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Jean Negulesco’s How to Marry a Millionaire. “Fashion at Fiaf” also includes talks with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, Kate Betts, and Garance Doré and a gallery show of the work of photographer Grégoire Alexandre.

ECCENTRICS OF FRENCH COMEDY: THE TREE, THE MAYOR, AND THE MEDIATHEQUE

A patch of greenery and an old tree are the center of controversy in Éric Rohmer satire

CINÉSALON: THE TREE, THE MAYOR, AND THE MEDIATHEQUE (L’ARBRE, LE MAIRE ET LA MÉDIATHÈQUE) (LES SEPTS HASARDS) (Éric Rohmer, 1993)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 17, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through February 24
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Éric Rohmer’s The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque is a delightfully simple, outrageously funny satire that stands apart from the majority of the French auteur’s works, especially his three famous series: Six Moral Tales, Comedies and Proverbs, and Tales of the Four Seasons. “French can be illogical, as we’ll see,” school principal Marc Rossignol (Fabrice Luchini) tells his young students at the beginning, and the same can be said for the French characters in the film as well, each one thinking they are nothing if not completely logical. Rohmer divides The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque into seven chapters, each built around a conditional “if” clause; for example, chapter four begins, “If Blandine Lenoir, at the monthly ‘Tomorrow,” had not, while recording a cultural broadcast, inadvertently unplugged her answering machine…” Each chapter pits philosophical, sociopolitical foes against one another as the small rural town of Saint-Juire-Champgillon prepares to build a new cultural, sports, and media center on an expanse of greenery that is home to a large, beautiful old tree. The center is the pet project of the mayor, Julien Dechaumes (Pascal Greggory), who aspires to higher office, while Rossignol is dead-set against anyone tampering with the natural environment. The battle heats up as magazine editor Régis Lebrun-Blondet (François-Marie Banier) hires freelance journalist Blandine Lenoir (Clémentine Amouroux) to do a story on the town’s situation.

Reporter Blandine Lenoir (Clémentine Amouroux) finds herself in the middle of controversy in wickedly funny Rohmer satire

Arguments abound over parking lots, the relative values of country vs. city, traditional farming vs. new advances, form vs. function, politics and ecology, and chance vs. the imponderable nature of history, involving Rossignol, Dechaumes, Lebrun-Blondet, Lenoir, architect Antoine Pergola (Michel Jaouen), the mayor’s girlfriend, author Bérénice Beaurivage (Arielle Dombasle), and even Rossignol’s ten-year-old daughter, Zoé (Galaxie Barbouth). Oddly, and most refreshingly, the extremely French rational, irrational, scientific, metaphysical, subtle, obvious, logical, and illogical discussions don’t involve any smoking, drinking, or sex. Even so, The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, which features an endearingly goofy score by Sébastien Erms, is a purely French film from start to finish, a lovely little slice of life that is one of Rohmer’s unsung masterworks. The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque is screening February 17 at 4:00 & 7:30 in the French Institute Alliance Française’s CinéSalon series “Eccentrics of French Comedy” series; the 7:30 show will be introduced by film critic Nicholas Elliott, and both shows will be followed by a wine reception. The series concludes February 24 with Luc Moullet’s The Land of Madness, introduced by theater director Pavol Liska.

ECCENTRICS OF FRENCH COMEDY: YOYO

All the wealth in the world can’t make a lonely millionaire (Pierre Étaix) happy in YOYO

CINÉSALON: YOYO (Pierre Étaix, 1965)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 3, 4:00
Series continues Tuesdays through February 24
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

French auteur Pierre Étaix’s strange and beautiful films were long inaccessible, the subject of nearly two decades of legal wrangling, but on February 3 at 4:00, the French Institute Alliance Française will be presenting his 1965 bittersweet black-and-white slapstick charmer, Yoyo, as part of its January-February CinéSalon “Eccentrics of French Comedy” series, followed by a wine reception. (In April 2010, Étaix was finally able to once again bring his films to the public, his entire output restored and making their New York debut at a festival of all five features and three shorts at Film Forum in October 2012.) Étaix, who wrote Yoyo with master collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière, who also cowrote films by Luis Buñuel, Miloš Forman, Volker Schlöndorff, Andrzej Wajda, Nagisa Oshima, and Louis Malle and won an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2014, stars as a ridiculously wealthy but extremely bored man who lives alone in an ornately decorated, absurdly large chateau. It’s 1925, and he has servants for absolutely everything, as well as his own private band and flappers, but he pines for his lost love, Isolina (Claudine Auger). One day she arrives with a traveling circus, along with a young boy (Philippe Dionnet) who turns out to be his son. She at first rejects the multimillionaire, but when he loses it all on Black Tuesday, the three of them form their own traveling circus, with the boy ultimately turning into a popular clown named Yoyo (played as an adult by Étaix) and seeking to restore the chateau and his family.

French auteur Pierre Étaix takes clowning around very seriously in rediscovered classic

The first section of the film is a glorious homage to the silent film era and other cinematic comedians, with director and star Étaix evoking his mentor, Jacques Tati; Charlie Chaplin; Buster Keaton; and, later, Jerry Lewis, with whom he’d appear as Gustav the Great in Lewis’s never-to-be-seen Holocaust film The Day the Clown Died. Nouvelle Vague cinematographer Jean Boffety (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; Je t’aime, je t’aime) shoots Yoyo in a sharp, gorgeous black-and-white, composing breathtaking shots that boast a dazzling symmetry that must make Wes Anderson giddy with delight, while Étaix fills the film with ingenious sight gags that would make Ernie Kovacs proud (just wait till you see the supposed still-life painting), all anchored by Jean Paillaud’s memorable musical theme. But once the stock market crashes and talkies take over, dialogue enters the picture, and the camera is often off balance, the perfect symmetry a thing of the past. With Yoyo, Étaix, who had previously made Heureux Anniversaire and The Suitor and would go on to make The Great Love and En pleine forme, was influenced by the sudden, tragic death of his father, his love of the circus — he had already worked under the big tent, and he would leave films to become a clown in a traveling circus in the early 1970s — and his viewing of Fellini’s 8½ (look for the La Strada poster) resulting in a film that sometimes gets a little lost and too surreal, but he ultimately brings things back around as Yoyo grows into a star and the story travels through the arc of twentieth-century entertainment, from the silent era to talkies to television. It’s a real treat that Étaix’s work is undergoing this rediscovery; lovers of Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist will particularly enjoy Yoyo. “Eccentrics of French Comedy” continues through February 24 with Riad Sattouf’s The French Kissers introduced by Jean-Philippe Tessé, Jacques Rozier’s Du côté d’Orouët introduced by Annie Bergen, Eric Rohmer’s The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque introduced by Nicholas Elliott, and Luc Moullet’s The Land of Madness introduced by Pavol Liska.

THE ART OF SEX AND SEDUCTION: THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN

Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner) keeps his eyes on he prize in François Truffaut’s THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN

CINÉSALON: THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN (L’HOMME QUI AIMAIT LES FEMMES) (François Truffaut, 1977)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, December 16, $13, 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Back in October, a Hollaback! video went viral showing a young woman walking through New York City as men harassed her by calling out suggestively to her, looking luridly at her, and even following her. It’s hard not to think about that video, posted by a nonprofit “dedicated to ending street harassment,” when watching François Truffaut’s 1977 film, The Man Who Loved Women. As Maurice Jaubert’s bright, cheery score plays, a string of women get out of their cars to attend a funeral. The hearse drives past the camera — just as cinematographer Nestor Almendros’s name flashes on the screen — and holds for a few seconds as Truffaut himself watches the hearse go by, then walks off in the other direction. “One funeral is just like another,” Geneviève (Brigitte Fossey) says in voice-over. “However, this one is special. Not a man in sight. Only women . . . nothing but women.” They have all gathered to say farewell to Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner), a man obsessed with the fairer sex, particularly when he sees their bare ankles and calves. He goes to great lengths to find them, to be with them, but he is no mere ladies’ man or womanizing misogynist seeking to add notches to his belt. Deeply affected by his rather offbeat relationship with his mother (Marie-Jeanne Montfajon), he finds it impossible to stop these constant urges. He works in a lab building and testing model airplanes for the military, still a child playing with toys. He is not a particular handsome man, nor is he that dapper or charming, but there is something in his eyes, in his mannerisms, that make him surprisingly desirable to the opposite sex. He is after more than just physical pleasure, but it always remains just out of his grasp, leaving an empty hole inside that he tries to fill by writing a book about his numerous exploits and endless search for happiness, a journey that ends with his premature death.

Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner) decides to share his love of women with the rest of the world

Truffaut, who based some situations in the film on his own life with women and his mother, fills The Man Who Loved Women with a bevy of beauties, including Nelly Borgeaud, Geneviève Fontanel, Valérie Bonnier, Nathalie Baye, and Leslie Caron. But The Man Who Loved Women is not just about eye candy, even with the nudity; it’s about the search for true love, as evidenced by a late scene between Bertrand and former flame Véra (Caron). It’s also about the art of storytelling itself, told in flashback and, in the second half, focusing on Bertrand’s book, with a stream of clever self-references linking cinema and literature. Denner, who previously starred in Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black, has an uncanny way of making us root for him despite the sheer political incorrectness of his raison d’être; The Man Who Loved Women is probably not on Hollaback!’s Christmas wish list. But as crafted by screenwriters Truffaut, Michel Fermaud, and Suzanne Schiffman, the film, which is set in the pretty city of Montpellier in the south of France, portrays Bertrand as a kind of romantic antihero, an everyman who is fully aware of what he is doing but just can’t stop it. The film was remade in 1983 by Blake Edwards with Burt Reynolds, Julie Andrews, and Kim Basinger, but it’s not the same, of course. Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women, which earned César nominations for Denner, Borgeaud, and Fontanel, concludes the French Institute Alliance Française CinéSalon series “The Art of Sex and Seduction” on December 16 at 7:30, introduced by cultural critic Laura Kipnis.

THE ART OF SEX AND SEDUCTION: SWIMMING POOL

Jealousy and envy are at the heart of François Ozon’s sexy thriller

CINÉSALON: SWIMMING POOL (François Ozon, 2003)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, November 18, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through December 16
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
www.focusfeatures.com

Charlotte Rampling is divine in François Ozon’s playfully creepy mystery about a popular British crime novelist taking a break from the big city (London) to recapture her muse at her publisher’s French villa, only to be interrupted by the publisher’s hot-to-trot teenage daughter. Rampling stars as Sarah Morton, a fiftysomething novelist who is jealous of the attention being poured on young writer Terry Long (Sebastian Harcombe) by her longtime publisher, John Bosload (Game of Thrones’s Charles Dance). John sends Sarah off to his elegant country house, where she sets out to complete her next Inspector Dorwell novel in peace and quiet. But the prim and proper — and rather bitter and cynical — Sarah’s working vacation is soon intruded upon by Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), John’s teenage daughter, who likes walking around topless and living life to the fullest, clearly enjoying how Sarah looks at her and judges her. “You’re just a frustrated English writer who writes about dirty things but never does them,” Julie says, and soon Sarah is reevaluating the choices she’s made in her own life. Rampling, who mixes sexuality with a heart-wrenching vulnerability like no other actress (see The Night Porter, The Verdict, and Heading South), more than holds her own as the primpy old maid in the shadow of a young beauty, even tossing in some of nudity to show that she still has it. (Rampling has also posed nude in her sixties in a series of photographs by Juergen Teller alongside twentysomething model Raquel Zimmerman, so such “competition” is nothing to her.)

Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Sarah (Charlotte Rampling) come to a kind of understanding in François Ozon’s SWIMMING POOL

Rampling has really found her groove working with Ozon, having appeared in four of his films, highlighted by a devastating performance in Under the Sand as a wife dealing with the sudden disappearance of her husband. Sagnier, who has also starred in Ozon’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women, is a delight to watch, especially as things turn dark. Swimming Pool is very much about duality; the film opens with a shot of the shimmering Thames river while the title comes onscreen and Philippe Rombi’s score of mystery and danger plays, and later Sarah says, “I absolutely loathe swimming pools,” to which Julie responds, “Pools are boring; there’s no excitement, no feeling of infinity. It’s just a big bathtub.” (“It’s more like a cesspool of living bacteria,” Sarah adds.) Ozon (Time to Leave, Criminal Lovers) explores most of the seven deadly sins as Sarah and Julie get to know each other all too well. Swimming Pool is being shown November 18 at 4:00 and 7:30 as part of the French Institute Alliance Française CinéSalon series “The Art of Sex and Seduction,” with the later screening introduced by filmmaker Ry Russo-Young and followed by a wine reception; the series continues Tuesdays through December 16 with Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake introduced by Alan Brown, Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress introduced by Melissa Anderson, and François Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women introduced by Laura Kipnis, all complemented by Jean-Daniel Lorieux’s “Seducing the Lens” photography exhibition.