Tag Archives: french institute alliance francaise

EDM ANTHEMS — FRENCH TOUCH ON FILM: DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED

The fascinating history of French EDM pioneers Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo is detailed in DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED

DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED (Hervé Martin Delpierre, 2015)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, March 1, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through April 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

You might think that the phrase “the French Touch,” which is part of the title of FIAF’s March-April edition of its CinéSalon series, refers to the unique style of such French auteurs as François Truffaut, Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Jean Cocteau, Éric Rohmer, and others whose films are often included in these Tuesday-night festivals. But the term actually describes a group of DJs and bands associated with electronic dance music, or EDM, in France. So it is rather appropriate for the series, “EDM Anthems: French Touch on Film,” to kick off with Daft Punk Unchained, a thumping documentary about the patron saints of that movement, the iconoclastic duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, better known as Daft Punk. Director Hervé Martin Delpierre, who cowrote the film with Marina Rozenman, had his work cut out for him, as he had to make the film without the participation of Daft Punk itself, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo, who have not shown their faces in public this century and rarely give interviews of any kind. But Delpierre gets just about everyone else who has ever worked with them to open up, allowing others to interpret the band’s musical evolution and cultural impact as he traces DP’s career from 1992, when they were in the somewhat more traditional bass-guitar-drum combo Darlin’, to the worldwide sensation of their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, as they melded American disco, German techno, and Manchester industrial into something wholly new. A special focus is placed on their mind-blowing show at Coachella in 2006, which single-handedly changed the future of EDM.

Amid rare photographs of Bangalter and de Homem-Christo without their trademark robot helmets or masks and audio clips of radio interviews, Delpierre speaks with such Daft Punk collaborators as Kanye West, Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Pete Tong, Todd Edwards, Pharrell Williams, Skrillex, and Paul (Phantom of the Paradise) Williams, in addition to special effects master Tony Gardner, anime director Leiji Matsumoto, and filmmaker Michel Gondry, who first put DP in helmets. Also sharing insight into what makes the duo so significant are former manager Pedro (Busy P) Winter as well as various journalists, record label heads, and friends. “I just think they’re a unique set of individuals. I have a hard time calling them human, just because musically the robots are something else,” Pharrell, who scored a huge hit with Daft Punk on eventual Grammy favorite “Get Lucky,” says. “I just never experienced working with individuals like them. Everything is so concise. There’s a reason behind everything. Nothing is done by coincidence, by accident or mistake. It’s always with an intention to serve a purpose.” What also serves their purpose is avoiding promotion or publicity that would involve their making an appearance of any kind. Thus, we don’t learn about Bangalter and de Homem-Christo’s private lives, how they work with each other, or what they even look like today. But with everyone stressing how individualistic Daft Punk is, how they insist on doing things their own way no matter what, we wound up rooting for them to keep those helmets on and let the groove-heavy mystery linger on. Daft Punk Unchained is screening at FIAF on March 1 at 4:00 and 7:30; the later show will be followed by a Q&A with Delpierre and DJ Superpoze. In addition, Winter will lead a French Electronic Music Master Class on March 3 with Boston Bun, Superpoze, Jacques, and Julian Starke, and there will be a party celebrating the FIAF series on March 4 at Le Bain with Busy P, Boston Bun, Jacques, and Superpoze. The series continues through April 26 with such other films as Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, which are either set in the club scene or feature EDM-based soundtracks.

LHOMMME BEHIND THE CAMERA: LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Romy Schneider share a fun moment on the set of the gripping political/romantic thriller LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE

CinéSalon: LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE (FIRE AND ICE) (Alain Cavalier, 1962)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 9, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through February 23
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
zeitgeistfilms.com

FIAF’s wide-ranging “Lhomme Behind the Camera” CinéSalon series continues February 9 with a double rare treat: a visit by the man himself, master cinematographer Pierre Lhomme. The eighty-five-year-old Lhomme, who has shot more than sixty films for such directors as Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Bresson, William Klein, Marguerite Duras, James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, Benoît Jacquot, Patrice Chéreau, and Volker Schlöndorff, will be at Florence Gould Hall on February 9 for a Q&A following the second of two screenings of Alain Cavalier’s ravishing debut, the rarely shown and underappreciated 1962 neonoir Le combat dans l’île. The gripping French New Wave film, which was rediscovered in 2009, combines a crime thriller with a love triangle, shot in shadowy, smokey black-and-white by Lhomme. Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist, A Man and a Woman) is stoic as Clément Lesser, a member of a small, right-wing radical group determined to change things in France by any means necessary. Romy Schneider (Purple Noon Mädchen in Uniform) is warm and charming as Anne Lesser, Clément’s wife, a party girl who is growing tired of her husband’s cold, controlling nature and his secret rendezvous with the group, which is led by mastermind Serge (Pierre Asso). After an assassination attempt goes awry, Clément and Anne hide out at the isolated home of Clément’s childhood friend, Paul (Jules et Jim’s Henri Serre), a left-wing idealist who prints political material. When Clément has to set out on his own, Anne and Paul become close, setting up both a philosophical and romantic battle between the two old friends.

Jean-Louis Trintignant, Romy Schneider, and Pierre Asso star in Alain Cavalier’s debut film

Cavalier (Thérèse, Un étrange voyage) and Lhomme (Army of Shadows, The Mother and the Whore) create a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere in Le combat dans l’île, with Lhomme’s slowly moving camera — a Cameflex that was so noisy that all of the dialogue had to be dubbed in later — closing in on his characters in small rooms, where they sometimes emerge from complete darkness. The story is a kind of parable about French politics in the 1960s, following the landslide victory of Charles de Gaulle, who would survive several assassination attempts during his ten years as president. Le combat dans l’île also boasts quite a pedigree, with Cavalier’s mentor, Louis Malle, serving as producer, dialogue written with Jean-Paul Rappenau, and an outstanding score by French composer Serge Nigg; Cavalier said the film’s father was Bresson and mother was Jean Renoir. The solid cast also includes Jacques Berlioz as Clément’s wealthy and powerful industrialist father, Maurice Garrel as left-wing politician Terrasse, and Diane Lepvrier as Cécile, Paul’s young housekeeper. The FIAF series continues February 16 with Chris Marker and Lhomme’s Le Joli Mai and concludes February 23 with Rappenau’s Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Gérard Depardieu.

LHOMME BEHIND THE CAMERA: THE FLESH OF THE ORCHID

Charlotte Rampling is on the run in THE FLESH OF THE ORCHID

CinéSalon: THE FLESH OF THE ORCHID (LA CHAIR DE L’ORCHIDÉE) (Patrice Chéreau, 1975)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, January 26, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through February 23
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

French stage and opera director Patrice Chéreau made an offbeat choice for his debut film, deciding to adapt British thriller writer James Hadley Chase’s The Flesh of the Orchid, the 1948 sequel to his first novel, 1939’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which had been made into a 1948 film by St. John Legh Clowes considered to be one of the worst movies ever. So it’s little surprise that The Flesh of the Orchid is a dark and gloomy, not wholly successful, both tantalizing and frustrating tale of lust and greed. Following up her controversial role in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, the exquisite Charlotte Rampling stars as Claire, a mentally unbalanced heiress who has a penchant for blinding men who attempt to have sex with her. But she takes an odd liking to Louis Delage (Bruno Cremer), a man with financial problems who is on the run after witnessing a murder committed by a pair of cold-blooded killers, brothers Gyula and Joszef Berekian (Hans Christian Blech and François Simon). Meanwhile, Claire’s aunt, the elegant, très chic Madame Wegener (Edwige Feuillère), and her ne’er-do-well son, Arnaud (Rémy Germain), are hot on her trail as well, determined to lock her away again so they can get their hands on the family money.

flesh of the orchid

Adapted by Chereau and Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist Jean-Claude Carrière (Heureux Anniversaire, Belle de Jour), The Flesh of the Orchid is a peculiar, dreary mystery that is made palatable by Rampling’s mesmerizing performance, her dark, penetrating eyes offering an intriguing counterpoint to what her character likes to do to men’s faces, and Pierre Lhomme’s César-nominated cinematography, which uses water as a major theme and incorporates clever shots of windows and mirrors to heighten psychological tension. The back story involving Oscar winner Simone Signoret (Les diaboliques, Room at the Top) is never fully realized, while a cameo by Alida Valli (The Third Man, The Paradine Case) is simply baffling, unless it’s a strange reference to Georges Franju’s 1960 horror classic Eyes without a Face, in which Valli plays an assistant to a doctor trying to rebuild his daughter’s face after a terrible accident. And yes, that is Mr. Slugworth himself, Günter Meisner, as Madame Wegener’s trusted right-hand man. Chereau would go on to make such films as Queen Margot, Intimacy, and Persécution before passing away in 2013 at the age of sixty-eight. The Flesh of the Orchid is screening at Florence Gould Hall on January 26 at 4:00 and 7:30 in FIAF’s CinéSalon series “Lhomme Behind the Camera,” a tribute to the eighty-five-year-old award-winning French cinematographer who shot more than sixty films, working with such directors as Joris Ivens, William Klein, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Bresson, Jean Eustache, Benoît Jacquot, Marguerite Duras, Dusan Makavejev, Claude Miller, and Claude Berri. The 7:30 show will be introduced by documentary director and cinematographer Frédéric Tcheng (Dior and I, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel). The series continues through February 23 with such other Lhomme-lensed films as James Ivory’s Maurice, which will be followed by a Q&A with Lhomme and Ivory; Alain Cavalier’s Le Combat dans l’île; Chris Marker and Lhomme’s Le Joli Mai; and Jean-Paul Rappenau’s Cyrano de Bergerac.

LHOMME BEHIND THE CAMERA: LE SAUVAGE

Catherine Deneuve and Yves Montand star in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s screwball romantic comedy, LE SAUVAGE

CinéSalon: LE SAUVAGE (THE SAVAGE) (LOVERS LIKE US) (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 1975)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, January 12, $14, 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through February 23
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

The spectacularly gorgeous Catherine Deneuve and the ruggedly handsome Yves Montand play it for outrageous laughs in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s screwball romantic comedy, Le Sauvage, aka Lovers Like Us. Deneuve is mesmerizing as Nelly, an unpredictable woman who lives by her wits, as if she is a feral child raised by wolves. She acts out instantly on her id, without concerning herself with the consequences and effects on other people. She is engaged to marry Vittorio (Luigi Vannucchi), a hot-blooded Italian who is none too happy when she bolts in the middle of the night. In need of money, Nelly goes to the nightclub where she worked for a year without getting paid, demanding her salary, but when slick manager Alex Fox (Tony Roberts) refuses to give her a dime, she takes off with his prized possession, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge.” She tries to sell the painting to the stranger in the hotel room next to hers, Martin (Montand), but when Vittorio wrongly assumes he is his fiancée’s lover, Martin gets caught up in the middle of some crazy silliness as well as legitimate danger. Soon Martin and Nelly are living on a deserted island, she on the run from Vittorio, he hiding from his mysterious past.

Nominated for four César Awards — Best Actress (Deneuve), Best Director, Best Cinematography (Pierre Lhomme), and Best Editing (Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte) — Le Sauvage can be, er, savagely funny as well as absurdly silly. The plot takes plenty of awkward twists and turns as the action moves from Caracas to the Bahamas, from the Virgin Islands to New York City and France. Much of the madcap comedy is overblown, but it’s still an awful lot of fun, primarily because Deneuve and Montand are a joy to watch, and Rappeneau never misses a chance to showcase her beauty (oh, when she is washing her hair and the camera cuts in on her . . .) and his machismo (even slyly referencing The Wages of Fear when Montand gets behind the wheel of his truck). Roberts shows off his slapstick skills, but the subplot involving Vittorio’s endless chase of a woman who doesn’t want him grows both tiresome and misogynistic, and Bobo Lewis is way too over the top as the odd Miss Mark. The delightful music by Michel Legrand goes hand in hand with Lhomme’s bright and cheerful cinematography, with scene after scene painted in lush pastel colors that dazzle the eyes. So it is rather appropriate that Le Sauvage is kicking off FIAF’s two-month tribute to the eighty-five-year-old French cinematographer, the subject of the CinéSalon series “Lhomme Behind the Camera,” screening at 4:00 and 7:30 on January 12 in Florence Gould Hall. The series continues through February 23 with such other Lhomme-lensed films as Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, and Chris Marker and Lhomme’s Le Joli Mai.

MATHIEU AMALRIC — RENAISSANCE MAN: THE SCREEN ILLUSION

Clindor (Loïc Corbery) is caught in various personal and professional triangles in THE SCREEN ILLUSION

CinéSalon: THE SCREEN ILLUSION (L’ILLUSION COMIQUE) (Mathieu Amalric, 2010)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, December 1, $14, 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through December 15
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

In 2010, French actor-director Mathieu Amalric was commissioned by la Comédie-Française to make a television version of one of the plays the legendary company had recently staged. The rules were both limiting and freeing: He had to use the same cast, could not add any words to the script (but could make cuts), and had to shoot the film in twelve days without using the theater itself. Amalric had the credentials for such a daunting assignment; he had previously starred in such films as Munich, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Kings and Queen and directed Mange ta soupe and On Tour, in which he also starred and for which he won the Best Director prize at Cannes. He decided to adapt Pierre Corneille’s 1636 play, L’Illusion comique, a melodrama written just as the Baroque style was shifting into the Classical period. The film takes place in and around a hotel in 2011, where concierge/sorcerer/detective Alcandre (Hervé Pierre) is showing surveillance video to Pridamant (Alain Lenglet), who is searching for his long-missing son, Clindor (Loïc Corbery). Clindor is working for video-game executive Matamore (Denis Podalydès); both men, as well as Adraste (Adrien Gamba-Gontard), are vying for the attention of the lovely but cold Isabelle (Suliane Brahim), daughter of corporation head Géronte (Jean-Baptiste Malartre). Meanwhile, Adraste’s coworker, Lyse (Julie Sicard), is desperately in love with Clindor. It all comes to a head one night following a dinner party, when a fierce battle takes place on a rooftop. “When all hope is gone, one has nothing more to fear,” Isabelle says.

Mathieu Amalric on the set of his Pierre Corneille adaptation for la Comédie-Française

The Screen Illusion is a clever and inventive, if at times confusing and overly farcical, adaptation of Corneille’s tale. The actors recite their lines in verse, which takes a little getting used to. Production designer Hervé Dajon and cinematographer Isabelle Razavet bathes the hotel in deep, lurid greens and reds, echoing the greed, envy, jealousy, and lust that surround the characters. The film is very much about the act of viewing; just as we watch theater and movies, becoming lost in their magic, Pridamant watches his son via CCTV cameras, and Amalric actually brings the camera — and the viewer — inside the recordings as the story unfolds before our eyes as well. “Believe only what you see,” Alcandre warns at the beginning of the film, looking into a mirror and talking to himself as well as the audience, hinting at what is to follow and foreshadowing a surprise twist at the end. Inspired by such works as Jean-Luc Godard’s Détective and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, Amalric, an accomplished stage performer in addition to being a film director and actor, melds all of those elements into The Screen Illusion, a tidy little tale that is more than what it first appears. The Screen Illusion is being shown at 7:30 on December 1 in Florence Gould Hall as part of FIAF’s CinéSalon series “Mathieu Amalric: Renaissance Man” and will be introduced by film critic Nicholas Elliott. The series continues through December 15 with Late September, Early Spring; Fantastic Mr. Fox; and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT (LE MORAL DES MÉNAGES)

Mathieu Amalric makes his U.S. stage debut at FIAF this week in FIGHT OR FLIGHT with Anne-Laure Tondu (photo © Marc Domage)

French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Wednesday, November 4, and Thursday, November 5, $50, 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Acclaimed actor and director Mathieu Amalric has been rather busy in New York City, celebrating his fiftieth birthday with appearances at a pair of film festivals being held in his honor, “Mathieu Amalric: Renaissance Man,” at Anthology Film Archives and the French Institute Alliance Française. But most exciting, on November 4 and 5 he’ll be making his U.S. theatrical debut at FIAF, starring opposite Anne-Laure Tondu in the sixty-minute drama Fight or Flight (Le Moral des ménages). The play, about a forty-year-old musician facing a midlife crisis, is based on the 2002 novel by award-winning Parisian writer Eric Reinhardt and is adapted and directed by Stéphanie Cléau, Amalric’s wife, who was also his costar in his latest directorial effort, The Blue Room. (Amalric and Cléau will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 screening of the film at FIAF on November 3.) Amalric is an extraordinarily sensitive actor, as seen in such films as Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Olivier Assayas’s Late August, Early September, and Arnaud Desplechin’s Kings & Queen, while also displaying a mischievous sense of humor, as exemplified in the French version of Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, so this stage production should be a real treat.

MATHIEU AMALRIC — RENAISSANCE MAN: THE BLUE ROOM

Mathieu Amalric stars as a husband and father in deep trouble in film he also directed and cowrote

CinéSalon: THE BLUE ROOM (LA CHAMBRE BLEUE) (Mathieu Amalric, 2014)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, November 3, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through December 15
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
www.lachambrebleue-lefilm.com

Real-life partners Mathieu Amalric and Stéphanie Cléau strip Georges Simenon’s short 1955 novel The Blue Room to its bare essentials — and we do mean bare — in their intimate, claustrophobic modern noir adaptation, which kicks off FIAF’s six-week tribute to Amalric, consisting of the eight-film CinéSalon series “Mathieu Amalric: Renaissance Man” and the special two-night theatrical presentation Fight or Flight (Le Moral des Ménages), starring Amalric and Anne-Laure Tondu, directed by Cléau. In addition to being one of the world’s most talented actors, starring in such films as Kings and Queen, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, A Christmas Tale, and Venus in Fur, Amalric has directed several previous works, including On Tour, which earned him the Best Director prize at Cannes. In The Blue Room, Amalric plays Julien Gahyde, a successful agriculture equipment salesman whose passionate affair with a local pharmacist’s wife, Esther Despierre (Cléau, who cowrote the script with Amalric), appears to have ended in murder. The film opens with Grégoire Hetzel’s lush, sweeping music as the camera makes its way to a blue hotel room where Julien and Esther have just made love offscreen. “Did I hurt you?” she asks. “No,” he responds. “You’re angry,” she says. “No,” he repeats as she laughs and a drop of blood falls on a creamy white sheet. Only then do we see the naked, sweaty couple, whose lurid tale has been succinctly revealed by this highly stylized, beautifully orchestrated scene. Next we hear Julien being interrogated by a magistrate (Laurent Poitrenaux) about a suspicious death, and soon we see Julien in handcuffs in the police station. We don’t know exactly what crime he has been accused of, nor do we know the victim — it could be Julien’s wife, Delphine (Léa Drucker), Esther’s husband, Nicolas (Olivier Mauvezin), or maybe even Esther herself. But as director Amalric, cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne, and editor François Gedigier cut between the past and the present, the details slowly unfold — although that doesn’t mean they ever become completely clear.

Amalric fills The Blue Room with bold splashes of color amid all the darkness and muted skin tones, from the red towel that signals Julien and Esther’s illicit rendezvous to Delphine’s blue bikini to the strikingly red hair of Nicolas’s mother (Véronique Alain) and the shiny green and yellow John Deere equipment he sells. Amalric and Cléau trim so much out of the original story that it too often feels overly cold and calculating, the manipulation too clear and obvious. The nudity also lacks subtlety; Amalric and Cléau might be comfortable with each other sans clothing, but it seems to be a bit of an obsession with Amalric the director. Nonetheless, The Blue Room, shot in the old-fashioned aspect ratio of 1:33 and running a mere seventy-six minutes, is a gripping yarn, a lurid tale of sex and murder, pain and passion, and femmes fatale, told from the point of view of a relatively quiet, reserved man who never thought his world could just fall apart like it does. With such plot elements as adultery and murder and even the presence of a young daughter (Mona Jaffart), the story cannot fail to call to mind French author Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel of provincial France and misplaced passion, Madame Bovary, but the near-echoes never become too loud, merely adding a somewhat puzzling flavor to the film, like a dream half remembered. The Blue Room is screening at 4:00 & 7:30 on November 3 in Florence Gould Hall; Amalric and Cléau will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 show. The series continues through December 15 with such other Amalric films as My Sex Life . . . or How I Got into an Argument, The Screen Illusion, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. A companion series continues at Anthology Film Archives through November 8.