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CROSSING THE LINE — ARTIST’S CHOICE: JÉRÔME BEL / MoMA DANCE COMPANY

(© 2012 Museum of Modern Art, New York. photo by Julieta Cervantes)

MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, Marron Atrium
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, October 27, through Monday, October 31, free with museum admission, 12:30 & 3:00
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.moma.org

In the fall of 2012, French conceptual choreographer Jérôme Bel presented The Show Must Go On as part of the three-week MoMA series “Some sweet day.” The piece was performed by professional dancers, teachers, and choreographers. Bel is now returning to MoMA for “Artist’s Choice: Jérôme Bel / MoMA Dance Company,” a new, site-specific work that will feature an unusual troupe composed of MoMA staff members, who had to audition in order to be chosen. Bel is a main focus of this year’s Crossing the Line festival, FIAF’s annual multidisciplinary lineup of dance, art, theater, film, and discussion. Bel restaged The Show Must Go On last week at the Joyce, and he is bringing back 1995’s eponymously titled Jérôme Bel for its New York premiere October 27-29 at the Kitchen. At MoMA every afternoon at 12:30 and 3:00 from October 27 to 31, staffers will dance in the Marron Atrium, moving around and among the crowd, many of which are, of course, rather dance savvy. (Maria Hassabi just won a Bessie Award for PLASTIC, her 2016 dance that also took place in the atrium and other locations around the museum.) Others won’t know quite what’s going on, which is all part of the fun.

BEYOND THE INGÉNUE: ADIEU PHILIPPINE

Liliane (Yveline Céry), Juliette (Stefania Sabatini), and Michel (Jean-Claude Aimini) have some wild adventures in ADIEU PHILIPPINE

CINÉSALON: ADIEU PHILIPPINE (Jacques Rozier, 1962)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 25, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

FIAF’s two-month CinéSalon series “Beyond the Ingénue” comes to a close October 25 with one of the lesser-known French New Wave classics, Jacques Rozier’s shamefully seldom screened Adieu Philippine. Rozier’s first film is a freewheeling adventure as Michel (Jean-Claude Aimini), a young man working in a television studio, cavorts with a pair of eighteen-year-old best friends, Juliette (Stefania Sabatini) and Liliane (Yveline Céry), while waiting to be called up to serve in the Algerian War. Rozier opens the film by taking viewers into the studio, where they are shooting a lively jazz performance by French violinist Maxim Saury and his band, the bouncy rhythm meeting the behind-the-scenes chaos. Pretending to be more important than he really is, Michel invites Juliette and Liliane to come in, and soon the trio is hitting cafés and nightclubs, camping on the beach, and trying to hook up with would-be filmmaker Pachala (Vittorio Caprioli). But what started out as fun gets somewhat more serious as jealousy creeps in and the war intervenes.

A trio of young French dreamers fight ennui and prepare for war in Jacques Rozier’s seldom-screened ADIEU PHILIPPINE

Adieu Philippine is an exhilarating tale of teenage freedom, of youth taking advantage of all life has to offer no matter one’s circumstance, fighting off ennui with a mad desire to just have fun. Rozier, who wrote the screenplay with Michèle O’Glor, allowed the cast of mostly nonprofessional actors to improvise and dubbed in dialogue later, resulting in less-than-stellar syncing that took two years in postproduction but thankfully gets lost in all the wild abandon. In his debut feature, cinematographer René Mathelin (Pardon Mon Affaire, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe) shoots guerrilla-style in black-and-white, a kind of cinéma vérité in which passersby and people in the background often look at the camera, wondering what is going on. Adieu Philippine shares a soul and spirit with the early work of such auteurs as Jean-Luc Godard (1960’s Breathless), a friend and supporter of Rozier’s; American-born French photographer and documentarian William Klein (1958’s Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?), and François Truffaut, whose similarly themed Jules et Jim was also released in 1962, but Adieu Philippine has a charm all its own. Rozier, who turns ninety on November 10, would make only a handful of other features, including 1985’s Maine-Ocean and 2001’s Martingale. A new 35mm print of Adieu Philippine is being shown at FIAF on October 25 at 4:00 and 7:30; the later screening will be introduced by New York Review of Books editor Madeleine Schwartz.

BEYOND THE INGÉNUE: PAULINE AT THE BEACH

Pauline (Amanda Langlet), Pierre (Pascal Greggory), and Marion (Arielle Dombasle) get involved in a complicated love sextet in Éric Rohmer’s PAULINE AT THE BEACH

CINÉSALON: PAULINE AT THE BEACH (PAULINE À LA PLAGE) (Éric Rohmer, 1983)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 4, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through October 25
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

“Love’s a form of insanity,” Pauline (Amanda Langlet) says in Éric Rohmer’s modern French classic, 1983’s Pauline at the Beach. The fifteen-year-old virgin turns out to be the most intelligent and honest character in the film, which earned Rohmer the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. Amanda Langlet stars as Pauline, a teenager who is spending the end of the summer on the Normandy coast with her older cousin, sexy fashion designer Marion (Arielle Dombasle). Windsurfing hottie Pierre (Pascal Greggory) wants to rekindle the romance that cooled off when Marion left to get married, but the now-divorced Marion lusts for Henri (Féodor Atkine), a balding, middle-aged father who is not nearly as serious about sex as Marion is. Meanwhile, Pauline and fellow teen Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse) start a cute flirtation that gets upended when Marion shows up at Henri’s beach house one afternoon to discover candy girl Louisette (Rosette) hiding in a bathroom with Sylvain. A series of lies, misunderstandings, and miscommunications — all the elements of a basic French sex farce — ensue as various characters reevaluate their relationships as well as their faith in love.

Photographed by the great Néstor Almendros, who worked extensively with Rohmer and François Truffaut, Pauline at the Beach is a sophisticated jigsaw puzzle of a romantic drama, as Marion, Pierre, Pauline, and Henri spend much of the film debating over just what love is, each justifying their own beliefs. While the grown-ups act like children, the two teens are more like adults when examining the future. The film is also a splendid time capsule of 1980s styles, from the cheesy music to the awesome hairstyles and bathing suits. Dombasle, who has had a long film career, is racy and seductive as the libidinous blonde, but Langlet, in her cinematic debut, steals the show with her fantastic bangs, skimpy bikini, and expressive puppy-dog eyes. The third in Rohmer’s 1980s “Comedies and Proverbs” cycle — which also includes The Aviator’s Wife, A Good Marriage, Full Moon in Paris, The Green Ray, and Boyfriends and Girlfriends — Pauline at the Beach is screening October 4 at 4:00 and 7:30 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Beyond the Ingénue”; the later show will be introduced by author Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires). The series continues Tuesday nights through October 25 with Patricia Mazuy’s The King’s Daughters, Jacques Rozier’s Adieu Philippine, and a double feature of Antoine Desrosières’s Haramiste and Claire Denis’s US Go Home.

BEYOND THE INGÉNUE: WATER LILIES

Floriane (Adèle Haenel) and Marie (Pauline Acquart) develop a complicated friendship in Céline Sciamma’s WATER LILIES

CINÉSALON: WATER LILIES (NAISSANCE DES PIEUVRES) (Céline Sciamma, 2007)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, September 27, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through October 25
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

This past spring, the FIAF CinéSalon series “EDM Anthems: French Touch on Film” concluded with Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, an award-winning coming-of-age drama about a sixteen-year-old girl who is trying to find a workable path to a worthwhile adulthood but is continually thwarted by socioeconomic and cultural issues. The 2014 film stars Karidja Touré, who was nominated for a César for Most Promising Actress. On September 27, Sciamma’s first feature, Water Lilies, another poignant and provocative coming-of-age drama, will be shown in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Beyond the Ingénue.” The 2007 film stars Adèle Haenel and Pauline Acquart, both of whom earned nominations as Most Promising Actress, along with a Best Debut nod for Sciamma. Mousy Marie (Acquart) wants to become part of her school’s synchronized swimming team, so she cozies up to squad captain Floriane (Haenel), who has a reputation as a rather loose girl. Marie’s best friend, Anne (Louise Blachère), dreams of having her first kiss with the hunky François (Warren Jacquin), a swimmer who is dating Floriane. Marie is caught in the middle, especially as she develops feelings of her own for Floriane.

The French title of Water Lilies is Naissance des Pieuvres, which translates as Birth of the Octopuses, referencing the eight interweaving arms of the four main characters as well as the synchronized swimming team itself. The film is a bold and honest look at young love, teen angst, and body image. While Floriane flaunts her alluring figure, Marie is small and flat-chested, and Anne is big-boned and fleshy, with large breasts that she desperately wants François to see. Writer-director Sciamma creates uniquely believable and intimately touching scenes that reveal the different problems the protagonists face as regular teenagers who might not quite be ready for what they are getting themselves involved in. As with Girlhood and Sciamma’s other full-length feature, 2011’s Tomboy, the cinematography, which goes from underwater shots to long, shadowy hallways, is by Crystel Fournier, with music by Para One, aka electronica maestro Jean-Baptiste de Laubier. Winner of the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film, Water Lilies is screening September 27 at 4:00 and 7:30; the later show will be introduced by Columbia French literature professor Elisabeth Ladenson. “Beyond the Ingénue” continues Tuesday nights through October 25 with such other films as Éric Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach, Patricia Mazuy’s The King’s Daughters, and Jacques Rozier’s Adieu Philippine.

CROSSING THE LINE 2016

Jérôme Bel’s THE SHOW MUST GO ON will go on at the Joyce as part of FIAF’s tenth annual Crossing the Line festival

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 22 – November 3, free – $55
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.fiaf.org

We can’t help but get excited for FIAF’s annual multidisciplinary fall festival, Crossing the Line, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. Every summer, we eagerly await the advance announcement of what they’ll be presenting, then scour the lineup for the most unusual events to make sure we see them. This year is another stellar collection of cutting-edge international dance and theater, beginning September 22 and 24 with screenings of concluding episodes seven, eight, and nine of Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s epic Life and Times at Anthology Film Archives ($11), along with a Thursday night party in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall ($10) that begins with a screening of the eighth chapter of Kristin Worrall’s rather ordinary life, with the artists themselves serving up PB&Js. The festival features a special focus on French choreographer Jérôme Bel, who will be involved in four programs, beginning October 17 (free with RSVP) with a screening of his short biographical film on Paris Opera dancer Véronique Doisneau, followed by a discussion with Bel and Ana Janevski. Bel’s award-winning The Show Must Go On will go on at the Joyce October 20-22 ($36-$46), with Bel hanging around for a Curtain Chat after the 2:00 show on October 22. Bel will present the New York premiere of his controversial eponymous 1995 signature work at the Kitchen October 27-29 ($20) while also moving over to the Museum of Modern Art October 27-31 (free with museum admission) for Artist’s Choice: MoMA Dance Company, a site-specific piece for MoMA’s Marron Atrium that will be performed by members of the MoMA staff.

Tenth annual Crossing the Line festival features special focus on breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen, including AUTARCIE (….): A SEARCH FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Tenth annual Crossing the Line festival features special focus on breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen, including U.S. premiere of AUTARCIE (….): A SEARCH FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen is making her U.S. debut with a pair of works: the free Graphic Cyphers will take place September 23 at Roberto Clemente Plaza in the Bronx at 2:00 and in Times Square September 25 at 2:30 and 4:30, while Autarcie (….): a search for self-sufficiency has its American debut September 29 to October 1 ($20) at Gibney Dance. “I seek to reconcile the peculiarities of hip-hop with demanding theatrical performance to question the place of human beings in the modern-day world,” Nguyen says; you can hear more from her at the October 1 artist talk “Towards Cultural Equity: The Artist’s Perspective” (free with RSVP) with fellow panelists David Thomson, Mohamed El Khatib, and Rokafella, moderated by George Emilio Sanchez. The UK’s Forced Entertainment, which is “interested in confusion as well as laughter,” will likely dish out a healthy portion of both at the New York premiere of Tomorrow’s Parties in Florence Gould Hall September 28 and 30 and October 1 ($20). From September 30 to October 2 ($35-$55), Venice Biennale lifetime achievement award winner Romeo Castellucci will deliver the one-man show Julius Caesar. Spared Parts, making the most of Federal Hall’s marble columns. This past June, dancer-choreographer Maria Hassabi gave an informal preview of her latest work, Staged, on the High Line; she will now bring the final piece down to the Kitchen, below the High Line, where it will be performed by Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Hristoula Harakas, and Oisín Monaghan October 4-8 ($20).

Romeo Castellucci will make his New York City debut channeling Julius Caesar at Federal Hall

On October 6-8 and 13-15 ($35), drag fabulist Dickie Beau will conjure up Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Richard Meryman at Abrons Arts Center for Blackouts. [Ed. note: All performances of Blackouts have been canceled because of unexpected travel circumstances.] Also on October 13-15 ($20), Lora Juodkaite and Annie Hanaeur will perform the U.S. premiere of Rachid Ouramdane’s Tordre (Wrought) at Baryshnikov Arts Center; CTL veteran Ouramdane will take part in the October 15 artist talk “Towards Cultural Equity: The Institutional Perspective” (free with RSVP) with keynote speaker Patrick Weil, panelists Firoz Ladak and Zeyba Rahman, and moderator Thomas Lax. On October 25 (free with RSVP), Aaron Landsman will host Perfect City, in which a group of young people from the Lower East Side will gather at Abrons Arts Center and discuss what the future holds in store for them, particularly in their neighborhood. The festival ends on November 3 with My Barbarian’s Post-Party Dream State Caucus at the New Museum (free with RSVP), held in conjunction with the exhibition “The Audience Is Always Right.” Throughout the festival, you can check out Mathieu Bernard-Reymond’s “Transform” art exhibit in the FIAF Gallery, and Tim Etchells’s multichannel video installation “Eyes Looking” will be projected at 11:59 each night in Times Square as October’s Midnight Moment.

BEYOND THE INGÉNUE: À NOS AMOURS

Sandrine Bonnaire makes a stunning debut as a sexually active teen in Maurice Pialat’s À NOS AMOURS

CINÉSALON: À NOS AMOURS (Maurice Pialat, 1983)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, September 20, $14, 4:00
Series continues Tuesdays through October 25
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

Sandrine Bonnaire won the César for Most Promising Actress in her film debut, Maurice Pialat’s À nos amours, and she has more than fulfilled that promise in her still-vibrant thirty-plus-year career. Bonnaire stars as fifteen-year-old Suzanne, who suddenly becomes sexually promiscuous one summer. “‘Don’t you think one can die of love?’” she asks, rehearsing for a camp play. “‘You told me you loved me. What kind of a world is this?’” As Suzanne flits about from lover to lover, her family begins to notice a change in her and is not very happy about it. Her mother (Evelyne Ker) and father (Pialat) are on the verge of a breakup, and her creepy brother, Robert (Dominique Besnehard), doesn’t really get any of it; all three seem emotionally stunted, able only to express their feelings about Suzanne’s behavior by striking her physically. Suzanne is a decidedly contemporary Western European ingénue; the film casts no aspersions on her and does not judge her actions, even if her mother and Robert do. Bonnaire was around the same age as her character when she made the film, which contains significant nudity and bed scenes if not graphic depictions of sex; the film would likely have been wildly controversial if made in Hollywood with a fifteen-year-old American actress. Suzanne’s father, a furrier who has left his wife for another woman, is sad that she has lost one of her dimples, a sign of her maturing; when she was a baby, he wanted to protect her from kidnapping, but now he knows and accepts that he no longer has control over her life. Suzanne enjoys the sex she is having but is obviously seeking something more; but Pialat, the director of the film and who also plays the fictional father, never delves too deeply into her psyche, refusing to provide any easy answers or simplistic resolutions for this complex coming-of-age story.

Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) has a complicated relationship with her father (cowriter-director Maurice Pialat) in À NOS AMOURS

It’s not even clear how much time passes between scenes and boyfriends, whose names essentially become interchangeable. Pialat wrote the incisive script with Arlette Langmann, Claude Berri’s sister; Pialat and Langmann previously collaborated on 1980’s Loulou, in which Isabelle Huppert plays a young wife who undergoes a sexual reawakening. Bonnaire, who would go on to make such films as Pialat’s Under the Son of Satan and Police, Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire, Claude Chabrol’s La Cérémonie, and Régis Wargnier’s Est-Ouest, earning another six César nominations and one more win (for Agnès Varda’s Vagabond), is extraordinary in her first film. Cinematographer Jacques Loiseleux falls in love with her eyes, following them as they wander, linger, and focus with an intelligence far beyond her years, and you will too. À nos amours is screening at 4:00 on September 20 in the FIAF CinéSalon series “Beyond the Ingénue,” which continues Tuesday nights through October 25 with such other films as Céline Sciamma’s Water Lilies Éric Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach, and Jacques Rozier’s Adieu Philippine.

BURNING BRIGHT — NEW FRENCH FILMMAKERS: PARIS, LOVE, CUT

Gabrielle (Louise Coldefy) and Arnaud Viard (Arnaud Viard) explore acting and more in PARIS, LOVE, CUT

CINÉSALON: PARIS, LOVE, CUT (ARNAUD FAIT SON 2ÈME) (Arnaud Viard, 2015)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 12, $14, 4:00 & 7:30 (later screening introduced by Alan Brown)
Series continues Tuesdays through July 26
212-355-6100
fiaf.org

“I like mixing fiction and reality,” writer, director, and star Arnaud Viard says in his second film, Paris, Love, Cut, the French title of which is Arnaud fait son 2ème film, or “Arnaud Makes His Second Film.” As the movie opens, Viard, sitting on the toilet, says directly into the camera, “Sometimes, in life, nothing works. You struggle . . . Nothing. Then, one day, it all flows. Just like that. Fluid. Magnificent. As if you were constipated, then suddenly . . . not at all. Last time things flowed was when I made my first film.” A longtime television actor who made his biggest impact as Jean-François in the French series Que du bonheur, Viard released his debut feature, Clara et moi, in 2004, then experienced difficulties raising money for his follow-up. In Paris, Love, Cut, Viard plays a version of himself, a longtime television actor who made his biggest impact as Jean-François in the French series Happy Times and who released his debut feature in 2004, then experienced difficulties raising money for his follow-up. Viard is trying to have a baby with his girlfriend, Chloé (Irène Jacob), but she is having trouble getting pregnant, echoing his inability to give birth to his second film, which he decides will be about a man unable to get an erection. He takes a job teaching an acting class, where he falls for twenty-one-year-old student Gabrielle (Louise Coldefy), whose goal is to become a famous actress. As he meets with his producer (Christophe Rossignon), other directors, his ailing mother (Nadine Alari), a sex coach (Chris Esquerre), a psychoanalyst (Pierre Aussedat), a tax agent (Marie-Christine Laurent), his sisters, and various dates, he has a generally positive take on life; he is soft-spoken and gentle, with a fun sense of humor whether being audited or going to a party thrown by his students, one of whom (Hamza Meziani) gets to the heart of the matter when he delivers a monologue from Alfred de Musset’s Don’t Fool with Love: “All men are liars, false, fickle, hypocritical, cowardly, contemptible, sensual. All women are faithless, deceitful, vain, curious, and depraved. The world is a bottomless sewer where shapeless beasts writhe on mountains of filth. But one thing is holy and sublime, the union of two beings, so imperfect and horrible.”

Much of Paris, Love, Cut serves as personal and professional wish fulfillment for both the real and the fictional Viard — if there is a difference. Evoking a mix of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Manhattan, Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario, and Caveh Zahedi’s I Am a Sex Addict, Viard lays his neuroses out there for all to see, primarily keeping it as lighthearted as the soundtrack, while also getting naked with some beautiful women. He pays homage to François Truffaut and The Last Metro while exploring a midlife crisis that isn’t really much of a crisis, which is not to say he isn’t facing some difficult situations and has to make some hard choices. But like the title of his real and fictional series, these are still some pretty happy times for him, in a pretty happy movie. FIAF is presenting the U.S. premiere of Paris, Love, Cut at 4:00 and 7:30 on July 12 in its CinéSalon series “Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers”; the later screening will be introduced by writer-director Alan Brown (Book of Love, Superheroes). The series continues Tuesday nights in July with Thomas Salvador’s Vincent and Jean-Charles Hue’s Eat Your Bones.