Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2012
North America’s leading showcase for the best in contemporary French film returns with two dozen New York premieres, including French box-office sensation The Intouchables, new work from master directors André Téchiné, Benoît Jacquot and Alain Cavalier, plus Delicacy, the latest from Audrey Tautou, who will join us to present the film!
This year also marks the first collaboration with Emerging Pictures on a select number of titles including 17 Girls, Moon Child, Smugglers’ Songs, Pater, The Last Screening, The Well-Digger’s Daughter and The Screen Illusion. The films will show in over 50 venues across the country contemporaneously with their showings at Lincoln Center via Emerging’s network of digital theaters. Q&As from the Film Society venues will be broadcast live to many of those locations.
Lineup
The Intouchables
Opening Night! In person: Eric Tolenado, Olivier Nakache and François Cluzet!
A phenomenon in France, where it shattered box-office records to become the second most successful film of all time, The Intouchables tells the fact-based story of the unlikely friendship between a handicapped white millionaire (François Cluzet) and his unconventional Senegalese caretaker (breakout star Omar Sy).
Delicacy
Closing Night! In person for both screenings: Directors David & Stéphane Foenkinos and star Audrey Tautou.
Audrey Tautou returns with this touching portrait of a woman trying to put her life back together after the loss of her husband, including embarking on an unexpected affair with a co-worker. A charming adult fable about starting over.
17 Girls
Director Muriel Coulin in person for both screenings!
Based on a headline-grabbing incident in the U.S., sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin’s provocative debut feature follows the fallout in a sleepy French coastal town when a group of teenage girls all decide to become pregnant at the same time.
18 Years Old and Rising
Director Fred Louf in person!
As France prepares for a presidential election that will determine the fate of François Mitterand, a young man from the provinces falls head over heels for a bourgeois girl from Paris in this charming and inventive spin on a classic tale of first love.
38 Witnesses
A woman is brutally murdered in front of an apartment building, but all of the residents claim to have seen and heard nothing in this taut, haunting thriller from Rapt director Lucas Belvaux. Inspired by New York’s infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese case.
Americano
In person: Mathieu Demy and Chiara Mastroianni!
When thirty-something Martin (played by actor-writer-director Mathieu Demy) travels from Paris to Los Angeles to settle his estranged mother’s estate, the journey dredges up long-submerged emotions...and unexpected revelations about a woman he hardly knew.
Children of Paradise
Special Centerpiece Screening!
Positif magazine editor Michel Ciment in person!
A magnificent new restoration of one of the best-loved masterworks of French cinema, Marcel Carné’s classic tale of a notorious actress/courtesan and the four men who pine for her in 1830s Paris.
Farewell, My Queen
In person: Director Benoît Jacquot for both screenings!
A brilliant snapshot of the final days of Marie Antoinette, starring a terrific Diane Kruger as the ill-fated Queen and rising star Léa Seydoux (Midnight in Paris) as her quietly ambitious lady-in-waiting.
Free Men
In person on March 3: Director Ismael Ferroukhi and star Tahar Rahim!
During the German Occupation of France, an Algerian black marketeer (A Prophet star Tahar Rahim) is coerced into spying on the denizens of the Paris Grand Mosque, whereupon he discovers a clandestine operation to provide North African Jews with fake Muslim IDs.
A Gang Story
Based on the autobiography of a real crime boss, A Gang Story follows aging ex-gangster Momon (Gérard Lanvin) as he agrees to break his old partner (Tchéky Karyo) out of prison. A solid return to the gangster genre—in the French style, of course!
Guilty
A breathtaking, fact-based journey into a Kafka-esque judicial nightmare: a provincial court bailiff (the extraordinary Philippe Torreton) is accused of horrifying crimes against children. Imprisoned, he maintains his innocence, even as his reputation and family life are destroyed.
Headwinds
Benoît Magimel (The Piano Teacher) gives perhaps his greatest performance as a struggling writer who tries to start a new life in the coastal Brittany of his youth after his wife (Audrey Tatou) mysteriously vanishes. Based on Oliver Adam’s best-selling novel.
Here Below
The brief, tempestuous relationship between a nun and a priest working for the French Resistance is the focus of director Denis’s taut, suspenseful look at closing months of WWII and the transformation of private passion into national politics.
The Last Screening
In person for both screenings: Director Laurent Achard, actor Pascal Cervo and producer Sylvie Pialat!
Cinema Paradiso meets Psycho in a provocative genre film about the dutiful manager/projectionist of a repertory cinema in the French provinces...and the many secrets he holds.
Louise Wimmer
In a tough, unapologetic work of social realism, director Mennegun observes the daily life of a middle-aged chambermaid (the riveting Corinne Masiero) who lives out of her car while desperately trying to make a fresh start.
Low Life
In person: Director Nicolas Klotz in person on March 4!
Carmen, a young French student, enters into an intense affair with Hussain, an Afghan poet living illegally in the country, in this bracingly radical movie about the revolt of the human spirit against a heartless, unjust world.
The Painting
Family Film!
In Person: Jean-François Laguionie & Annick Le Ray!
A touching, wonderfully inventive animated fable, The Painting takes place within the borders of an unfinished canvas, where the fully drawn and colored creatures lord their privilege over the half-drawn and merely sketched underclasses.
Pater
Actor Vincent Lindon in person for both screenings!
France’s most unpredictable filmmaker, Alain Cavalier, teams up with actor Vincent Lindon for a witty, semi-improvised look at men, power and politics, starring Cavalier himself as a fictional French President and Lindon as his newly appointed Prime Minister.
The Screen Illusion
In person: Director Mathieu Amalric for both screenings!
Commissioned by La Comédie-Française, actor-director Mathieu Amalric’s wildly inventive update of Corneille’s popular 17th century tragicomedy follows a hotel concierge on the trail of a missing young man who seems to have left many a young female heart aflutter.
Smugglers’ Songs
Director Rabah Ameur-Zaïméche in person for March 8 screening!
The 18th century folk hero and bandit Louis Mandrin is the inspiration for this strikingly relevant period tale, tracing the efforts of Mandrin’s followers to distribute his songs and stories in the build-up to the French Revolution.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin in person at the March 10 screening!
When a newly retired union rep is robbed, thwarting a dream vacation to Kenya, he finds himself reflecting on the many compromises and lost ideals of his career. An engaging, affecting drama from one of the cinema’s great observers of the politics of everyday life.
Unforgivable
In person: Carole Bouquet!
In the latest from acclaimed director Téchiné, a blocked mystery novelist (André Dussolier) on vacation in Venice falls for an expat real estate agent (Carole Bouquet). Then jealousy rears its head and the writer puts a detective on the trail of this possibly unfaithful femme.
The Well-Digger’s Daughter
In person: Jean-Pierre Daroussin!
Daniel Auteuil, veteran of Marcel Pagnol adaptations Jean de Florette and Manon des sources, returns to Pagnol for his first work as a director, telling moving story of a hardscrabble well digger, his eldest daughter and her passion for the son of a local shopkeeper.
Zarafa
Family Film!
In this beautiful hand-drawn animation,10-year-old Maki and the orphaned giraffe, Zarafa, go on an epic adventure from the Sudan, where Maki escapes from slave traders, to Alexandria, Marseille and Paris. Ages 7+. In French with English subtitles.
New French Shorts
Wonderful things can sometimes come in very small packages, as this prize-winning selection of provocative short films from France amply demonstrates. See tomorrow’s auteurs today!
Rendez-Vous +
Extérieur, nuit
A jazz musician (Gérard Lanvin) and a struggling writer (André Dussollier) fall under the spell of a mysterious female taxi driver (Christine Boisson) in director Bral’s moody, boozy, rediscovered cult classic. NOT ON DVD.
Garde à vue
On New Year’s Eve, a hard-boiled police inspector (Lino Ventura) interrogates a wealthy lawyer (Michel Serrault) about the rape and murder of two young girls. A clockwork, claustrophobic thriller that never lets the audience off the hook. NOT ON DVD.
Here We Drown Algerians
A richly detailed account of a dark episode in 20th century French history: the attack by French police on a peaceful Algerian independence march on October 17, 1961, and its subsequent cover-up.
In Mondrian’s Studio & Frida Kahlo
Introduction by producer Fabienne Servan-Schreiber!
In Mondrian’s Studio / Dans l’atelier de Mondrian
François Lévy-Kuentz | 2011 | France | 52m
Creating an exact replica of Mondrian’s famous Paris studio, François Lévy-Kuentz offers some fascinating insights into life and worldview of one of the true masters of modern art.
Screening with:
Frida Kahlo | Xavier Villetard | 2011 | France | 53m
Frida Kahlo’s public and private lives come together in this perceptive portrait of her life and art that includes some very rare footage of Kahlo, Diego Rivera and their amazing circle.
Into Our Own Hands
A superb documentrary about the workers of the Starissima factory outside Orleans, who band together into a cooperative when they learn the business is about to be shut down.
Juliette Gréco, Without Limits & Philip Roth, Without Complexes
Introduction by producer Fabienne Servan-Schreiber!
Two films about artists who, in their individual ways, came to embody their respective generations, both still active in their eighties: Parisian songstress Juliette Gréco and American novelist Philip Roth.
Life After the Camps
A rare Holocaust documentary focused on survivors, using personal records, family albums and personal reminiscences to create a revealing look at the courage, strength and sometimes contradictory emotions of those who had been to hell and back.
Lumière d'été
Restored by the Cinémathèque Française and SNC (Group M6)!
A marvelous new restoration of Jean Gremillon’s masterpiece, scripted by Jacques Prévert and Pierre Laroche, about the couplings and uncouplings of the weekend guests at a remote country estate.
Michel Petrucciani
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Michael Radford (Il postino) returns to his documentary roots in this touching look at the gifted jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani, who achieved fame on both sides of the Atlantic despite a debilitating physical condition.
Muslims of France
An extraordinary, three-part epic journey through the history of Muslims in France, beginning in the early 20th century and stretching to the present day.
See How They Fall
A Prophet director Jacques Audiard’s made his superb debut with this sharply etched, darkly funny modern noir about the relationship between a small-time hood on the lam (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and the slow-witted lost soul (Mathieu Kassovitz) he reluctantly takes under his wing.
The Shiver of Vampires
Considered the first mature work by the late cult favorite Jean Rollin, Shiver follows two attractive newlyweds as they stop for the evening in a picturesque castle and find themselves in the lair of a pack of lesbian vampires.
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