More French Film

Two French films that I saw last year are lovely, chaotic pieces that strongly tend towards verite. The Class, Cantet’s Cannes winner, is based on a semi-autobiographical book. And it’s quite unlike any classroom film, including French films like Etre et Avoir and It All Starts Here. Though the movie’s central figure is a white teacher in an inner city school full of immigrants, he is neither heroic or patient nor immediately inspiring. Instead, in Cantet’s film, the teacher is well intentioned but prickly. Further he is constantly challenged by his racially diverse unruly class and in the film’s pivotal scene the students end up hostile and the viewer remains unsure whether the teacher was well-intentioned. Cantet’s hand-held camera work also captures the classroom action very effectively. In short the film captures both the liveliness and potential of the classroom and the inherent tensions in the school experience where teachers remain authority figures. The film is morally ambiguous, it is hard for example to feel for a disruptive student, nevertheless you sense that the response of the school is only likely to push the boy into further bad behaviour. In fact so free is Cantet’s film of polemic that a moment when one of his students casually reveals herself to be a reader of Plato when the teacher assumes otherwise grates. Of course Cantet’s film is hardly a documentary, as this review (one I do not completely agree with) makes clear, but it is all the more interesting for pulling it off so well. Another review here.

Unlike The Class, Summer Hours did not make an immediate impression on me. Assayas' film is only nominally the story of siblings who come together after the death of their mother to settle her estate. Instead it is an exploration of the things we accumulate and what they mean to us, especially in a world where identity is increasingly fluid and a family may live on different continents. In the film, Binoche’s character is a high end designer in the US and Renier’s character makes mass produced goods in China and are therefore connected with the making of things. The eldest son (Berling) is an academic and the only sibling in France. More than his siblings, he wants to hold on to his mother’s estate and her possessions for the memories they hold. Because the film is funded by the Musee d’Orsay, there is a diversion into the process of how museums acquire estates. But Assayas’s film is not about things per se, in fact for a movie about objects it does not choose to showcase them attractively (which I must add helps the film as it does not take a detour into object porn). It is more about what objects mean in our lives, the memories they hold and how they touch people, be they children or domestic help (in one of the film’s slyly funny moments, the mother’s longtime help modestly takes what she thinks to be a lowly, simple piece which is in fact quite expensive). It is also about the idea of France/country itself. The eldest son wants to hold onto the house so they can “return at least for the holidays” but it is clear that these holidays and reunions can only be infrequent. It is also about inheritances and how siblings may view this in different ways. The film ends as it begins with a summer party with the granddaughter enjoying a brief idyll at her grandmother’s – savouring so to speak a little of what she has left behind. Perhaps I found myself thinking of this film more than The Class because at middle age I feel a sudden sadness at the loss of many of my mother’s things. And I have little idea of what will be the future of my grandparents house, for so long a central point of our nomadic lives. The realization that time is a straight arrow that will render all these concerns meaningless somehow makes these concerns all the more legitimate and poignant. It's probably why the film has grown on me.

Emmanuelle Devos is the most graceful and subtle of actresses. It is therefore not surprising that her almost wordless performance is up close and centre in Gilles' Wife (which I saw again on SBS - and long may it live!). The tale of a mid 20th century worker’s wife who faces a double betrayal in her husband’s affair with her sister, the effectiveness of the film rests on the inherent goodness of Devos’s wife and the extent she will go to restore the love of her husband. It’s a simple albeit beautifully shot film. There has been plenty of criticism of its slightly shocking ending but Devos’ face, so suffused with feeling and pain, is so riveting that you can forgive the film almost anything.

Another face riveting in its innocence and suffering can be found in Bresson’s classic, The Diary of a Country Priest which I had been wanting to see for a long time. I had mixed feelings about the film itself finally, though it is undoubtedly something of a masterpiece and I simply couldn’t stop watching it. Bresson’s film touches on the nature of faith and perhaps it’s such an unfashionable thing these days that you cannot engage completely with the central conversion of the film. The voiceover necessitated by the diary entries can be distracting, although this is balanced by the purity of Bresson’s camera work. In the film, Bresson’s naïve priest find himself in an unfriendly parish and from thereon he is subject to suffering of both mind and body. It’s quite difficult to quantify what is so riveting in this tale of an ordinary priest tossed into a world which offers neither the redemption or grace he is searching for, but riveting it is. But at least in part the film’s success is because everything it has to say is concentrated in Claude Laydu’s face – and like with Devos in Gilles's Wife, it is a face of such intense purity that you cannot look away.