Stephen Leonard's blog

The biggest box office success in the history of French cinema was Titanic.

(Sadly, this was not actually a French film.)

Just as it did pretty much throughout the world in 1997 and 1998, Titanic caused turnstiles to spin like never before.

20 million French spectators were captivated by the tragic story of Jack and Rose.

That figure is equal to a third of the nation’s populace (though how many times did 13-year-old girls see the movie in theatres, inflating that number?).

The number one viewed French movie of all-time is the 1967 World War II comedy La Grande Vadrouille, which proportionately speaking did about the same business as Titanic, taking in seventeen million viewers in a nation of 51 million.

Both films face a new challenger in the face of Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis.

Three-quarters of the way through Cédric Klapisch’s Paris, a young African man who has already traveled a great distance from his home looks over the choppy sea from the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar and asks the ferryman who will sneak him into Europe if it’s all worth the trouble.

The ferryman, perhaps just eager for payment, replies that it is definitely worth it.

The young man, who is seen only in snippets during his long journey, carries with him a post card sent by a relative.

The black and white image is that of Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris.

Klapisch, and his mighty ensemble cast, bring that piece of photo paper to vibrant life in a wonderful movie that lives up to the gamble that is its name.

If you’re going to write and direct a film and call it Paris, it had better be worth the trouble.

Nailing the definition of Paris, even in a two-hour film, is a daunting task best left to a seasoned professional.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

The English playwright William Cosgreve knew what he was talking about when he penned a similar line in 1697 which, slightly misquoted, takes the form of the famous adage we know today.

Cosgreve’s quote concerns angels of a darker sort, those of the fairer sex who torment their tormentors.

Think Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

Kathy Bates in Misery.

Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

No matter if you’re her former lover, her favorite novelist, or her prom date, you do not want to play with a woman’s emotions.

If you do, you might just find you’ve got hell to pay.

In Michel Spinosa’s Anna M., Isabelle Carré makes her grand entrance into the Cosgreve Hall of Fame, playing a mentally disturbed young woman who falls in love with her doctor after a failed suicide attempt.

Karl Zéro’s latest political documentary is entitled Ségo et Sarko Sont dans un Bateau, which translates literally as Ségo and Sarko are in a Boat, but perhaps the scene that most accurately portrays the movie’s message takes place in a train.

Nicolas Sarkozy, right wing presidential candidate and until recently Minister of the Interior, is shown glad-handing on an RER train, one of the network of commuter trains that connect Paris with its outlying suburbs.

Sarkozy chances upon a middle-aged businessman, probably hoping he’s found a kindred spirit.

The man, with an air of disgust, scoffs at Sarkozy’s thinly veiled attempt at connecting with the masses, asking him why he should talk with him, telling Sarkozy he knows as Minister of the Interior he never rides the RER but is usually chauffeured around town.

James Huth seems to have made Hell Phone just so France can say to America, ‘See ? We can make incredibly sophomoric teen films too!’

As if this were a good thing.

In fact, all Huth, the director of the 2005 box office winner Brice de Nice, really has accomplished is the recycling of every American teen film from the ‘80s to the present, added in a lot of Beverly Hills 90210, and tossed in plenty of shots of the Panthéon, slapping it all together in a truly awful film that every teenager in France will see.

From the title alone, one can guess at the plot of this film.

There’s a cell phone.

It comes from hell.

Boy meets cell phone, boy falls in love with cell phone, boy realizes cell phone is evil, boy has to get rid of cell phone before everybody dies.

Got it?

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to like Audrey Tautou.

She’s just so undeniably sweet.

Sweets aren’t supposed to be good for you.

While they may provide deliciously wonderful moments of tasty satisfaction, they are filled with empty calories and cannot truly satisfy the soul.

Right?

In 2006, when her first big American movie, Ron Howard’s boring Da Vinci Code flopped, a part of me felt good about it.

But why?

After all, I loved her quirky, cute character in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 César-winning Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, or just Amélie to American audiences.

She showed range and depth in Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things and in supporting roles in Cédric Klapisch’s excellent L’Auberge Espagnole, and its sequel, Les Poupées Russes.

She has become the darling of French cinema, drawing comparisons to a European legend of another era, Belgian-born Audrey Hepburn.

Every film needs a bad guy.

Star Wars had Darth Vader.

Terminator had, well, the Terminator.

Hannibal Lecter.

The devil.

Enron.

In Les Témoins, or The Witnesses, the bad guy is more powerful than all of them.

The bad guy is sneaky, takes its time, strikes at the harmless, and spreads – incongruously – through acts of love.

In French, the bad guy is called SIDA.

Switch those letters around a bit, and you get AIDS.

In whatever language, in 1984 AIDS was a little known disease that was just starting to take hold in the national consciousness in France, as it was in the U.S.

André Téchiné’s Les Témoins revisits the era when HIV and AIDS were still thought of as a ‘gay problem’.

Manu (Johan Libéreau), a young, gay man from a small mountain town comes to Paris to stay with his sister Julie (Julie Depardieu), a struggling opera singer.

The best thing about Franck Mancuso’s Contre-Enquête, is that it is incredibly short.

At one hour 25 minutes (including credits), this barely even qualifies as a film.

It’s more like a ‘filmella’.

The worst thing about Contre-Enquête is that the pacing is so ploddingly slow that it feels like you’re in the theater for twice that long.

And choosing a ‘worst thing’ about this film was no easy task.

It just as easily could have been the acting.

Or the writing.

Direction: yeah, could have said direction.

The movie was, in short, so bad it made the popcorn tasteless.

It made the Coke go flat.

It was so bad that this review could break protocol and reveal the ending without worrying that readers might get upset, because there is no way that anyone should ever consider going to see this film.

(However, for those of you who enjoy self-flagellation, this review will not reveal the ending, so read on.)

Identity can be hidden, covered up and denied.

But underneath, it’s still there.

Thomas Gilou’s Michou D’Auber is a simple story about an orphan and the couple who takes him in, rendered complex by the events that surround it.

Set in the early 1960s, a turbulent time when the north African colony of Algeria is fighting a bitter war of independence against France, nine-year-old Messaoud (Samy Seghir) must leave his Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers when his Algerian-born father can no longer take care of him and his older brother.

Split away from his family, Messaoud is taken in by Gisèle (Nathalie Baye) and Georges (Gérard Depardieu), who have let the flame go out on their marriage long ago.

They live in the small village of Berry, a postcard town with one café, a Gothic church, and a populace where everyone knows everybody else.