Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center 2013

[Chris Knipp]

Rendez-Vous with French
Cinema 2013

To provide feedback to reviews and get day-to-day updates on screenings go to the Rendez-Vous Forums thread HERE.

Links to the reviews:

Augustine (Alice Winocour 2012)
The Atomic Age (Héléna Klotz 2012)
Bad Girl (Patrick Mille 2012) .
The Day of Crows (Jean-Christophe Dessaint 2012)
The Girl from Nowhere (Jean-Claude Brisseau 2012)
Granny’s Funeral (Bruno Podalydès 2012)
In the House (François Ozon 2012)
Jappeloup (Christian Duguay 2013)
Journal de France (Raymond Depardon, Claudine Nougaret 2012)
A Lady in Paris (Ilmar Raag 2012)
La Maison de la radio (Nicolas Philibert 2013)--CANCELLED
My Blue-Eyed Girl (Shalimar Preuss 2012)
The Nun (Guillaume Nicloux 2013)
Populaire (Régis Roinsard 2012)--NO FSLC PRESS SCREENING
Renoir (Gilles Bourdos 2012)
Rich is the Wolf (Damien Odoul 2012)
The Suicide Shop (Patrice Leconte 2012)
Thérèse Desqueyroux (Claude Miller 2012)
Three Worlds (Catherine Corsini 2012)
You, Me and Us (Jacques Doillon 2012)
You Will Be my Son (Gilles Legrand 2012)

The Rendez-Vous with French Cinema presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance has been announced for 2013. Public screenings will run from Feb. 28 to March 10. The Rendez-Vous site is here.

Augustine
Director: Alice Winocour
Screenplay: Alice Winocour Cast: Vincent Lindon, Soko, Chiara Mastroianni, Olivier Rabourdin
Synopsis:
Paris, winter 1885. At the Pitié-Salpêtriere Hospital, Professor Charcot is studying a mysterious illness: hysteria. Augustine, 19 years old, becomes his favorite guinea pig, the star of his demonstrations of hypnosis. The object of his studies will soon become the object of his desire… Based on a true case, writer-director Winocour has adapted the story of a progressive 19th century doctor/therapist and his unusual patient into a study of personal wills, hidden desires and reversals of fate. A maid who suffers from seizures is sent to a mental hospital, where it seems she’ll be condemned for life until Professor Charcot finds in her the possibilities of testing his advanced notions of the sources of so-called “hysteria.” Soko as Augustine and Vincent Lindon as Charcot deliver astonishing performances. A Music Box Films release.

The Atomic Age
Director: Héléna Klotz
Screenplay: Héléna Klotz, Elisabeth Perceval Cast: Eliott Paquet, Dominik Wojcik, Niels Schneider, Mathilde Bisson
Synopsis:
The Atomic Age follows what begins as a pleasure-seeking journey into Parisian night life and ends in abandonment and disillusionment in a remote forest at dawn. What are Victor and Rainer looking for when they take a train into the seemingly claustrophobic centre of Paris at night? The artificial paradise of a night club, amusement, sex, drugs, but also oblivion. Full of profound sadness and gloom, this is not the Paris of rationality and light, but a latently dangerous place where tedium, frustration and boredom, ephemeral flirtations and chance encounters can suddenly turn into aggression, violence and emotional breakdown. We follow the friends on their trip through the night which becomes increasingly charged with an unexpressed eroticism through gay gestures and prolonged eye contact. Thematically as well as formally, The Atomic Age is reminiscent of films by Robert Bresson, or even Gus Van Sant. Throughout all this, the director, Héléna Klotz, does not pretend to fully understand her characters – something fundamental and mysterious remains which defies explanation – but invites us to take a closer look at objects and people.
Bande annonce AVEC ST anglais

Bad Girl
Director: Patrick Mille
Screenplay: Patrick Mille, Justine Lévy Cast: Izia Higelin, Carole Bouquet, Arthur Dupont, Bob Geldof,...
Synopsis:
Louise simultaneously discovers that she is pregnant and that her mother is seriously ill. Happiness and guilt, euphoria and sadness, filial love and love, period. She’ll need a good nine months to cope with all this.

The Day of Crows
Director: Jean-Christophe Dessaint
Screenplay: Amandine Taffin Cast: Jean Reno, Lorànt Deutsch, Isabelle Carré, Claude Chabrol
Synopsis:
Courge lives in the heart of the forest, raised by his father, a tyrannical giant who reigns triumphant and prevents his son from exploring beyond limited boundaries. Ignorant about the ways of men, the boy grows up wild, with the placid ghosts who haunt the forest his only company. That is until the day that he is forced to go to the nearest village, where he mets young Manon…

The Girl from Nowhere
Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Brisseau Cast: Virginie Legeay, Claude Morel, Jean-Claude Brisseau, Lise Bellynck… Synopsis: Michel
Synopsis:
Michel, a retired math teacher, lives alone since his wife died. He spends his time writing an essay about human illusions. One day he comes across Dora, a young homeless woman, who shows up injured on his doorstep, and puts her up until she recovers. Her presence brings something new to Michel’s life, but gradually the apartment becomes the site of mysterious happenings.

Granny’s Funeral
Director: Bruno Podalydès
Screenplay: Bruno Podalydès, Denis Podalydès Cast: Denis Podalydès, Valérie Lemercier, Isabelle Candelier, Bruno Podalydès
Synopsis:
Gran’s dead. Berthe is no longer. Armand had “vaguely” forgotten his dear old grandmother…
A druggist, he works with his wife Hélène in Chatou. Armand hides his magician’s props in a medicine draw because he is secretely preparing a show for the birthday of… his mistress’s daughter. And now there’s dear and dead gran? Should she be buried or should she be incinerated? Who exactly was Berthe?

In the House
Director: François Ozon
Screenplay: François Ozon Cast: RFabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner, Ernst Umhauer
Synopsis:
A 16-year-old teenager sneaks into the house of one of the pupils in his class and writes about in one of the pieces of writing he gives to his French teacher. Confronted by this talented and different student, the teacher finds renewed joy in teaching. However, the teenager’s home invasion will set off a series of uncontrollable events.

Jappeloup
Director: Christian Duguay
Screenplay: Guillaume Canet Cast: Guillaume Canet, Marina Hands, Daniel Auteuil, Lou de Laâge, Tcheky...

Journal de France
Directors: Raymond Depardon & Claudine Nougaret
Screenplay: Raymond Depardon & Claudine Nougaret Cast: Raymond Depardon & Claudine...
Synopsis:
A journal, a voyage through time. He photographs France, she rediscovers the unseen footage he has so carefully kept: his first steps behind the camera, his TV reports from around the world, snatches of their memories and of our history.

A Lady in Paris
Director: Ilmar Raag
Screenplay: Ilmar Raag, Agnès Feuvre, Lise Macheboeuf Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Laine Mägi, Patrick Pineau…..
Anne leaves Estonia to come to Paris as a caretaker for Frida, an elderly Estonian lady who emigrated to France long ago. Anne soon realizes that she is not wanted. All Frida wants from life is the attention of Stéphane, her younger former lover. Stéphane, however, is desperate for Anne to stay and look after Frida, even against the old lady’s will. In this conflict of strangers, Anne will find her own way

La Maison de la radio
Director: Nicolas Philibert
Screenplay: Nicolas Philibert
Synopsis:
A journey into the heart of Radio France during which Nicolas Philibert shall attempt to capture the mysteries of a media whose very matter, sound, is invisible

My Blue-Eyed Girl
Director: Shalimar Preuss
Screenplay: Shalimar Preuss Cast: Lou Aziosmanoff, Jocelyn Lagarrigue, Victor Laforge
Synopsis:
Maden, 17 years old. Summer holidays on the island. She is waiting for the mail. Between her room and the beach, between her father and cousins, the house, and, very close, the prison.

The Nun
Director: Guillaume Nicloux
Screenplay: Guillaume Nicloux, Jérôme Beaujour Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Louise Bourgoin, Martina Gedeck, Pauline Etienne
Synopsis:
Adapted from Diderot’s eponymous novel, The Nun tells the trajectory of a woman trying to resist imposed religious values, unveiling the dehumanization of cloistered life.

Populaire
Director: Régis Roinsard
Screenplay: Régis Roinsard, Daniel Presley, Romain Compingt Cast: Romain Duris, Déborah François, Bérénice Bejo
Synopsis:
1958. Rose is a terrible secretary but a demon typist. Her handsome boss resolves to turn her into the fastest girl in the world.

Renoir
Director: Gilles Bourdos
Screenplay: Jérôme Tonnerre, Gilles Bourdos Cast: Michel Bouquet, Vincent Rottiers, Christa Theret, Thomas Doret
The Côte d’Azur. 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action.
But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation.
Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden – and in the face of his father’s fierce opposition – he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit… and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.

Rich is the Wolf
Director: Damien Odoul
Screenplay: Damien Odoul Cast: Marie-Eve Nadeau, Damien Odoul
Synopsis:
Olaf is missing. He only left his lover Marie with a box of tapes with hundreds of hours of rushes (the last seven years of his life), together with a notebook. Marie decides to investigate. Day in day out, she views these pictures, these fragments of a life, and attempts to reconstruct the journey of the man she loves so as to better understand his departure.

The Suicide Shop
Director: Patrice Leconte
Screenplay: Patrice Leconte Cast: Bernard Alane, Isabelle Spade, Kacey Mottet-Klein
Synopsis:
Imagine a city where people no longer have a taste for anything, to the point that the most flourishing store in town is the one that sells poisons and hanging ropes. But the store owner has just given birth to a child who is joy incarnate. In the Magasin des Suicides, the rot has set in.

Thérèse Desqueyroux
Director: Claude Miller
Screenplay: Claude Miller, Natalie Carter Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier, Catherine Arditi
Synopsis:
A woman trapped in a disappointing marriage tries to reclaim her freedom by any means. Claude Miller’s new film, starring Audrey Tautou in an extraordinary role..

Three Worlds
Director: Catherine Corsini
Screenplay: Catherine Corsini, Benoît Graffin Cast: Clotilde Hesme, Raphaël Personnaz, Arta Dobroshi, Reda Kateb
Synopsis:
Al, a young man from a modest background is about to marry his boss’ daughter, along with succeeding him as the head of a car dealership. One night, while coming back from his bachelor party, he is guilty of a hit-and-run accident, urged by his two childhood friends present in the car. The next day, gnawed with guilt, Al decides to inquire about his victim. What he does not know is that Juliette, a young woman, has witnessed the entire accident from her balcony. She is the one who had called 911 and helped the victim’s wife Véra, a Moldavian illegal-immigrant. But when Juliette recognizes Al as the reckless driver in the Hospital corridor, she is unable to denounce him…

You, Me and Us
Director: Jacques Doillon
Screenplay: Jacques Doillon Cast: Lou Doillon, Samuel Benchetrit, Malik Zidi
Synopsis:
Seven-year-old Lina has a thing on her mind: are her beloved parents, now separated, secretly spending time together? She soon has the proof. It’s nuts! And then her mother tells her that she wants another baby, as though she, Lina, is not enough. And who will she have this child with? Yes, it’s totally nuts!

You Will Be my Son
Director: Gilles Legrand
Screenplay: Gilles Legrand, Delphine de Vigan Cast: Niels Arestrup, Lorànt Deutsch, Patrick Chesnais, Anne...
Synopsis:
You can’t choose your parents or your children! Paul de Marseul, proprietor of a prestigious vineyard in Saint Emilion, has a son, Martin, who works with him on the family estate. But Paul, a demanding and passionate winegrower, can’t stand the idea that his son will one day take over from him. He dreams of a more talented, more charismatic son… a son who conforms more to his father fantasies. The arrival of Philippe, the son of his steward, will turn life at the estate upside down. Paul becomes fascinated by this ideal son. Thus begins a game of chess played by four: two fathers, two sons, under the powerless gaze of the women who surround them. And at least one of the men no longer has anything to lose.