UN TRIOMPHE (THE BIG HIT) (France 2020) ***
Directed by Emmanuel Courcol
As unlikely as the film’s series of events could have taken place in real life, it did, and the film clearly touts the fact at the start that the film is based untrue events (apres one historic vraie).
Read more: Film Review: Un Triomphe (The Big Hit)
Write comment (13 Comments)Cinefranco 2021
One of my favourite local film festivals is Cinefranco for the reason I, like many others, adore French films. French films (particularly by François Truffaut) are the reason I studied French. This year, Cinefranco, under the direction of the ever-energetic Marcelle Lean, offers a wide variety of films from around the world once again.
Cinefranco welcomes audiences once again to in-theatre and online screenings for its 24th edition. The hybrid festival will take place Tuesday, October 26 – Tuesday, November 2, 202, with 27 features, 3 shorts programs, post-screening Conversations, and Panels, at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema and via the festival platform, accessed at:
Write comment (0 Comments)STUCK TOGETHER (8 Rue de l'Humanité) (France 2021) ***
Directed by Dany Boon
The non-French, unless one loves French comedies, might not be familiar with the name of Dany Boon. To Boon’s credit, he has starred and directed one of the biggest French comedy hits of all time, the 2008 WELCOME TO THE STICKS. He has, at present, at least a film a year, last year seen in a supporting role as an action hero in LE LION (I saw the film on an Air Canada flight) and now the Netflix original film STUCK TOGETHER (8 Rue de l'Humanité). This is a comedy about the tenants, except for one owner, played by Boon, of an apartment with the address of 8 Humanity Street in Paris, who tries to make sense and survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pandemic comedy is manic and occasionally all over the place, as it crisscrosses stories with several tenants, but there are fresh laughs around every corner.
Read more: Film Review: 8 Rue de l'Humanité
Write comment (0 Comments)BERGMAN ISLAND (France 2021) ***1/2
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
Director Mia Hansen-Løve is a master of films on relationships. She examines the mechanics of them, often offering valuable and entertaining personal insight. These deal with quite a few of young teen relationships but returns to an older couple here, as she covers the sensitive relationship between a middle-aged couple, both writers in their own right.
BERGMAN ISLAND is the island of Fårö, where legendary director Ingmar Bergman spent most of the end of his life. Bergamn was born in Upsala, not Fårö. A tourist attraction, Fårö sees Chris and Tony renting a place, in order to write. The residence holds the bedroom where Bergman shot SCENES OF A MARRIAGE, the film that caused a million people to divorce, a joke of the film. Hansen-Løve has been one of the most respected and outstanding French directors since LE PERE DE MES ENFANTS (The Father of my Children), all her films about relationships, mostly young ones. Tony’s work is fêted at their artist residency while Chris struggles with her screenplay and the two, despite a tender rapport, seem to be at an unspoken impasse, navigating romantic malaise and subtle professional enmity under the spell of the stunning island and Bergman’s legacy. Chris’s in-development script comes to life: a bittersweet love story starring Mia Wasikowska as Amy, a young filmmaker and obvious alter ego to Chris, who is reunited with her first love Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) at a mutual friend’s wedding on the same remote island. Hansen-Løve does Woody Allen doing Ingmar Bergman in this film, with a surprise revelation at the end that should keep audiences thinking.
Occasionally clever and vastly entertaining, BERGMAN ISLAND should not disappoint Hansen-Løve’s fans.
BERGMAN ISLAND premiered at this year’s Cannes and continued its run at the Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in theatres October the 15th and is available to rent everywhere on October the 22nd.
Trailer:
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