2021 #6 Film of the Year Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e)

 

Director Jacques Audiard

Audiard with his ensemble cast

Audiard with Noémie Merlant

Audiard with Lucie Zhang

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e)                    B+                                           France  (105 mi)  2021  d: Jacques Audiard

Probably one of the strangest love stories ever, where the cool, overly detached attitude never seems to be about love, or so we’re led to believe through all the strange detours and plot twists, becoming a moody, self-absorbed experience about living in the computer age where everything is at your fingertips, featuring more nudity than any film seen in years, delving into the hateful and misogynistic aspects of the porn sex industry, yet also introducing a true screen star, Lucie Zhang, whose brash, contemporary attitudes couldn’t be more flamboyantly in-your-face, as free-spirited as any character that has graced the screen in years, while Audiard is an uncompromising director, making this an exhilarating experience, constructing a fascinating exposé on contemporary multicultural attitudes in Paris today.  A bit like Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), where Los Angeles is transported to Paris, given a literary feel, set in the suburban sprawl of contemporary Parisian life, the motif of the film is built around the growing chaos of intermingled lives who all appear shattered by circumstances, featuring broken characters who spend the film trying to heal.  It lacks the subversive humor of Altman, but it owes a lot to that film.  Audiard transfers to France three stories by graphic novelist and New Yorker cartoonist Adrian Tomine, adapted by Léa Mysius, Céline Sciamma, and the director himself, the power of black and white photography from cinematographer Paul Guilhaume is immediately apparent, offering a gorgeous landscape of the sleek, high-rise modern architecture in the 13th arrondissement, situated on the left bank of the River Seine, home to Paris’s principal Asian community, the Quartier Asiatique, located in the southeast of the arrondissement in an area that includes Les Olympiades, a diverse neighborhood of high-rise apartments that evolved out of an Olympic-themed renovation project in the 1970’s built to attract young multi-ethnic professionals, a prominent undercurrent of the film, capturing the intersecting lives of Émilie (Lucie Zhang), a Chinese immigrant from Taiwan, Camille (Makita Samba), an African immigrant, and Nora (Noémie Merlant), fresh off her role in 2019 Top Ten List #2 Portrait of a Lady On Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu), a recent arrival from the Bordeaux region.  Almost immediately, this film offers a wide panorama of love and desire mixed into the everyday survival in a racially, culturally, and sexually diverse contemporary city landscape, taking the abstract documentary film genre of the City-symphony and expanding it into a fictional film about educated but disillusioned young people of today trying to find their way, where the interest is in things happening simultaneously.  Audiard, an ardent social realist who won the Palme d’Or with Dheepan (2015), a film about Tamil refugees in France, finds it troubling that so many French films lack multi-racial representation, acknowledging “In (François) Truffaut’s films, you could see a real estate agent too, or a lover that passes out, but there is no Black person, no Chinese person.”  Premiering at Cannes, in what could easily be one of the best edited and best photographed films of the year, the film won the Cannes Soundtrack Award, featuring a throbbing urban musical design scored by Rone, perfectly synchronized and punctuating the opening shot (and trailer), LES OLYMPIADES Bandes Annonce (2021) Jacques Audiard YouTube (1:43), as the camera peers into high-rise apartment windows where we immediately discover Émilie completely naked singing a French song in Chinese, which is among the more provocative openings, as it certainly grabs the attention and lures viewers into this film.  Émilie is a graduate of the prestigious Sciences Po School, yet works at a call center in some sort of telemarketing campaign, where the floor is a jumbled conglomeration of low-entry temp workers all squeezed into their cramped spaces, yet she walks down the street with an air of casual abandon and nonchalance, totally into herself, representing a new breed of openness.  A knock at her door reveals a prospective roommate, Camille, confusing her at first as she was looking for a girl, yet he persists, a literary postgraduate teacher who has put his academic career on hold, as the conversation immediately turns to sex, another key element of the film, he openly acknowledges that he “channels professional frustration into intense sexual activity,” a revelation she finds immensely appealing, reminding her of an old Chinese proverb, “Fuck first, ask later,” where sex has replaced the idea of getting to know someone first, inverting the social dynamic in relationships, where in no time the two are fuck buddies, developing a steamy relationship, but it all changes when he brings a girlfriend home, as Émilie is not amused, and is more than a little bit ticked off, feeling openly betrayed. 

While both make appealing fresh faces gracing the screen, Émilie’s unabashed freedom to say and do whatever she damn pleases is an utter revelation, cute and sassy, with an acid-sharp tongue, yet she’s shaped by the Asian cultural dynamic, receiving repeated calls from her mother to go visit her grandmother in a retirement home, scolding her for not visiting enough, while also calling her sister whenever she needs help, which exasperates her sister, working in a hospital with more emergent needs, but Émilie is a character living in the here and now.  Camille has surprised her with his declaration of independence, claiming he’s tied to no one and made no promises, yet the presence of new girlfriends in her home is leaving her infuriated, made even worse when she loses her job for being overly outspoken, violating some rule of polite conversation.  Apparently unable to reach a compromise on everchanging rules and agendas, Camille moves out as well, learning Émilie lives there rent-free, as it’s her grandmother’s apartment, making it an easy source of income.  A visit to her grandmother is another shock to the system, a sad sight, rambling incoherently, incapable of recognizing who she is from her worsening dementia, while receiving substandard care at the facility where she is largely ignored.  In finding a new roommate, a young Chinese woman, Émilie amusingly treads new territory, offering rental reduction if she visits her grandmother once a week, as she’s not recognizable anyway, and the experience is just too painful for her to deal with on a regular basis, yet this also reveals the utter selfishness of the character, and the depths of her own apathy.  When she attends a wild and raucous party, she over-indulges in ecstasy, calls her sister in a state of distress, but her sister is tired of her antics and has more pressing matters.  When she accidentally runs into Camille, she feigns indifference, as does he, but it’s clear they have unfinished business between them.  Both engage in a contentious, yet often endearing and sarcastic, love/hate relationship as Émilie struggles with her attraction to Camille, while he does his level-headed best to remain connected yet uncommitted.  A new character is introduced, Nora, a Sorbonne postgraduate seen thrilled at the view from her new apartment with a balcony overlooking the Seine, moving to Paris to attend law school, yet her introduction turns awkward and ugly, as she’s mistaken for a porn star named Amber Alert (Jehnny Beth, from the English rock band Savages), with text messages sent back and forth between students revealing her supposed sexual identity, with guys openly demeaning her with cyber bullying and sexist taunts, while women are more than eager to play along, where in one class session the phones light up like a Christmas tree with instant messaging associating her with salacious sexual promiscuity, where just a flick of her name opens files of porn activity.  She is so humiliated and her reputation so damaged that she flees in dismay, having never heard of this porn star before, but her self-esteem plunges to new depths.  She makes a fresh start and takes a job working for a small real estate company currently run by Camille, who’s filling in for a friend, knowing nothing about the real estate market, so Nora sets him straight, offering warning signs about any unwelcome come-ons, as she’s strictly professional, having worked in real estate in the Bordeaux region.  She turns the business around almost immediately, both seemingly happy, so as it happens they jump into the sack as well, but Nora is among the more deeply confused and overly repressed characters seen in a while, exhibiting signs of trauma that she keeps concealed, so their sexual activity is usually fraught with unanticipated problems, as she’s clearly got issues, but Camille tries to be patient and understanding.  While each of the three main characters have strong personalities, coming from a much more sexually liberated generation, but they also have exposed awkwardness and vulnerabilities, making them easy to relate to, where their crossed paths only heighten the human interest, yet it’s their unique inner dynamic that couldn’t be more fascinating, as the interweaving tapestry of stories highlights the intelligence, cynicism, and relative aimlessness these characters come to represent.    

When we visit Camille’s family, reeling from the recent death of his mother, we discover his 16-year sister Eponine (Camille Léon-Fucien) has designs of being a stand-up comic, yet this discovery is met with mock sarcasm by Camille who belittles the entire comedy profession with a healthy amount of arrogant disdain, suggesting comics only vent their own psychological frustrations, which is enough to send his sister to her room slamming the door in his face, with his father chewing him out for being so arrogantly cocky and unsupportive, claiming it’s hard enough being a teenager.  Later Camille introduces Nora as his girlfriend to Eponine, who can see right away that something’s off.  One stunning revelation is that Nora worked for her uncle in the real estate business, and was married to him as well, which didn’t generate any red flags, but apparently he became overly controlling in their relationship and never wanted her to leave.  There’s a kind of musical chairs of changing plot twists where the characters occasionally intersect, yet among the stranger developments is Nora’s interest in contacting Amber Alert on her porn site, paying the money like any visiting customer, but simply wanting to talk.  This seems to go on a while, with Nora wanting more personal information, the kind of thing never revealed on porn sites, as it could damage your reputation, stunned to realize the naiveté of her own stupidity, as she’s been using her own name when visiting the site.  At the end of one session Amber Alert blurts out that her name is Louise, provides an email address indicating how to hook up on a Zoom conference call, and the two of them become fast friends, spending hours staring at their screens, revealing their innermost secrets, where sex-abuse is never openly discussed, but seems to be a common underlying connection they both share, as it would explain Nora’s sexual reticence, her attempts to fight through it through even more brazen sexuality, but eventually she calls it off with Camille as it obviously isn’t working.  The tell-tale sign that something is up happens when a Taiwanese businessmen is interested in buying property, with Camille bringing in Émilie to translate, where Nora could immediately see sparks between them, demonstrated further at a celebratory party afterwards, which is enough for Nora to call it quits.  Émilie, on the other hand, seems to be flirting with men on dating apps in an attempt to make Camille jealous and test his seriousness, sending him text messages of her dates.  In what is perhaps the most boldly audacious sequence in the film, Émilie is alone playing the piano, as if preparing for a class of young ballerinas, playing Schubert, Schubert: Piano Sonata No.17 in D, D.850 - 2. Con moto YouTube (11:53), which is juxtaposed against another scene where she’s working as a waitress at an upscale restaurant, seen receiving a call, taking a break from work, merging into a sex scene with a random date, continuing in silence and slow motion as she returns to the restaurant gliding through the aisles with exquisite grace in a series of leaping ballet moves to the applause of the customers.  When Émilie’s grandmother dies, she’s racked with guilt for not visiting more, but the entire family is flying in for the funeral.  When Camille asks is he should show up, Émilie insists she doesn’t want him around unless he’s willing to make a lifelong commitment, and walks away.  With her family interested in selling her grandmother’s apartment, Émilie is seen on the morning of the funeral in the empty apartment dressed in her black funeral attire.  When it’s time to leave, the phone rings, receiving a last-minute reprieve from Camille who has arrived to escort her to the funeral.  Considering the amount of baggage on display at the beginning of the film, that’s a long way for the two of them to come before finally reconciling their differences to take the next step.  It’s like an old-fashioned, Hollywood ending.  In yet another scene, Nora arrives to the tranquil setting of a gorgeously landscaped public park, looking around, obviously awaiting someone with great anticipation, as we see Louise emerging from a crowd, with her short cropped hair, happy to finally meet her in person.  Nora faints, dropping to the ground, but a kiss resuscitates a binding love between them.  In each instance, out of nowhere, it’s like a fairy tale ending, like the arrival of Prince Charming, an unlikely possibility anywhere else in the world but here.     

Petite Maman

 

Writer/director Céline Sciamma

The director shooting on the set

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Petite Maman          B                                                                                                                      France  (72 mi)  2021  d: Céline Sciamma     

Secrets aren’t always things we try to hide.  There’s just no one to tell them to.                          —Marion (Gabrielle Sanz)

Some find this an enchanting film, an open dialogue between our past and the present, a kind of existential mystery that veers into the supernatural, with death having a pronounced effect on a young 8-year old girl, where two actual twin sisters, Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz, are indeed extremely compelling figures who are utterly fascinating, yet the overriding storyline feels overly contrived, imposing adult dialogue and transcendent concepts that are well beyond the ages of the children, standing out as the only thing that is not natural in an otherwise totally naturalistic film, recalling an earlier effort by this filmmaker, Tomboy (2011), another modest film told through a child’s perspective, so this feels like a return to an earlier period in her filmmaking career in the way that it is filmed and realized, completely guided by a verité naturalism, yet is different in that it introduces larger-than-life themes.  Outside of the two young girls, who are utterly charming, bringing an elevated level of personal magnetism and mystique to the picture, offering proof of the director’s sheer artistry working with children, the rest of the cast feel overly slight, non-existent, even wooden at times, as if never really invested in the picture, completely overshadowed by these two young girls who really do carry the picture.  Featuring unusually long silences, much of this film is wordless and extremely spare, turning into a fable taking place in the woods, like a children’s fairy tale.  But it’s all preceded by the death of her grandmother in what appears to be a senior retirement home, with Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) affectionately saying goodbye to each of the residents before she joins her mother (Nina Meurisse) clearing out her grandmother’s room before heading out to do the same with her mother’s childhood home in the woods.  Affectionately sharing her snack and juice box with her mother in the car, there are a few awkward moments between mother and daughter, with her mother pointing out she always gets chatty and asks a lot of questions at bedtime, but Nelly states matter-of-factly, ”That’s when I see you,” while Nelly is less than satisfied with the few anecdotal stories her mother shares about her childhood, eagerly wanting to learn more, never really getting to know that younger version of her mother.  While her parents rarely speak, her father (Stéphane Varupenne) is kind and supportive, but is even more guilty of failing to connect on that earlier childhood connection, leaving Nelly a bit exasperated at times, while her mother is also grieving for the loss of her own mother, and disappears one morning without explanation, leaving Nelly alone to play in the woods, which have a gorgeous autumnal presence with the leaves turning color, beautifully filmed by Claire Mathon, shot in the same woods of the director’s childhood in Cergy-Pontoise, bringing a spirit of enchantment to the picture.  But nothing out of the ordinary happens until the next day when she sees another young girl her exact same age in the woods, her identical twin Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), lugging some tree branches to make a hut in the forest, becoming their own secret place.   

Marion invites her home, which is identical to her grandmother’s home, with the same wallpaper, only with furniture, with Margo Abascal playing Marion’s mother, yet the two girls play games and have fun, while growing curious about each other.  Both are sad that they have no siblings, which seems to draw them closer to one other.  They also act out stories while wearing costumes, with Nelly asking Marion’s mother for help, yet it’s the interaction of the two girls that carry the picture, mimicking the world of adults, never carried away with overacting, always maintaining a strong sense of self, both very determined young ladies who immediately connect with each other, becoming the friend they never had, though they are challenged by time restraints, as once Nelly’s parents finish clearing out the home, they will depart back home, expected to be just a few days.  Playing out in the woods together, fortifying their handmade fort, Nelly reveals an ominous hidden secret, informing Marion (the same name as her mother), that she believes she is her mother as a young child, and that Marion’s mother is her grandmother, so this time together allows them to interact in ways they never could before.  Now this is a blockbuster revelation, way too complicated for an 8-year old to figure out, yet there it is playing out before our eyes, like a storybook coming to life, allowing viewers to immerse themselves into a developing fantasy world, a lushly realized children’s story that suddenly has adult implications, incredible perhaps, yet a ponderous possibility, where the appeal of the two young girls may lure you into thinking they believe it, as children believe things without hesitation, without bias or filter, but simply believe.  The light airiness of the film couldn’t be more polar opposite than the density in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s THREE COLORS: BLUE (1993), yet both deal with similar themes, though here a story of death and grief evolves into an out-of-body experience, illuminated by what amounts to a wish-fulfillment fantasy, yet perhaps the bravery of the film is the director’s willingness to portray a child’s world with this degree of worldly enhancement, valuing their emotional intelligence and their ability to adapt to things we view as complicated.  Perhaps the essence of this film is that it’s a woman’s picture, internalizing the female experience, accentuating the bond between a mother and child, which doesn’t have to make sense, as so much of it is instinctual, learning by feel, allowing the spirit to express itself onscreen.  Now if this was an animated feature, a Miyazaki picture, for instance, would we be viewing it any differently?  Miyazaki seems to have been a strong influence on the making of this film, as unlike Disney, Miyazaki’s children stories confront real-life dilemmas that can be profoundly scary, like the potential death of a sick mother who is away at a hospital in MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), sending chills of fear into her children, who invent a fantasy world to cope with it.  Because this film plays out in such a realist manner, we may get caught up in the details, as there are transcendental elements here that appear jaw-dropping, yet the matter-of-fact style is how the director has chosen to convey this message, using no special effects, only magical ideas.    

Lacking the luxuriance of her most recent film, 2019 Top Ten List #2 Portrait of a Lady On Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu), this seemingly effortless film is unusually low-key, remaining ambiguous in every respect, which can be off-putting and a bit disconcerting at times, where the short film duration does not allow viewers much time to adjust to what’s happening onscreen, yet it’s certainly a provocative film.  And while this may be a BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985) ghost story, it never feels like one.  Shot during the Covid pandemic, limited to small sets and minimal crew, that fact belies the richness of the film’s detail, and the bright color of the forest, though it may tap into shared themes of profound grief and loss.  Nelly inquisitively leafs through her mother’s childhood journals, extracting bits and pieces of information, exhibiting a healthy dose of curiosity, a trait she shares with Marion, while Marion’s mother is already walking with a cane that Nelly kept as a keepsake after her death from some undisclosed terminal illness.  Marion is due to undergo surgery in just a few days so she doesn’t suffer the same fate, acknowledging a certain amount of fear, with Nelly helping her pack a suitcase for the hospital.  Yet the overriding factor is the developing friendship between the two girls, who seem to hide nothing from each other, always speaking directly, yet so much is communicated without ever uttering a word.  Nelly can’t help but wonder what happened from the playful and uninhibited child that Marion is to the closed-off adult that she is now, where her unexplained departure leaves an emotional gap that she’s trying to fill, remaining a bit of mystery.  The subject of grief is filtered through childhood innocence, as the girls mischievously make pancakes together, spilling ingredients, rubbing some of the mess on their face, laughing giddily, where their humor is infectious, yet Nelly is especially mature and perceptive, quickly picking up on things, like Marion’s changing moods, already exhibiting signs of melancholy, which she’s seen happen with her own mother and predates her recent loss.  But Marion is quick to point out, “You didn’t invent my sadness,” which feels uncommonly generous, like an overly insightful and completely incomprehensible thing for an 8-year old to understand, but these girls display a rare degree of empathy.  It can be jarring to hear young 8-year olds speak like adults, but that is part of the inversion of this film, as they’re the ones exhibiting uncommon insight, while the adults exist only on the periphery.  Among the more transfixing scenes is a raft ride on a lake, paddling to a destination out in the middle that resembles a lost Mayan ruin, like the pyramid structure of El Castillo that seems to hold mystical powers, adding an element of complexity and depth that is never explained, but challenges the imagination, as if exploring the deep recesses of their own subconscious, accompanied by exhilarating music they call “Music of the Future,” Petite Maman 2021 - La Musique du Futur YouTube (2:16), offering an uplifting air of euphoria.  Exploring themes of female identity in such an unusual manner, mixing childhood with adulthood, seems like an original choice, yet death in this film always seems far away, more like an abstract concept, yet the film does engage in difficult territory too often left unexplored.