NZFFF 2021 Week 2

The Man in The Hat

An absurdist gem that will leave you wondering what is and isn't real. A very fun film that follows a man (Ciarán Hinds) driving through France with a picture of a woman, and a gang on his tail. There is beautiful photography and very little dialogue, and it delighted me.

Un triomphe/The Big Hit

A simple, well-executed biographical piece about a theatre teacher staging Waiting for Godot in a prison, lead b the always enjoyable Kad Merad. Well worth spending a couple of hours with.

De Gaulle

There is a tremendous about to love about this biopic of Charles de Gaulle; I'll start with the focus: it centres around his efforts to prevent the invasion of France, and then to continue the battle against both the Nazi occupation and the Vichy coup against the Republic, and it remains focused on covering what it needs of his life to tell that story.

That might sound like the basis for a rather narrow film, but it isn't because of the greatest strength of it: it places De Gaulle in context not only as a military man and a defender of the a free France, but a family man. We are presented, then, with his desperate fears for his own family, and hence the role Yvonne de Gaulle must play in saving that family from the Nazi advance. Neither Charles nor Yvonne are under any illusion that the Germans and the Vichy, the latter of whom hold a particular hatred for him, would scruple to use his wife and children as weapons against him if they can get hold of them - and the film presents their particular fears for their youngest child, Anne. Anne de Gaulle was born with Down Syndrome and was especially vulnerable to fascism.

So the film does look at their lives before the war in as much as it must to explain their lives during the fall of France: in particular, it recreates the famous photo of de Gaulle playing with Anne at the beach. His other children remember as a stern traditionalist who did not much express himself with others addressing them and his wife formally, with Anne as the exception, who he was happy to play with however she liked.

During the fall, it spends a great deal of time on Madame de Gaulle's flight and search for passage to England, and the challenges of uprooting a profoundly disabled child - Anne had very limited speech - for reasons that are both desperately important to her survival, but she will never understand; it is called "de Gaulle" but it is really about the de Gaulles, rather than one of them.

Seules les bêtes/Only the Animals

A mystery that cuts between the Côte d'Ivoire and the mountains of southern France; it's difficult to say too much about it without unravelling the whole thing, but it's an expertly told story that shows us a murder at the start and then lays out seemingly disparate stories over a number of acts, finally pulling everything together deftly in the final scenes. Excellent.

Délicieux/Delicious

This film was an absolute joy; set shortly before the French Revolution it serves as a dramatisation of the early modern development of public dining. It starts with a Duke's chef, Pierre Manceron, being humiliated and turned out into poverty because he provided an experimental dish to his master, and follows the development as his son - no chef, but a poor would-be intellectual - argues that he could do better by lending his genius to the long-abandoned inn that he had inherited from his father.

They are joined by Louise, played by the always fabulous Isabelle Carré, who fights to be allowed to cook, in the face of Pierre's insistence that commercial cuisine is the business of men, adding another strand to the skein of class and fashion and sexism that the film explores.

It's a wonderful film: it casually drops historical elements - the chef bellowing at his staff to dial back on the cinnamon because "it's not the Middle Ages any more" is aimed at a modern audience who persistently refuse to understand that the sparing use of spices in prestige European cuisine is not ignorance or incompetence, but a statement of wealth - and the photography is brilliant, with scenes punctuated by still life images of the foods.

La bonne épouse/How To Be A Good Wife

By turns hilarious and painful this film is set on the eve of the 1968 near-revolution in France. It's set in an old-fashioned rural, not especially prestigious finishing school that promises to wrangle teenagers into "good wives" for an archaic patriarchy. Juliette Binoche features as the head teacher - in a staff of three - who teaches values that have led her to a life where she has neither happiness in her own marriage, nor the ability to organise the basics of an adult life: her husband exerts rigid control over their car, their finances, their business, everything.

When he drops dead, his incompetence is revealed: the school is almost broke, and she has little idea of how to save it. The film follows her efforts to do so, and the dreadful mismatch of the aspirations of the teenagers in her care and the inadequacy of the education that she is providing them. Except it is a hell of a lot funnier than I made it sound: those are the themes, sure, but they are explored through whacky hi-jinks as her sister in law and the live-in nun try to aid her, and as an old flame tries to woo her - at one point shimmying up a drain pipe and regaling her with his ability to iron his own clothes to convince her to give him a chance. It's hilarious, and then end is... well. Have you ever wanted to see Binoche lead an army of feminist teens to the barricades in the form of a musical? No? Well you do now.