The LFF reserves significant space in its programme each year for new offerings from France, grouped beneath the moniker “French Revolutions”. Many of these films don’t make it back to a UK projection booth, so it’s always a good idea to catch a few at the festival if you’re in the market for a lost-classic-to-be. Another good reason for seeing French films is that many of them are screened in the delightful Ciné Lumière, based in the UK’s French Institute in South Kensington. I’ve no idea if it says anything about the priorities of the French when it comes to designing a cinema auditorium, but it offers unusually generous personal space.
It’s a Sunday afternoon at the Lumière for the first of my three French choices, 17 Girls (or if you prefer, 17 Filles). This is a based-on-real-events drama inspired by the story of a sudden and simultaneous occurrence of teenage pregnancies at Gloucester High School, Massachusetts, which reached international notoriety in 2008. The French sibling team of Delphine and Muriel Coulin have made of the subject their debut feature, and moved the events to the French port of Lorient.
In spite of the title, the film’s plot is driven by the story of one girl; Camille is smart, confident, attractive, mature, very popular and pregnant. Whilst her pregnancy does nothing to detract from Camille’s allure to her friends, initially numbering about half a dozen that form the cool set, they all assume that an abortion will result. When Camille shocks her peer group by deciding to keep the baby, plans for the child’s upbringing become the main topic of conversation. Before common sense has had a chance to prevail, the girls descend en masse to a party with the intention of having unprotected sex. Whilst this is only ‘successful’ for one girl, the die is cast. The girls grow closer than ever as they make plans to form a community support network that will ensure nobody has to drastically rethink their future once their offspring arrives. The group’s membership swells (sorry) as word gets around the school that babies are in.
Though there is clearly something admirable about the girls’ solidarity and rejection of the conflicting and judgmental advice they receive from floundering adults, it’s impossible not to see similarities with the small town angst-turned-self-destruction of The Virgin Suicides. It’s in searching for a reason behind the girls’ behaviour that the film finds its most sympathetic moments. There are two scenes of adults seeking explanations which both ring true and raise a smile; one at a school governors meeting where every stereotypical flawed response from the left, right and centre of public opinion is comically rolled out; and another in the form of a TV news report that attempts a bizarrely tenuous link between the perceived moral decline and the collapse of the town’s industry.
I enjoyed the film, and was genuinely upset by its sad and abrupt climax, but there are a few too many under-developed ideas and characters. A lot more could have been made, for instance, of Clementine, physically and emotionally the least mature member of the gang, who could have offered a lot in terms of a contrast with Camille’s headstrong leader. Camille’s brother is also underused, despite being the only remotely serious male character. A soldier sent to war as a teenager, his very different kind of lost innocence offered a potentially interesting parallel storyline.
The treatment is also a little too French for its own good. Whilst the abundance of flesh, fornication and drug use is perhaps refreshingly liberated when imagining how Hollywood might have treated the same subject, it’s also just a bit too predictable. There is one especially outrageous moment involving Clementine’s attempts to conceive which is courageously played for laughs, but is actually very uncomfortable to watch. The film also floats along in a dreamy, philosophical atmosphere that becomes a little irritating at times. Essentially though, it is Camille’s story, and Louise Grinberg’s performance in the central role is arresting enough to forgive the peripheral flaws.
Two other new French films attempt a little cinematic nostalgia, with variable results. Most successful is Last Screening, a slasher horror that is all kinds of retro. The cinematography is pure 70s/80s genre classic, the references draw on the 50s and 60s, and the message is anti-modernisation.
Sylvain single-handedly runs the local art-house cinema, doing everything from projection to ticket sales. It’s not an arduous task as no more than about three people ever seem to attend a screening. For this reason, the owner announces the cinema’s closure, but this means nothing to Sylvain who remains in denial whenever anyone dares to enquire about it. The resistance is hardly surprising; the cinema is Sylvain’s life – he even resides in a cramped and gloomy living space in the basement.
In the evenings Sylvain pursues his hobby of slaying women with a knife, and his twisted trademark is to remove a single ear from every victim. We soon learn that this is connected to a secret section of his living quarters, hidden behind an enormous Jacques Tati poster, containing portraits of Hollywood’s greatest female icons, and one of Sylvain’s mother. Yes, what we have here is a lonely young man for a killer with an absent mother looming large. It doesn’t take a genius to work out which famous horror character is the inspiration for Sylvain, and he is given a similarly disturbing quality thanks to a wonderfully blink-resistant performance by Pascal Cervo.
The life story of Sylvain and his mother is revealed in a series of flashbacks which enable us to reach a full understanding of the situation by the film’s climax. To be honest, the revelations are nothing original, but then that’s kind of the point as the whole thing is homage. In addition to the stars found in his basement flat, the only feature showing in Sylvain’s cinema is Jean Renoir’s French Cancan, the film’s tribute to a French master. It’s a pleasingly ironic choice; in the real world an arch-cinephile such as Sylvain might regard the use of Renoir in a cheap, gory B-movie as somewhat sacrilegious.
However, despite the references to the classics, what’s really being celebrated in Last Screening is the filming process itself, and specifically the use of traditional celluloid. In the post-screening Q&A, the writer/director Laurent Achard, otherwise slightly unsure of himself, states as a matter of fact that “35mm is still the most beautiful film we have”. He means it so much that this is the only statement Achard dares to make in English, conducting the rest of the interview through a BFI interpreter. For all the dismembered bodies he leaves behind, it’s clear that what this director really wants to see the back of is digital technology.
To be honest, the Q&A isn’t all that successful. Most of Achard’s comments are quietly mumbled in French, with long pauses and the odd “Norman Bates” thrown in. The interpreter doesn’t seem an awful lot wiser than the rest of us. Mind you, the boot switches amusingly to the other foot when the floor is opened to the audience, as an academic-sounding question comes in from a young lady, first in perfect French, then self-interpreted in a cut-glass English accent. After a pause, Achard shrugs and turns to the official interpreter for help, proving there’s an international language of unintelligibility.
A much more ham-fisted effort at celebrating the golden age is made in Nobody Else But You. The film’s French title Poupoupidou actually offers more in the way of clues to the film’s subject, and I can’t immediately think of a reason why it was deemed necessary to change the title to a less famous line from the same song. You may have guessed by now that we are into the murky waters of Monroe-worship. This celebration of arguably the greatest screen icon of them all is in fact a daft whodunnit set in an obscure, snow-bound French outpost with a weathergirl in the role of Marilyn.
The story revolves around a crime novelist, David Rousseau, who makes his way to the wintry retreat of Mouthe for the reading of a will, clearly expecting a tasty inheritance. When it turns out to consist only of an unwelcome memento of a family pet, Rousseau plans to set off home. That is until he chances upon the story of a recently deceased local celebrity and Monroe-alike, Candice Lecoeur. For no apparent reason besides obsession with Candice’s beauty, Rousseau dismisses the accepted verdict of a suicide and goes on the hunt for his own evidence, much to the consternation of the local fuzz.
What does Rousseau discover about Candice? Well, oddly enough there’s a tragic back story of drugs, violent men, chronic self-doubt, unpredictable behaviour, etc… and you know what? This suicide thing might not be as clear-cut as it seems. I’m sure I don’t need to go on, but just in case you’re wondering, yes they even go as far as introducing a president into this, and yes, it’s every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, mostly because the girl we’re dealing with here, besides reading the weather, is famous only for cheese commercials, and only within the confines of Mouthe.
The problem is that the film never really makes its mind up what it wants to be; it’s part pulpy noir, part deadpan indie comedy, part mainstream crime thriller. My guess is that the director was aiming for a low-rent Mulholland Drive with more laughs, but it falls some way short of that. Rousseau is the divviest of detectives, and if you root for him at all it’s for his failure rather than success. The other blatant issue is that we’re so obviously watching Monroe’s story that we know exactly what’s going to happen. If anything, what keeps the viewer hanging on is to find out what twist they put on it but, without wishing to plant a plot spoiler, it’s a futile endeavour.
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