February 2 : Hull Auditorium : Coco avant Chanel
February 6 : Hull Auditorium : Des Dieux et des hommes
February 8 : Wygal Auditorium : L’Illusioniste
February 12 : Hull Auditorium : Potiche
February 14 : Hull Auditorium : Joueuse
All shows, subtitled in English, begin at 7.00 pm.
Anne Fontaine’s thoughtful exploration of the pre-fame life of the world’s greatest fashion designer focuses on Coco Chanel during the Belle Epoque. The film opens in 1893 with a powerfully grim scene of 10-yearold Coco and her sister unceremoniously dumped at an orphanage and ends around World War I, a few years before the Chanel empire is launched. In her strongest performance to date, Audrey Tautou expertly conveys Chanel’s struggle against the formidable limitations that an ambitious, non-wealthy woman at the time faced—particularly one who refused to marry. The designer, a proud peasant who wasn’t ashamed to sometimes distort the truth, sought to liberate women from the oppressive fashion of the time: suffocating corsets, pounds of extra material, and hats that looked liked “meringues.” Fontaine’s complex biopic refuses to completely lionize its subject, insisting on examining the compromises Chanel had to make. Though she may have been aided by her rich lovers, namely millionaire Etienne Balsan and English industrialist Arthur “Boy” Capel, Chanel remained fiercely independent, becoming a great visionary—as evident in the film’s fantastic coda, when an older Chanel sits on the famous steps of her couture house as contemporary models march past her, wearing her greatest designs.
Xavier Beauvois’s sublime tale of faith and doubt is based on a real incident from 1996 that still reverberates in France. Eight French Trappist monks settle in an impoverished village in Algeria, offering medical assistance and gaining the locals’ trust by taking part in Muslim traditions. Life, in many ways, is idyllic for the Catholic brothers as they tend to their honeybees and exalt God’s glory; led by the abbot, they are frequently seen chanting and praying. This harmony is disrupted by the arrival of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), fundamentalist terrorists who demand that the monks leave, a request that is soon seconded by the Algerian military. Not wanting to abandon the destitute citizens who’ve come to rely on them, the brothers take a vote, ultimately deciding to stay—a resolution that seems even more perilous after Croatian volunteers are killed by the GIA. As the film leads up to the monks’ inevitable doom, Beauvois considers the intransigence of religious belief: both for his white-robed martyrs and their brutal captors.
Sylvain Chomet’s delightful follow-up to 2003’s The Triplets of Belleville is another exquisitely animated film, one based on an unproduced script by the French comic genius Jacques Tati (which was given to Chomet by Tati’s own daughter). The Illusionist is set in the early 1960s, the time when Tati wrote the screenplay after his huge success with Mon Oncle (1958). As an homage to the source material, Chomet’s title character is the spitting image of Tati. This middle-aged, slightly stoop-shouldered magician is upstaged by his rabbit during performances in Paris; at his shows his London, the Illusionist can’t begin to compete with a wildly popular proto-Beatles band. But he finds far more appreciative audiences in small pubs in Scotland—and makes a devoted teenage friend, Alice, a poor cleaning girl who follows him to Edinburgh. The two form a touching father-daughter bond, with the Illusionist determined to secretly provide Alice with the nice clothes she so admires—finery that isn’t procured through magic, but through a series of funny odd jobs that the conjurer takes. Though neither the magician nor his young charge speak each other’s language, The Illusionist, like Tati’s work, beautifully shows the ways people understand each other nonverbally.
The thrillingly incongruous image of Catherine Deneuve, the long-reigning queen of French cinema, in curlers and a cherry-red track suit is just one of the many delights in François Ozon’s 1977-set comedy, a very loose adaptation of a boulevard-theater production. The film’s title translates as “trophy wife,” the position that Deneuve’s Suzanne Pujol has held for decades in her loveless marriage to philandering umbrella-factory owner Robert. When labor unrest causes the high-strung Robert to suffer a collapse, the intrepid Suzanne steps in, endearing herself to the workers and rekindling a romance with a Communist ex-lover and union liaison, Babin. Much as he did in his 1950s-set film 8 Women, Ozon creates a stunning period piece, perfectly re-creating the 1970s through costume, hairstyle, décor, and music, epitomized in Suzanne and Babin’s outing at a disco. But above all, Potiche is a showcase for the formidable talents of Deneuve, whose comic timing proves just as impeccable as her dramatic delivery. As Suzanne breaks free of her coddled life, she realizes, just like many other women who discovered feminism in the 1970s, that the personal really is political.
This charming first film by writer-director Caroline Bottaro stars the peerless Sandrine Bonnaire as Hélène, a dutiful, middle-aged wife and mother and hard-working maid at an exclusive resort in Corsica whose obsession with chess leads to a powerful transformation. After bicycling to work—a gorgeous scene that shows off the Mediterranean island’s breathtaking beauty—Hélène notices an amorous couple playing chess while she changes the sheets in their room. Simultaneously turned on and transfixed, Hélène teaches herself to play the game, staying up until all hours of the night as she tries to understand its intricate strategies. When her practical-minded husband shows little interest in playing the board game with her, she beseeches the reclusive American intellectual, whose house she cleans, to be her chess partner. Though their game-time slowly becomes erotically charged, Bottaro wisely focuses on the ways chess reenergizes Hélène, whose life had become mere routine. The greatest pleasure in Queen to Play is watching Hélène’s intense concentration as she contemplates her next move on the board, particularly in the triumphant final scene.
Le Cinéma en France
