Strong women, up-and-coming auteurs
French film fest offers heroines, drama, and thrills
French cinema has always celebrated actresses, and unlike the United States, France supports a film industry in which the ingenues of years past have become writers, producers, and directors -- and on-screen heroines, of course -- of fascinating tales about women of a certain age. The 11th Boston French Film Festival, which runs July 6-23 at the Museum of Fine Arts, continues that tradition, with several titles that demonstrate why so many of Europe's most popular film stars have been Frenchwomen.
Fortunately for audiences, these actresses have long careers. Nathalie Baye, who began her career as an ingenue in Francois Truffaut's ``Day for Night" (1973), now stars as a chief of detectives in Xavier Beauvois's moody policier ``Le Petit Lieutenant." Another icon of French cinema made her debut as a woman, not a girl: Jeanne Moreau became an international star at 30 in ``Elevator to the Gallows." Moreau's famously unsmiling visage is still imposing, but she brings an unexpected warmth to her role as the grandmother of a dying young man (Melvil Poupaud) in ``Time to Leave." This clear-eyed, unsentimental drama is all the more surprising because it comes from Francois Ozon (``Under the Sand"), who's best known for Hitchcockian thrillers.
The 2005 rerelease of the surrealist classic ``Peau d'ane" (1970) served as reminder that Catherine Deneuve was a natural to play both a fairy-tale princess and a queen. So it's only fitting that she sends up the whole idea of noblesse oblige in ``Palais Royale!," a distinctly Gallic satire of the hapless House of Windsor. Director/cowriter Valerie Lemercier stars as a reluctant princess thrust into the spotlight when her husband -- the queen's favorite son -- suddenly ascends the throne. To the queen's dismay, the commoner princess transforms herself from gauche to gorgeous -- a celebrity more beloved than anyone in the royal family.
Quintessentially British, Charlotte Rampling has heated up a series of recent films (``Lemming," ``Swimming Pool"). She now essays another startlingly bold role in ``Heading South," a look at women (French, French-Canadian, and American) who engage in sex tourism in late 1970s Haiti. The movie's sensational subject matter drew packed houses and sharply divided responses when it played at festivals; many accused director Laurent Cantet (``Time Out") of casual anti-Americanism. Others -- including a few female critics -- pointed out that Cantet wouldn't have gotten anyone to see a movie on such a troubling subject if the protagonists had been male. Yet the mere mention of ``Rampling" and ``sex tourism" in the same sentence was enough for standing-room-only audiences.
The festival will be a showcase for the chameleon-like actress Isabelle Huppert, who appears in two films: Claude Chabrol's ``Comedy of Power," a political drama based on a recent, real-life French government corruption scandal. In it, Huppert plays a judge-magistrate (think special prosecutor) on the trail of a massive bribery ring. But her righteous quest won't bring simple justice: Chabrol's film coolly presents a society in which class still trumps merit. For director Patrice Chereau, Huppert transformed herself into ``Gabrielle," a fin-de-siecle trophy wife who contemplates leaving her elegant but loveless marriage -- but changes her mind just as her husband (Pascal Greggory) discovers her plans. While the Joseph Conrad short story ``The Return , " on which the film is based, focused on the thoughts of the husband, `` Gabrielle " also illuminates the inner torment of the lonely wife. Director and coscreenwriter Chereau will be on hand to introduce the film. It would be interesting to find out whether the husband's obsession with Gabrielle's blood-and-milk complexion was written by Conrad, or by Chereau with Huppert's unusual redheaded beauty in mind: ``Your skin reflects your every thought," says the husband. ``I can trace your life in each blue vein."
The festival also brings to Boston debut films from unknown directors. Several illustrate not just how influential the French film industry is, but how international it has become. ``L'Enfer," based on a scenario by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, is Bosnian director Danis Tanovic's take on the story of Medea. Costa-Gavras's black comedy ``The Ax" follows a laid-off middle-aged man who resorts to extreme measures, like murder, when faced with extended unemployment. The festival's second Chabrol movie, ``The Bridesmaid," is a deeply unsettling psychological thriller adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel. If audiences aren't warned in advance of the dark themes to come, they'll be beguiled by the pleasant suburban setting and seemingly happy occasion: a family preparing for a daughter's wedding. But don't be fooled: As in their previous collaboration, ``La Ceremonie," Chabrol and his literary soul mate Rendell are masters of understated menace.
Even an apparently lightweight comedy, ``La Moustache," shifts from sophisticated marital banter to a bizarre drama about how easy it is to lose oneself if no one recognizes you. After an innocuous conversation about a husband's fuzzy facial hair, he shaves his moustache, and his wife suddenly denies her man ever had one to begin with. Then she announces that his parents are dead and that her husband's insane. And he can't convince anyone that she's wrong.
The French aren't known for making horror films, but one entry, ``They Came Back"/``Les Revenants" takes a familiar horror trope -- the walking dead -- and gives it a philosophical twist. The revenants aren't scary but somber. Those who'd mourned for their loved ones are now faced with the burden of living with those whom they no longer have room for. For straight-up gore fans, there's ``The Ordeal," in which a traveler breaks down in France's version of ``The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
The festival's real gem is ``13 (Tzameti)," a prizewinner at both the 2005 Sundance and Venice film festivals. Though it opens in Boston soon, this is a chance to see one of the year's best thriller s . First-time director Gela Babluani, who's Georgian ( `` tzameti " means ``13" in his native tongue) , made the film on a lean, mean budget, in crisp black and white, and in a style reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Melville and early Roman Polanski. Except for the late-model
Justine Elias can be reached at justine@moviecitynews.com. 
