Relationships are tested in French film festival
Blame it on the recent nasty presidential campaign, unnerving social unrest, or simple ennui. Whatever the cause, if the 12th annual Boston French Film Festival is any indication, there's a mean streak running though interpersonal relations in France.
Infecting this year's program, which begins Thursday and runs through July 29 in Remis Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts, are more romantic revenge plots and brotherly back stabbings than you can shake a stale baguette at. Not only do characters struggle with fidelity (as the French often do), but also the nature of camaraderie itself.
Culled from the country's past three years' releases, the MFA festival is considered one of the largest showcases of French cinema anywhere. This 28-film crop reveals an emotional landscape in which every human relationship -- sexual, fraternal, parental -- seems up for grabs. Protagonists lie to children, cheat on lovers, and leverage friends for personal gain. Others tempt the edges of their sexual orientation, risking their conventional marriages and betraying middle-class ideas about happiness.
Take festival opener "My Best Friend," directed by Patrice Leconte ("Intimate Strangers," "The Hairdresser"). François (Daniel Auteuil), an uptight antiques dealer, is told by his colleagues he has no true friends. Defiantly, François wagers he can prove, in 10 days, that a best friend exists, engaging gregarious taxi driver Bruno (Dany Boon ) to school Francois in meeting people and being friendly. Yet as the two loners become closer, their own bond is tested in a nail-biting if clichéd climax. Oui, the premise is a bit absurd, and the characterization uneven and at times forced. But after the lights come up, few audience members won't wonder how far a friendship might be pushed, or if they truly have a best friend at all.
"Poison Friends" is another frank exploration of treachery, here focusing on one-upmanship and jealousy among male students at the Sorbonne. Director Emmanuel Bourdieu ("Esther Kahn") elicits highly believable performances from the young actors playing aspiring writers and scholars. The classmates allow themselves to be bullied into literary clique-dom by Morney, a manipulative fellow student who isn't above stealing girlfriends and deleting computer files. When Morney's behind-the-scenes machinations eventually catch up with him, poetic justice is served, and the nasty price paid is lost naivete.
"Ambitious" is director Catherine Corsini's take on the same territory. Her film delves into the cut throat world of Parisian literary circles as Julien, a young writer from the sticks, manipulates Judith, a powerful editor strangely drawn to him. But whereas Bourdieu's film is striking and fresh, "Ambitious" is not so ambitious. Dramatic tension is built (even if the outcome is foreseeable); but the maudlin romance of the last reel wrecks any emotional gravitas gained early on.
Two outstanding films concern the theme of closeted men awakening to a sexual identity they are loathe to admit. In the pitch-perfect "The Man of My Life," husband Frédéric (Bernard Campan) , on a vacation in the country with wife, family, and friends, finds himself inexplicably drawn to Hugo (Charles Berling) , a gay neighbor. Hugo's damaged credo -- "Relationships are a trap" and "The ultimate destruction is sharing your life" -- becomes gradually revealed to Frédéric during an all-night conversation that the film intercuts with day-to-day scenes of the summer holiday. Zabou Breitman , an actress who has become a brilliant director, does not shun quietness. Her compositions are daring. Her camera lingers to capture sunlight playing on walls. Scenes are revisited and replayed from new angles, adding new layers of resonance. Her characters walk into fixed frames, bodies cut off at the waist. Fearless children, dressed in masks and capes, seem to stand in for adult role-playing in this entirely compelling and visually arresting film.
"The Witnesses," the latest from André Téchiné, pits heterosexuality against homosexuality in this story of interlocking love triangles set at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. Uptight, older medical researcher Adrien (Michel Blanc ) falls for Manu (Johan Libéreau ); meanwhile, cop Mehdi (Sami Bouajila ), already coupled with writer Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart ), can't resist the boyish Manu. The roving, hand-held camera and bright reds and yellows capture the wanton energy of the pre-AIDS gay community -- a mood made all the more sober as these lives are torn asunder. Impressively, Téchiné's story manages to avoid any descent into banality or self-pity; the characters' struggles remain real; and Paris in 1984 never seemed so innocent.
Not all festival picks hit their marks. It seems the more Hollywood, star-studded and high concept the film, the less successful it becomes. In Guillaume Nicloux's "The Stone Council," Catherine Deneuve and Monica Bellucci tread in the moody " Sixth Sense" territory of the supernatural child, here mixed with serial murders and hackneyed international conspiracies. Minus her sex appeal, the pixie-haired Bellucci is given little to do but shriek.
In "How Much Do You Love Me?" veteran director Bertrand Blier ("Get Out Your Handkerchiefs," "Too Beautiful for You") has at least allowed Bellucci her long hair and ample sexual magnetism. But the plot -- a lowly lottery winner (Bernard Campan, Frédéric in "The Man of My Life") "buys" hooker Bellucci for 100,000 euros per month -- is too laughable to take seriously, nor is the dialogue and over-the-top acting stylized enough to work as farce.
Likewise, "Family Hero" is an overwrought melodrama about a transvestite-nightclub owner who dies, bringing together a family, Deneuve and Béart among them. And Xavier Giannoli's "The Singer," with Gérard Depardieu as a small-town lounge crooner and Cécile De France as a jilted single mom, seems promising, but much about their attraction and affair remains inexplicable.
Other highlights include "7 Years," the ultimate unexpected love-triangle-betrayal story among a prisoner, his wife, and his prison guard (suspend your disbelief at the prison gates); the atmospheric but bewildering "Hotel Harabati," which plumbs the gulf between a married couple and their strange descent into personal paranoia brought on by post-9/11 terrorism; and the subtle pleasures and treacheries of "Don't Worry, I'm Fine," a compelling drama about the secrets a father keeps in order to preserve his daughter's happiness. One of the festival's few outright comedies is "Love Is in the Air," a lighter-than-air story that uses fear of flying as a metaphor for romantic commitment.
Also of note are Mathieu Amalric and Laetitia Casta in the renters-versus-landlord clash "The Very Big Apartment," directed by Pascal Thomas as a bustling family portrait and drama-comedy; "Blame It on Fidel," a child's-eye view of political families, from Julie Gavras , daughter of Costa-Gavras ("Z," "Missing"), in her fiction-film debut; and such highly anticipated films as Benoît Jacquot's "The Untouchable" and Robert Guédiguian's "Journey to Armenia."
Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com. 
