The Good and the Bad at the FFF

Today proved the old adage, never believe the publicity. In this case it was the publicity for the opening movie of the festival called Chinese Puzzle, or more correctly 'Casse-tete chinois', and it was just that, a real 'casse-tete', meaning an 'annoyance' in modern French parlance.

I returned from this much hyped third of a series of French Rom Coms started by the The Spanish Apartment, which I saw long ago and enjoyed, feeling quite cheated, especially as I knew and loved the talents of Romain Duris who was hardly ever out of frame. All I can say is, he must have needed the money, as it was a boring movie. Well this franchise hasn't lasted to a third one as this pastiche of hackneyed characters and a storyline which has been stitched together by a soap opera writer cannot be saved by the ever-appealing Duris. I was itching to leave after forty minutes, ever wanting something original to appear but nothing did. It is an amazing anomaly that it is now the French ideal to live in New York City, Brooklyn to be more exact, and that is where this 'French' move it is set. A very missable affair, two stars only.

The lovely foyer of the Embassy Cinema

However earlier I caught an excellent remastered footage of a 1962 Documentary called 'Le joli mai', The wonderful month of May. For me it was a superb memoir of a Paris which I had seen the last of when I arrived in 1969. Things had already changed but this fabulous  personal memoir of how Parisians wanted and needed post-war modernisation was unique, historic and quite illuminating. Colonial, racist France, in spite of its great desire to be free, inclusive and brotherly, was shown to be somehow the opposite, but still retain its charm. But then, I suppose that's Paris, and it's the Paris which I loved, not the Paris of 2014.

And then came another French classic, named Quai D'Orsay, after the home of French Foreign Affairs in Paris. But there were none in this well filmed and quite successful political satire by the excellent Bertrand Tavernier. The principal actors, indeed all the actors, were great, and Thierry Lhermitte was super playing the Minister modelled upon the true patrician Dominique De Villepin, later to become Prime Minister for a while. It was really a movie for French people, and those in the audience were heard to laugh out loud a few times, but the majority of the non-French audience missed out on the very French sense of absurd and very educated classical jokes about  Heraclitus. It was enjoyable but how interesting are French politics to a New Zealander?