The movie that...

I read many cinema magazines every month and there is a French one which has a very nice last page. 
It is called Le Film qui... (The movie that...), in which an actor/actress or a director talks about a bunch of movies that marked his/her life. I read it always with great pleasure, because I adore knowing the taste of cinema makers. Of course, I dream that this magazine would ask me about my movies, but why should I wait for them since I have a cinema blog???! 
So, Zazie, which is the movie that...

... makes you want to dance?

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort by Jacques Demy (1967)
It is just impossible for me not to start dancing every time I hear a song from this movie. I know all the chansons by heart, I even went on pilgrimage to the city of Rochefort, I'm crazy about Jacques Demy's universe and the music written by Michel Legrand. This is a cure against the ugliness and sadness of the real world. Jumelles Garnier For Ever!!! 


... makes you laugh every time you see it?

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of Desert by Stephan Elliott (1994)
I never laughed so much watching a movie as I did for Priscilla. The plot is amazing, the actors are absolutely astonishing (Terence Stamp deserved an Oscar for his role!), the dialogues are so funny and brilliant you can basically never stop laughing and the scene where they dance on "I will survive" in the middle of the Australian bush... well, that wins hands off. There is no depression that can possibly survive to this:


... makes you cry every time you see it?

Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier (1996)
I saw this movie on a cinema screen four times and every single one I cried and sobbed in the most dramatic way. I can't stand to witness what happened to little Bess, that's the thing. This movie would be also part of my personal category of Movies that changed your life. I consider it a masterpiece under every point of view and Emily Watson's performance one of the best in cinema history. 
It is simply unforgettable.


... caused you sleepless nights?

The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan (1999)
I am a very impressionable person, so I don't usually see scary movie. I'm too scared too easily. When I saw The Sixth Sense, I didn't sleep for six nights (as many as the senses involved). It was the subtle bursting of supernatural elements into realistic situations that made the movie so incredibly dreadful. The idea at the core of the screenplay is really incredible. I don't think I can watch it ever again.

... shocked you?

American film-maker David Fincher

I am shocked by the misogyny of Fincher's movies, a film-maker I can't stand. Apparently, I'm the only one in the world to think that he is The Director Who Hates Women, but I don't care. I trust my guts and the way I feel every time I'm out of one of his movies: filthy, depressed and hopeless. Enough of it. I promised myself I will never see again one of his pictures. Good-bye, Mr. Fincher!

And NO, I'm not going to waste space of my blog to show images taken from his movies. Basta!

... made you fall in love with its actor?

Hunger by Steve McQueen with Michael Fassbender (2008)
It was a Saturday night. I was seated in the Salle n° 1 of the Cinéma des Cinéastes. Just few people in the audience. I guess nobody wants to see, on a Saturday night, the story of a man who starved himself to death for political reasons. After half an hour of a movie that I was already considering amazing, a man appears on screen. He is so thin you can count the bones on his chest, the walls of his jail are covered with shit, he looks pale and fragile. But when he starts talking, with a strong Northern Irish accent, and you hear that voice, and you see that look, you understand how powerful this man can be. 
It was love at first sight.


... makes you want to write a cinema blog?

The Purple Rose of Cairo by Woody Allen (1985)
Love for cinema has never been so well expressed, in my opinion, than in this adorable movie by W. Allen. If somebody said: Madame Bovary, c'est moi!, I could easily say: Cecilia, c'est moi! The main character of this movie is a woman who can endure any misfortune in life provided that she can go to the movies and forget all the rest. In front of the screen, magic can happen, anything can happen, even the miracle of a movie character getting off the screen to meet you and fall in love with you. And if things go wrong, well, you can always go to the movies and crying while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are dancing cheek to cheek... 
... I can write about this for ever!

The Australian 400 Blows

Last week, I went to see the avant-première of an Aussie movie at the Cinéma du Pantheon: Samson & Delilah by Warwick Thornton (the movie won the Caméra D'Or, the award assigned to the best first feature at the last Cannes Film Festival).

I have to confess it: I’m in love with Australian cinema.

I think it’s a real pity that not many movies from Down Under are distributed in Europe and I think it’s a pity that the few Australian movies arriving in Europe are not exactly the best representation of their cinema industry. I mean, Australia by Baz Luhrmann is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in my entire life and the country he’s showing there is a mere cliché. The real Australia is somewhere else, for sure.

In the four years I’ve been living in Paris, though, I was lucky enough to see some very good Australian movies: the noir The Square by Nash Edgerton, the incredibly funny Razzle Dazzle by Darren Ashton, the fascinating 10 Canoes by Rolf De Heer, the interesting Jewboy by Tony Krawitz, the tender fairy tale Opal Dream by Peter Cattaneo and the splendid animation movie Mary and Max by Adam Elliot.

My favourite Australian movie of these recent years, by the way, is Lantana by Ray Lawrence. If you’ve never seen it, please rent/buy the DVD. It is a beautiful, touching, outstandingly played story (if you can, please also see the other two movies by Lawrence: Bliss and Jindabyne).

Another film maker I really love is Peter Weir and I don’t think my life would have been the same without the vision of Walkabout, a masterpiece by Nicolas Roeg (1971).

And last, but not least, I owe to two Australian movies my funniest moments seated in a cinema: The adventures of Priscilla, Queen of Desert by Stephan Elliott and the (unfortunately) completely unknown in Europe The Castle by Rob Sitch.
When I feel depressed, I think about Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce and Terence Stamp dancing on I will survive in the middle of the Australian bush and, well, I can’t help myself: I’m happy again!

Besides my good foundation of Australian cinema, I wasn’t prepared for the experience of Samson and Delilah. When it comes to Aborigines, I always feel uncomfortable.

I mean, it is a very delicate subject in Australia, for evident reasons, and I’ve always found a false note in the representation of Aborigines in movies. The only exception is the character of the police woman in Lantana: she is Aborigine (or half-Aborigine) and this is a simple detail. Watching the movie by Thornton, the other night, I suddenly understood why I always felt that way: I’ve never watched a movie before on Aborigines made by an Aborigine. No false note whatsoever in his representation of the group. He was allowed to do something that other film-makers couldn’t do: to be tough with his own people.

The plot of the movie is very simple: Samson and Delilah are two young Aborigines living in a small community in Central Australia. When Delilah’s grandmother died (the only family she had), the two, who are secretly in love, leave the place trying to reach Alice Springs. The impact with the city is simply awful. All sorts of tragedies happen, but in the end they manage to go back to the community and to settle in an isolated but quite place in the Northern Territory.

I’ve rarely seen on screen such a powerful story.

Thornton, who’s been a cinematographer up until now, not only wrote, directed and edited the movie, but also partially composed the original soundtrack. He perfectly knows what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.

The images are so talkative, that there’s no need for words.

Thornton takes his time to tell us the story, and we savour every single moment of it. We enter into the bleak day by day life of these two young people very slowly, till the point it feels like it is our own life. We know that they are falling in love simply because they look to each other in a certain way (there’s a magnificent scene: Delilah seated in a car listening to some quite music looks at Samson dancing on some loud music from a ghetto blaster and the two tunes melt into each other, while Samson’s dancing is filmed in a sensual slow motion).

The violence too is filmed in a very strong way. Nobody is immune: the Australians towards the Aborigines and the Aborigines towards the Aborigines. Thornton wants to tell us that the good and bad could come from both sides (the white homeless that help the guys in town, the Aborigine woman that beat them up when they’re back to the community instead of welcoming them).

After the movie, we were lucky enough to have the film-maker present at the cinema. I really loved his witty and clever answers to the audience’s questions.

He said that this story is his story. He said that he’s been saved by cinema, otherwise he would have been one of the many Aborigines sniffing glue and getting drunk near some Australian highways. He said that this movie is his “400 Blows” (no surprise about the fact that I almost cried listening to this sentence: 25 years after Truffaut’s death, here it is an Aborigine film-maker talking about his cinema!!!).

Thornton, above everything else, was hoping that, leaving the theatre, every one of us meeting a homeless in the street would think about Samson and Delilah, and this will give us the will to help him/her.

I don’t know if this is going to happen but, for a moment, every one of us dreamt of being a better person, stepping out of that cinema.

So thanks, Mr. Thornton.