🎥 J+N Film Festival selection: Film #32

Les Traducteurs (2019) France – The Translators

Directed by Régis Roinsard

The French Film Festival is back!This film is a brilliant ode to writing and writers disguised as a mystery thriller. The key is in the name of the trilogy : Daedalus (the translators are assembled to do a ‘simultaneous translation’ of book III).

Daedalus was but the architect who designed the labyrinth which housed the minotaur, and, also importanly the dancing floor that held the key to the labyrinthine turns.

However, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know your Greek myths, as this film is very well written, filmed and edited.

Excellent ensemble cast also: Sidse Babett Knudsen (still amazing, but never as great as she was in 1864 or Borgen), Lambert Wilson, Riccardo Scamarcio, Olga Kurylenko (I loved her in The Ring Finger – and she had not aged one bit and still as luminous), Alex Lawther (you would have seen him in an unforgettable episode of Black Mirror, or more recently I caught him in Old Boy – great pairing with Pauline Etienne– another fave French actor of recent times), and Sara Giraudeau (love her in The Bureau).

Full of twists, turns, dead ends and doubling backs.

Catch this at #frenchfilmfestival #filmfestivaleveryday #filmoftheday

 

🎥 J+N Film Festival selection: Film #17

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain – Amélie (2001)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Amélie is a film that hardly needs an introduction. Why have I included this into our film festival selection? Because it is filled with joyful moments. Perhaps at the turn of the 20th century filmmakers felt we needed a extra dose of happiness; and this is a result of their sentiments. We could all do with a little bit more cheer in our lives at the moment.

Jeunet‘s fabulous love story comes to us in a saturated colour palette that is reminiscent of all great childhood memories; no longer washed down by the veneer of work and money-making. Interwoven stories of how to make connections with another person – being kind, playing tricks, leaving messages and traces of yourselves for others to find – are all delightfully stitched together in vignettes. There are so many similarities to the next film I’m posting in this series – Wes Anderson‘s The Royal Tenenbaums.

I must’ve seen both of these films a dozen times, easy; and Amélie never ceases to delight. Audrey Tatou’s openly inviting face, the trademark haircut (a tribute to two other characters who had a very different fate to hers – Anna Karina‘s character in Vivre sa vie, and, of course, Lulu – Louise Brooks’ character in G W Pabst‘s Pandora’s Box). Here, and like Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the heroine is given a different destiny.

I especially love the quirkiness of Kassovitz‘s character: he looks so young, so gentle here. And very different from his character (a hardened undercover operative) codename ‘Malotru‘ (literally means ‘lout’) in one of my favourite TV series, The Bureau.

Watch on #sbsondemand #filmfestivaleveryday #filmoftheday #stayhome

#filmfestivaleveryday #filmoftheday #stayhome