Go to a French Film Festival!
Foreign film festivals are exciting places where you can see films that have yet to be released in the UK. There is though the hassle of booking plane tickets and hotels and making sure you’ve got some Euros. Not any more. Until 17th February My French Film Festival is running online and you can watch a selection of French feature films and shorts that have not been seen in UK cinemas. Ten full length films and ten shorts are available and once you have watched a film you can vote for the winner of the Audience Award.
I chose to watch a film by Marc Fitoussi. Pauline détective is a fun comedy murder mystery on the Italian Riviera. With such a setting and a mixture of French and Italian languages it already has a lot going for it, but the plot is actually amusing. Fitoussi has got around the need for a murder mystery to have a detective by making the star (played by Sandrine Kiberlaine) the editor of a real-life murder magazine called Le Nouveau Detective. She has an overactive imagination, demonstrated from an early Hitchcock spoof to the final shot. Beautiful primary colours dominate the palette, whether red skirts and breeches or blue towels and dresses. Actors stand in front of boldly patterned walls, yellow sun beds are lined up by the blue pool. Scenes don’t fade to boring old black but end with iris wipes to red, purple or yellow.
Like any good Hercule Poirot holiday, Pauline goes to the coast to rest but is quickly caught up in a mystery. Why has a writer disappeared? Why has…well, there are lots of why hases for her to consider. Spoof magazine covers fly on screen, expressing her latest idea about why someone has been murdered. More shots of the riviera would have been good, but the film is out to entertain and with a Speedos-wearing swimming instructor as Dr Watson, it achieves this aim admirably. Pauline might be having personal problems but her character is a good choice to carry the film. Just don’t lend her your Alfa.
Films available to watch include:
Features ?
– In a Rush, by Louis Do Lencquesaing
– Augustine, by Alice Winocour
– Little Lion, by Samuel Collardey
– Maddened by his Absence, by Sandrine Bonnaire
– The Virgins, the Copts and Me, by Namir Abdel Messeeh
– The July 14 girl, by Antonin Peretjako
– The Day of the Crows, by Jean-Christophe Dessaint
– Welcome to Argentina, by Edouard Deluc
– Mobile Home, by François Pirot
– Pauline détective, by Marc Fitoussi
Shorts
– Just Before Losing Everything, by Xavier Legrand
– The Lobster’s Cry, by Nicolas Guiot
– Clay, by Michaël Guerraz
– The Runaway, by Jean-Bernard Marlin
– The Lizards, by Vincent Mariette
– Kiki of Montparnasse, by Amélie Harrault
– Solitudes, by Liova Jedlicki
– In Seventh Heaven, by Guillaume Foirest
– A la française, by Morrigane Boyer, Julien Hazebroucq, Ren-Hsien Hsu, Emmanuelle Leleu, William Lorton
– The First Step, by Jonathan Comnène
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