BONJOUR to French cinema

ANIMATION AND CINEMA classics from France are among the highlights of the 12th World Film Festival of Bangkok, which boasts a line-up of new talents as well as works by the likes of 1960s New Wave auteurs Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.
Godard goes experimental with his latest effort, the 3D “Goodbye to Language”, which is a musing on how language has changed and how we’re going to communicate in the feature. In it, a couple cannot understand one another until their pet dog acts as their interpreter. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Jury Prize with another World Film Festival of Bangkok entry, “Mommy”, by French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan.
“At 83, Godard still wants to challenge the audience,” says World Film Festival of Bangkok director Victor Silakong. “Good cinema provokes, and this is one of those.”
Also from Cannes is “The Blue Room”, a fresh adaptation of the Georges Simenon crime novel by Mathieu Almaric, a prolific actor known for his roles in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” as well as for his turn as a Bond villain in “Quantum of Solace”. But he’s a relatively new directorial voice, and with “Blue Room”, he takes his second turn helming a feature, steering a tense, claustrophobic tale of childhood friends reunited as adulterous lovers.
In a bid to bring classic films to the Bangkok big screen, two older French films will be shown, Godard’s 1965 comedy, “Pierrot le Fou” and from 1980, Truffaut’s “The Last Metro”. “Pierrot le Fou” follows a bored Parisian man (Jean-Paul Belmondo) whose life turns exciting when he travels to the Mediterranean with a young woman (Anna Karina) who is chased by Algerian hitmen.
Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu star in World War II drama “The Last Metro”, about an actress in a Paris theatre troupe struggling to keep her Jewish playwright husband out of Nazi hands, while also dealing with the Nazis’ strict curfew and shortages of food and coal. One of Truffaut’s most successful films, it was nominated for the foreign-film awards at both the Golden Globes and Oscars.
French animation is in the spotlight with five entries, “A Cat in Paris”, “Ernest and Celestine”, “Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants”, “Tales of the Night” and “The Congress”, all in different styles.
The hand-drawn “Cat in Paris” is the story of a black feline who is the secret assistant of a thief. The two have to stay a step ahead the law as they try to help the cat’s owner, a little girl. More traditional animation can be found in the family friendly “Ernest and Celestine”, which follows the unlikely friendship that forms between an orphan mouse and a reclusive bear.
“Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants” is a 3D computer-animated epic in which rival ant colonies go to war over the remains of a picnic – a box of sugar cubes.
Michel Ocelot, known for his distinctive silouette animation on such films as “Kirikou and the Sorceress” and “Azur and Asmar”, returns with “Tales of the Night”, a reworking of his 2010 French TV series, “Dragons and Princesses”. It’s a compilation of five of the TV episodes plus one new fairy tale.
And “The Congress”, director Ari Folman’s follow-up to “Waltz with Bashir”, mixes highly stylised animation with live-action sequences. It’s the story about an ageing actress (Robin Wright) who agrees to sell the rights to her digital image to a Hollywood studio in exchange for a hefty sum and the promise to never act again. The studio is then free to use her likeness to make any movie it wants.
Director Sylvan Chomet, best known for his animated triumphs “The Triplets of Belleville” and “The Illusionist”, turns to live action for his latest effort “Attila Marcel”. The quirky comedy is about Paul, a socially repressed young man who has been raised by his eccentric aunts and does not speak. The aunts push him to win piano competitions, but he has no success until an upstairs neighbour brews up a concoction that changes his life.
And there’s another live-action entry, “Timbuktu”, which takes inspiration from current events, particularly the rise of Islamic extremists in the West African city. A French- Mauritanian production, it was sent to the Academy Awards by Mauritania. At Cannes, it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Francois Chalais Prize, which goes to films dealing with life affirmation and journalism.

Viola
The 12th World Film Festival of Bangkok runs from October 17 to 26 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.
Tickets cost Bt120. There are 500 special packages offering five movies for Bt500.
The festival will also be held at SF cinemas in Khon Kaen from November 7 to 9, Pattaya from November 14 to 16 and Chiang Mai from November 20 to 23.
Find out more at www.WorldFilmBkk.com.