Queen to Play

Opening this weekend: Queen to Play, directed by Caroline Bottaro

Synopsis from AllMovie:

A middle-aged maid with few prospects before her finds a new lease on life via the game of chess, in this unusual tale that marked the first directorial go-round of acclaimed scriptwriter Caroline Bottaro (Les Aveux de l'innocent). French screen siren Sandrine Bonnaire (À Nos Amours) stars as Hélène, a Frenchwoman employed as a housekeeper in a posh Corsican hotel. Though devoted and diligent as a wife and mother, she lacks any real passion in her life. That changes in a single, defining instant when Helene espies a mysterious couple (the female played by Jennifer Beals) exchanging erotic glances and seductive gestures over a chessboard, on a nearby balcony. Feeling sexual arousal, Hélène misguidedly tries to parlay this into her own personal life by giving her boatworker husband an electronic chessboard, but the connection between this and a need for greater intimacy eludes him. Hélène's curiosity about chess nonetheless endures, and when she fails to teach herself to play sans assistance, she turns to an eccentric, reclusive American whose house she cleans, Dr. Kroger (Kevin Kline) and asks him to mentor her in the game. In time, her expertise outstrips Kroger's and she begins to live and breathe chess, but this very passion also threatens to alienate the woman's family, who perceive a form of infidelity in this new obsession.

Netflix It: Innocence

Available through Netflix: Innocence, written and directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Synopsis from AllMovie:

A strange institution prepares young girls for their future in a manner they don't truly understand in this surreal drama laced with fantasy. Iris (Zoe Auclair) is a six-year-old girl who arrives in a coffin (though alive and well) at a remote boarding school, where she and a handful of other girls are looked after by teachers Mademoiselle Eva (Marion Cotillard) and Mademoiselle Edith (Hélène de Fougerolles). Handpicked for the school and taken away from their families at a young age, each girl's age and place in the school's hierarchy is identified by the color of ribbon they wear in their hair (the oldest students, about 12, get purple ribbons), and they are forbidden to leave the campus grounds. Violating the rules is dealt with harshly, and their lessons focus on little besides ballet and biology. Each evening, the older girls are taken away to a different program they are not allowed to discuss, and the students get the impression that they are somehow being trained for future responsibilities, though what and why both remain a mystery. The first feature film from writer and director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Innocence was adapted from a short story by Franz Wedekind.

The Hedgehog

Showing at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival: The Hedgehog, directed by Mona Achache

Synopsis from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival website:

An intellectual concierge, a precocious 11-year-old and a refined Japanese gentleman are the strange trio at the heart of the sometimes uplifting, sometimes cynical The Hedgehog, based on Muriel Barbery’s bestselling novel. Making audiences feel clever while also delivering an old-fashioned fairy tale of unexpected love (and even a dose of social critique), Mona Achache’s helming debut unashamedly has it all ways. But the result is a basically touching, engaging parable about the importance of unconventionality. Performances are strong, with Josiane Balasko in particular suggesting a wealth of simmering emotion beneath her impassive features.

Unsubtitled trailer:

Let It Rain

Opening this weekend: Let It Rain, directed by Agnès Jaoui

Synopsis from the film's website:

Agathe Villanova, féministe nouvellement engagée en politique, revient pour dix jours dans la maison de son enfance, dans le sud de la France, aider sa soeur Florence à ranger les affaires de leur mère, décédée il y a un an. Agathe n'aime pas cette région, elle en est partie dès qu'elle a pu. Les impératifs de la parité l'ont parachutée ici à l'occasion des prochaines échéances électorales. Dans cette maison vivent Florence, son mari, et ses enfants. Mais aussi Mimouna, femme de ménage que les Villanova ont ramenée avec eux d'Algérie, au moment de l'indépendance.

Le fils de Mimouna, Karim, et son ami Michel Ronsard entreprennent de tourner un documentaire sur Agathe Villanova, dans le cadre d'une collection sur «les femmes qui ont réussi».

On est au mois d'août. Il fait gris, il pleut. Ce n'est pas normal. Mais rien ne va se passer normalement.

Or in other words:
 

Agathe Villanova, a feminist who has just entered politics, returns to her childhood home in the south of France for  ten day to help her sister Florence go through their deceased mother's possessions. Agathe never liked the area; she left as soon as she could. However, the demands of women's equality in the legislature have brought her here for the next election. This is the house where Florence, her husband, and her children all live, as well as Mimouna, the housekeeper that the Villanovas brought with them from Algeria when that country gained its independence.

Karim, Mimouna's son, and his friend Michel Ronsard are filming a documentary about Agathe, as part of a collection about "successful women."

It's August, but the weather is gray and rainy. That's not normal... but nothing is going to be normal.

Au voleur (A Real Life)

Showing at the Edinburgh International Film Festival: Au voleur, directed by Sarah Petit

Synopsis from the EIFF website:

Reacting impulsively to an inappropriate crush, a respectable young teacher lays her safety on the line for a grubby petty thief. Before she knows it, she's on the run — Bonnie to his Clyde, appropriately accompanied by Depression-era American folk tunes. Wayward, warm and genuinely unpredictable, this is a beautifully directed film, and a worthy vehicle for its late lead's idiosyncratic talents.

In Theaters: The Father of My Children

Opening in theaters today: The Father of my Children, directed by Mia Hansen-Love

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

Showing at Cannes: Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, written and directed by Sophie Fiennes

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

The film bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes and renders as a film journey the personal universe he has built at his hill studio estate in the South of France. In 1993 Kiefer left Buchan, Germany for La Ribotte, a derelict silk factory near Barjac. From 2000 he began constructing a series of elaborate installations there, comprising 48 buildings, a labyrinth of tunnels, bridges, lakes and towers. Traversing this landscape, the film immerses the audience in the total world and creative process of one of today’s most significant artists. Shot in Cinemascope, the film constructs visual set pieces alongside observational footage to capture both the dramatic resonance of Kiefer’s art and the intimate process of creation. This polarity - in terms of scale, sensibility and time - animates the film, creating a multi-layered narrative through which to navigate the complex spaces of La Ribotte. Here creation and destruction are interdependent; the film enters into direct contact with the raw materials Kiefer employs to build his paintings and sculptures - lead, concrete, ash, acid, earth, glass and gold...

The Tree

Showing at the Cannes Film Festival*: The Tree, directed by Julie Bertuccelli

*But not in competition, because among the films in competition, not one is directed by a woman. How... interesting. Feminism: totally unnecessary.

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

After the sudden loss of her father, 8-year-old Simone shares a secret with her mother Dawn: her father whispers to her through the leaves of the magnificient tree by their house. Simone is convinced that he’s come back to protect her family. Soon, Simone’s three brothers and Dawn also take comfort in the reassuring tree. But the new bond between mother and daughter is threatened when Dawn starts dating George. Simone moves into the treehouse and refuses to come down. With branches infiltrating the house and roots destroying the foundations, the tree seems to be siding with Simone. Dawn refuses to let the tree take control of her family...

The film's website is here.

In Theaters: Bluebeard (Barbe bleue)

Opening this weekend at the IFC Center in New York: Bluebeard, directed by Catherine Breillat

Ooh, this looks so creepy... can't wait!

Synopsis from AllMovie:

Controversial filmmaker Catherine Breillat puts a new spin on an ancient story in this multileveled drama. In France in the mid-'50s, Catherine (Lola Créton) enjoys toying with her younger sister, Anne (Daphné Baiwir), by reading her the story of the murderous and oft-married Bluebeard, embellishing the story with plenty of gore and scaring the child out of her wits. As Catherine rereads the story, we're taken back to the year 1697, as Lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) prepares to make Marie-Catherine (also played by Créton) his seventh wife. Marie-Catherine's youth and innocence make her an especially attractive quarry to Bluebeard, and rather than murder her right away, he decides to wait a while in order to savor the terrible joy of claiming her life. However, as Bluebeard becomes caught in a cycle of events that keep him from following through on his wife's murder, the two slowly become something like a normal couple and Marie-Catherine begins to turn the tables on her spouse. Barbe Bleue (aka Bluebeard) received its world premiere at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival.

Netflix It: 2 Days in Paris

Available from Netflix: 2 Days in Paris, written and directed by Julie Delpy

I loved this movie—it was hilarious, original and felt true. Plus, loads of Parisian eye candy (the architecture, people). It's actually available to watch instantly, so as long as you're on the Internet, you might as well check it out right now. Shoo. I'll be here when you get back.

Synopsis from AllMovie:

Ingenue Julie Delpy does triple duty as writer, director, and star of this romantic comedy. French photographer Marion (Delpy) and American interior designer Jack (Adam Goldberg) are returning from a vacation in Venice. Despite the fact that it was supposed to be the ultimate romantic getaway, disagreements and misunderstandings seemed to drive them farther apart rather than bringing them closer together. Before they return to the United States, Marion and Jack have a quick two-day stop in Paris to visit Marion's parents and pick up the cat that they had been pet-setting for their daughter. Unfortunately for Jack, Paris proves to be quite a culture shock. Not only are Marion's parents a pair of eccentric former "revolutionaries" who make no qualms about having knock-down-drag-out arguments regardless of who's present, but they also appear to have a particular distaste for Americans. Add to this the fact that Marion's friends hold nothing back when it comes to discussing their sexual lives, seem fixated on food rituals, and that Marion seems to run into former lovers on every street corner, and Jack quickly begins to suspect that he doesn't know his girlfriend half as well as he thought he did when they were living the simple life back in New York.

Netflix It: Fat Girl

Available from Netflix: Fat Girl, directed by Catherine Breillat

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Director Catherine Breillat, who courted international controversy with her film Romance, once again pushed the envelope with this disturbing (if somewhat less explicit) look at adolescent sexuality. Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) is a 12-year-old girl with a weight problem and a downbeat disposition growing up in a family that offers her little in the way of understanding and affection. Anaïs has a typically adolescent love/hate relationship with her slimmer and prettier 15-year-old sister, Elena (Roxane Mesquida); she's at once fascinated by her sister (and the boys who follow her around), and hates her for the love and attention she receives from others. While the family spends the summer at the beach, Elena attracts the attentions of Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), a college student from Italy who makes no secret of his attraction to Elena's budding sexuality. Anaïs, on the other hand, is forced to make do with a sad game in which she pretends that a ladder and a diving board at a neighborhood swimming pool are two suitors vying for her affections. Anaïs shares a room with Elena, and finds herself a fascinated, if troubled, witness as Fernando uses both charm and deceit to rob her sister of her virginity, while Elena is too naïve to see through the lies Fernando is spinning—and enjoys having Anaïs as an audience for her steadily advancing sex play with Fernando. Anaïs is more aware than her older sister of Fernando's insincerity, but she finds Elena isn't eager to believe her.

Home

Opening this weekend: Home, directed by Ursula Meier

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

An entire household is caught in traffic thanks to the opening of a new super-highway in this satiric comedy drama from Swiss filmmaker Ursula Meier. Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) and her husband (Olivier Gourmet) live in a small home in rural France with their three children. The family values their peace and quiet, except for oldest daughter Judith (Adélaïde Leroux), who has a fondness for cranking heavy metal music as she relaxes in her lawn chair. While construction on a highway near the house began years ago, the progress has been so slow that Marthe and her family have all but forgotten about it. But once the road is opened, they're suddenly subjected to a nonstop barrage of noise, exhaust, and all the stress that comes with it, and the relative calm of the household decays into chaos as Marthe is driven to a nervous breakdown. Home was screened as part of the Critics' Week program at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

The film's website is here.

Amer

Showing at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: Amer, directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Synopsis from the film festival's website:

In Amer, the first images, sounds and voices seem to come from an Italian horror movie of the seventies. To be more precise (and encourage those who visit these sinister regions of the catalog and festival), they seem to come from a giallo, combination of suspense and horror, in which dark directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento excelled. But Amer takes a different path, and first-timers Cattet and Forzani cleverly avoid making a movie that is a mere homage or insider’s wink. The film is more than the updating of a genre by skillfully and knowledgeably quoting its forms; the directors´ intentions and achievements are greater. Unlike classic giallos, there is no mystery to unveil, or rather, there are so many mysteries that they seem abstract, pure cinematographic form portrayed through images –probably the most fantastic images of the festival-, sounds and music (including the justified appearance of Ennio Morricone). And through the mystery of a woman in three different moments of her life, real or imagined, lived or dreamt, or everything at the same time.

Hidden Diary

Showing at the Chicago International Film Festival: Hidden Diary, directed by Julie Lopes-Curval

Synopsis from the Chicago International Film Festival website:

While visiting her parents in France, Audrey discovers her grandmother's diary, the only memento of a woman who abandoned her family. Audrey's search for understanding uncovers a family secret buried under 50 years of silence, and ultimately illuminates her relationship with her own mother (Catherine Deneuve) and the deep, complex bonds between three generations of women.

Coco Before Chanel

Now in theaters: Coco Before Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine

Synopsis from the film's website:

A little girl who is sent with her sister to an orphanage in the heart of France, who waits in vain every Sunday for her father to come for her...

A cabaret performer with a weak voice who sings to an audience of drunken soldiers...

A humble seamstress, who stitches hems at the back of a provincial tailor's shop...

A young, skinny courtesan, to whom protector Etienne Balsan offers a safe haven, amongst the idle and decadent...

A woman in love who knows she will never be anyone's wife, refusing marriage even to Boy Capel, the man who returned her love...

A rebel who finds the conventions of her time oppressive, and instead dresses in her lovers' clothes...

This is the story of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, who begins her life as a headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary journey becomes the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and became a timeless symbol of success, freedom and style.

Barbe Bleue

Showing at the New York Film Festival: Barbe Bleue, written and directed by Catherine Breillat

Synopsis from the New York Film Festival website:

Boudoir philosopher Catherine Breillat’s bloody chamber piece takes an outrageously deadpan approach to Charles Perrault’s grisly bedtime story about the aristocratic ogre who marries and murders a series of wives. Her Bluebeard is a middle-aged behemoth, easily four times the size of his child bride. The fairytale is acted out in a 16th century setting and explicated, often hilariously, by a contemporary pair of young sisters. The more sexually curious of the two is named Catherine and the movie’s double ending, while not exactly Perrault’s, is pure Breillat. The French director’s idiosyncratic follow-up to her sensuously carnal, literary period piece, The Last Mistress (NYFF 2007), is a perversely chaste and highly personal adaptation of Perrault’s classic fairytale.

Trailer (in French, no subtitles):

Where is Where?

Showing at the Museum of Modern Art: Where is Where?, directed by Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Synopsis from the MoMA website:

Eija-Liisa Ahtila (b. Finland, 1959), an artist celebrated for her often interrelated moving image installation pieces and 35mm films, returns to MoMA with the New York premiere of her film Where Is Where?, a haunting and layered consideration of how history affects our perception of reality. Fifty years ago, during the Algerian war, two young Arab boys killed their French friend. In the present day, a European poet (played by the sublime Kati Outinen, known for her appearances in the films of Aki Kaurismäki) seeks to understand and interpret this event with the aid of the character Death. With her fluid, highly original use of multiframe images Ahtila expands, beautifully and arrestingly, the expressive power of cinema.

The New York Times, by the way, loved it.

35 Shots of Rum

Opening this weekend: 35 Shots of Rum, directed by Claire Denis

Synopsis from the New York Times:

35 Shots of Rum, a quiet and lovely new film by the French director Claire Denis, is concerned with the bewildering chasm between huge and tumultuous international movements and individual lives. It is self-evident that the story of Joséphine and Lionel, an African immigrant whose wife was German, is bound up in a complicated history of demographics and political economy. The fact that nearly all of the characters in this film are French while few are white is a further index of how the European landscape has changed in recent decades. But the more salient change, the one that shapes Ms. Denis’s delicate narrative, is the one that occurs within Lionel and Joséphine’s relationship. It has to do with universally recognizable but nonetheless highly particular shifts in emotional weather, as a child and her parent undertake a gradual separation after years of solitary intimacy.
— A.O. Scott

Es kommt der Tag (The Day Will Come)

Showing at the Toronto International Film Festival: The Day Will Come, directed by Susanne Schneider

Synopsis from the TIFF website:

The legacy of terrorism is on the minds of a number of filmmakers this year, and with The Day Will Come, Susanne Schneider does a superb job of detailing the impact that youthful decisions can have on people's lives decades later. In her intimate, powerfully acted and extremely well-written film, Schneider focuses her narrative on two women from different generations whose lives are inextricably linked together.

The Day Will Come centres on a mysterious young woman (Katharine Schüttler) who equally mysteriously arrives on the doorstep of a family of complete strangers. She has had a small incident with her car and needs a place to stay for the night. Living in the countryside in a homey, rambling farmhouse with an underproducing vineyard, Judith (Iris Berben), her husband and their two teenaged children open their doors to the stranger. Little do they know how their lives will be completely and utterly changed.

Judith has a secret from many, many years ago that this stranger is committed to exposing. Slowly but surely, the truth begins to emerge, a past that has been swept under the carpet in a very successful attempt to create a new life.

It would be unfair to detail any more of the plot of this finely judged film. The beautifully honed performances of the two female leads become increasingly intense and harrowing as the story unwinds, and the fine secondary roles act as a subtle counterpoint to the main drama. Set in Alsace-Lorraine, a place where French and German mingle and blend but where history can never be fully forgotten, The Day Will Come evokes the complex masterpieces of Margarethe von Trotta's early work. As Schneider fully understands, the past never disappears; it reappears at unexpected times in unexpected ways. Her film is unflinching in its gaze and direct in its emotional connection.

Partir (Leaving)

Showing at the Toronto International Film Festival: Partir, directed by Catherine Corsini

Synopsis from the TIFF website:

Fresh from her remarkable, award-winning role in last year's Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Kristin Scott Thomas returns to the Festival opposite the smouldering Catalan actor Sergi Lopez in Catherine Corsini's gripping tale of a mid-life affair in southern France.

A gunshot erupts in the night, puncturing the quiet of a slumbering house. From this ominous opening, Partir jumps back in time several months. Suzanne (Scott Thomas) is preparing to return to work as a physiotherapist after years at home caring for her brusque doctor husband, Samuel (Yvan Attal), and her teenaged son and daughter. Samuel hires Ivan (Lopez) to build Suzanne her own backyard clinic. A former convict with a young daughter in Spain, Ivan responds cautiously at first to Suzanne's natural warmth. But when an accident brings the two closer together, social barriers give way to mutual attraction. As their relationship intensifies, Suzanne leaves her bewildered husband and children, abandoning her comfortable lifestyle for Ivan's cramped apartment. Practical matters soon disturb the lovers, however. Ivan can't work because of an injured leg, and Suzanne, thwarted by her aggrieved husband, is reduced to doing odd jobs. With money growing scarcer, she becomes increasingly desperate.

Corsini sets a simmering mood from the outset, contrasting the cool, clean aesthetic of the domestic space with Suzanne's sun-kissed vitality. Yet for all the heat of the affair, Partir is in essence the story of a family in freefall. While the daughter echoes her father's anger at Suzanne, the son remains loyal, and his attempts to support his mother as she veers further and further away from the woman he knew are truly touching.

As the frustrated wife prepared to risk everything for passion, Scott Thomas gives a rich, captivating performance. Lopez (best known for his villainous turns in Pan's Labyrinth and Dirty Pretty Things) deftly embodies the tension of a middle-aged labourer whose hard-won prudence is swept away by a force he can't resist, and Attal brims with the indignant, wounded rage of a husband betrayed. Corsini's skilful direction captures the subtleties of emotion and character as the story propels itself toward a shocking end.

Trailer (without subtitles):