Families

We’re now entering the Autumn and it means the 'quality' films are arriving again. The awards season is kicking. The new TV shows are wondering with unpredictability. But before I go into all that, I would like to resume one of the other holes of my summer with a late, brief but worth take on Francophone films. And this is how it went.

Un heureux événement

Directed by Rémi Bezançon, co-written with Eliette Abecassis.

I could be here being picky at this film’s storytelling, and I should, but you know what? I just don’t care; it’s too irresistible and cute. I could be watching this film all day long. It’s a film about motherhood, about growing up, both for a newborn and for a grown up. The title of the film says it, this story is a series of events, and the resolutions aren’t really the focus. Just look at it.

 

So as you can see, the family topic is a current favorite of mine.

 

 Le Premiere Jour Du Rest de Ta Vie

Written and Directed by Rémi Bezançon.

C.R.A.Z.Y

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, co-written with François Boulay.

Both films starring a Canadian guy named Marc-André Grondin. I loved him in both.

These are character centered films portraying different kinds of families at different levels in the society and they’re both crazy entertaining pieces. They both tell how differently families can grow together, how they learn together. It’s about acceptance, tolerance and that at the end of the day, there’s no way one can figure  out what the next day will bring, what the next week, the next month, the next year.

These are another couple of films with some things in common - both directed and co-written by women, both of them starring as one of the main characters of the plot and they are both beautiful takes on different kinds of human struggles.

La guerre est declarée

Directed by Valérie Donzelli, co-written with Jérémie Elkaim.

This beautiful film based on the lives of the co-writers and performers becomes from the very beginning a successful and heart warm storytelling because it doesn’t ask you to be patient, it doesn’t really ask you to identify with the pain, but rather feel it. This story representing the love of parents for a son who gets critically sick, when he’s diagnosed with a brain tumor, doesn’t simply wants to gives us a lesson on how someone overcomes such events, they rather want to focus on representing a story of this kind with wit. I wouldn’t recommend this film to my friend because her younger sister had a brain tumor and also overcame it but because it is a really well made film where she could challenge herself by watching a different approach on the kind of story. And it is after all French.

Polisse

Directed by Maiwenn, co-written with Emmanuelle Bercot.

This film is about tough stories; sometimes hard to believe, often times hard to accept. As a whole, it’s about life, it’s about human nature. I would believe you if you said to me that there are worst stories than those Maiwenn is telling us and I surely don’t care about comments on the performances of these actors as being over the top, as over acting. I don’t even understand such presumptions. Because this may even be out of place for a film lover but sometimes I just love when I don’t care about cinematography, about anything but what’s happening in the moment, which usually means that everything else is actually working, so with this film I only care about the people, because you come across with so much despair, but you can also see laugh. You see evil sickness in people and you see good will. This may even sound vague to you but believe me when I say this film was a representation of the life’s rollercoaster. I admire this film so much because it isn’t afraid of exposing both sides and just shows us everything. People come in every form and that’s what you see in Polisse, is its core. This is what I refer when I talk about evocative emotional sensations, because this was literally a rollercoaster of them. Maiween is my hero.

You see, I started with a light approach to end on something staggeringly beautifully challenging.