Writer’s Choice: French Film Festival

Milk Bar Mag presents a series of reviews written by our team of avid and francophile reviewers. First up is Redoubtable and Diane Has the Right Shape.

Redoubtable

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

An enjoyable, but often frustrating, biopic about Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) and his second wife Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) based on a novel written by Wiazemsky (ostensibly about her relationship with Godard, though the characters were published under different names). It’s 1968 and Godard has just released La Chinoise (The Chinese), about a group of Maoist university students in Paris, to an embarrassingly tepid response. Though the film was intended to be revolutionary, Godard realises he is out of touch with his audience, and joins the throng of revolutionaries (mostly students) protesting in what would later become known as the May 1968 events in France. Godard wants to make a radical change, alter the public perception of him as ‘Godard, filmmaker’ to ‘Godard, political revolutionary’ and, while this might be a subversive, complex idea played straight, told from Wiazemsky’s perspective, his contradictory, facile ploys attempting to persuade her to take the so-called revolution more seriously succeed in alienating both Wiazemsky and the audience. The film is often a sight to behold, with tongue-in-cheek nods to Godard’s stylistic ‘patische’: intertitles, close-ups, and a steady, reminiscent jazz soundtrack (likely both an homage to Godard and ‘60s cinema) – the film even closing with the theme from Breathless softly floating through. However sly the film may be in its attempts to honour Godard’s cinematic work – and Garrel does an admirable job playing him – it isn’t quite enough. One character’s assessment of Godard as a “celebrity pretending to be a revolutionary” is damningly accurate, and even the film’s discerning eye upon Godard, can make for exhausting viewing.

Three stars

Diane Has the Right Shape

Director: Fabien Gorgeat

A surprisingly touching film, Diane Has the Right Shape is a tender exploration of the titular Diane’s journey as a surrogate mother for her two best friends, Thomas (Thomas Suire) and Jacques (Grégory Montel). Diane (Clotilde Hesme), on the surface, doesn’t appear to be the kind of person who you would expect to volunteer herself as surrogate – in the film’s opening scene, we see Diane at a nightclub, brazenly insulting the appearance of a man chatting her up, then following him to apologise, and kissing him passionately. She initiates a sexual relationship with visiting electrician Fabrizio (Fabrizio Rongione) to distract herself from renovating her parents’ property. But what we come to learn about Diane is – by her own admission – she is “never specific”. At first, she sees no complication in offering herself as surrogate to Thomas and Jacques: they are her friends; they want a baby, and she can give it to them. This sets her up as an apparently infallible figure, until she begins to fall for Fabrizio, and we see how the intimacy frightens her, and though she wants him to accept the pregnancy as part of her, she pushes him away when he is too accepting. As her pregnancy progresses, we see Thomas’s possessiveness of her body also start to unnerve her, and the film’s emotional stakes are raised when Diane begins to feel the full weight of her decision to carry their baby. Diane Has the Right Shape is a quirky, often funny, drama with a very unlikely heroine who will surprise you, and an emotional depth to leave you pondering.

Three-and-a-half stars

Alliance Française French Film Festival 2018
Wednesday, 28 February to  Tuesday, 27 March 2018
affrenchfilmfestival.org