Cinefranco at 25: French cinema for the rest of us
By Liam Lacey
The Cinefranco Film Festival, celebrating its 25th year, is a reminder that some of the stereotypes of French cinema (let’s say, a couple smoking in bed, eating éclairs and discussing political theory) represents only one strata of the big world of French language movies.
As this year’s festival reminds us, French-speaking people also enjoy such universally amusing things as a woman trying to pee in a coffee cup in her car, a snooty banker getting a golf club in the teeth or a cheating naked bride hiding in a double bass case.
Cinefranco, the largest festival of francophone cinema in English Canada, is determinedly inclusive. Cinefranco includes 19 features and one shorts program in person in Toronto at three downtown theatres. Another nine features and two shorts programs are available online across Canada.
Louise (Marina Foïs), stuck in her car, and car thief Paul (Benjamin Voisin) in En Roue Libre
The films are from France, Quebec and Morocco (all with English subtitles.)
These include the kinds of family comedies you wouldn’t expect to see at the local art house. They include En Roue Libre (Freestyle), Mes Tres Cher Enfants (Price of Parenting) and L’homme parfait (The Perfect Man), all comedies, full of slapstick, sentimentality and happy endings. In En Roue Libre, an over-worked nurse has a panic attack and suddenly finds she’s incapable of getting out of her car. A young man with a gun hijacks her car, intent on driving across the country to kill a lawyer who killed his brother with a car, but she still won’t leave. They drive, they meet strange people en route, grieve and share.
In Mes Tres Chers Enfants, retired parents despair that their adult son and daughter never want to visit them, so they contrive a plan: They’ll pretend they’ve won the lottery, and contrive to dress and behave like people who have become suddenly rich. Sure enough, the son and the daughter develop a new enthusiasm for hanging out with their parents. But when the children find out the deception, can the deception be forgiven? Of course, it can.
In L’homme parfait (The Perfect Man), a harried woman lawyer purchases a handsome house robot called Bobby, who makes her schlubby, unsuccessful actor husband feel threatened. But could Bobby, a sort of battery-run Mrs. Doubtfire, secretly be the key to making the family realize what’s really matters in life. Of course, it can.
La Pièce rapportée (The Unsophisticated Lady) is also about family, but more of the crazy rich kind. A poor girl taking tickets in the Metro impulsively marries a sexless mama’s-boy son of an aristocratic widow. Her suspicious mother-in-law puts a detective on the young bride’s tail, which the young woman greatly enjoys.
That’s not to say the festival is all comfort food and no fine cuisine. There are a couple of old-school auteurs represented here as well. The festival opens with a documentary, Tourner pour vivre (Shoot To Live), about the now 85-year-old Claude Lelouch, best known for 1966’s A Man and a Woman, the mid-‘60s love story that won two Oscars and a Palme d'Or.
As well, there’s the Cannes festival regular, Patrice Leconte (Ridicule The Widow of St. Pierre) who brings us a solid take on George Simenon’s famous detective Maigret, starring Gérard Depardieu in the title role. Slow-moving, but toxically atmospheric, the film stars the hulking Depardieu as an aged, almost burned-out Maigret, who is re-energized in his attempt to find the killer of a young woman, whose body, clad in an expensive gown, was found dumped on the street.
In keeping with the times, about half the features belong to a section called Women’s Voices, including features from Canada’s most cinema-rich province, Quebec.
These include Arlette, Mariloup Wolfe’s political satire about a fashion editor who becomes Quebec’s minister of culture and finds herself at loggerheads with the Minister of Finance.
Then there’s Metis director, Gail Maurice’s debut film, Rosie, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, described by my colleague, Jim Slotek, as possibly “the most upbeat portrayal of people on the edges of society I’ve ever seen.” The winning Keris Hope Hill plays the title role as a six-year-old English-speaking Indigenous girl whose mother has died and is sent to the care of her nearest relative, her Francophone aunt Frédèrique aka “Fred” (Melanie Bray), an impecunious artist who works in a sex shop. Along with Fred’s gender-fluid friends, Flo (Constant Bernard) and Mo (Alex Trahan), Rosie helps build the family she needs.
A darker reality faces the title character in Geneviève Albert’s debut feature, the anti-prostitution social drama, Noémie dit oui (Noémie says yes). It stars Kelly Depeault as a teen-aged runaway from a girl’s detention center who, with few real options, is persuaded by her new boyfriend to work as an escort over Montreal’s Grand Prix weekend.
Albert avoids the potential voyeurism and familiarity of the scenario, focusing on the clients. They’re counted off with an onscreen counter, while the car-racing backdrop serves as a metaphor of mechanical violence Noéme endures.
A film about a Quebec woman, though not directed by one, is the festival’s closing feature, Martin Villeneuve’s Les 12 travaux d’Imelda (The Twelve Tasks of Imelda), in which he plays his eccentric, plain-spoken grandmother (who was the grandmother of Martin’s director brother, Denis). Imelda’s story is told in 12 chapters, drawn from real life. As she approaches her 100th birthday, proclaims, “I’m not ready to die because I still have old scores to settle.” The film also stars Robert Lepage as the Villeneuve dad and the great Ginette Reno as Imelda’s arch-enemy, Simone.
Cinéfranco will present 19 features and 1 shorts program at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema; The Royal and Cineplex Scotiabank in Toronto, while nine features and two shorts programs (Quebec, International) are available online, only in Canada. For the full line-up and other festival details go to https://www.cinefranco.com/