Saturday 20 July 2019

French Film Festival

I live in a small town in rural Australia. We don't get a lot of foreign films here. The local film society screens one film a month at the local cinema. I can't always go though.

Of course all of Australia can watch foreign language films on the joy that is SBS. They've just started their SBS World Movies as free to air, which is fantastic. Well I'm sure it would be if I could access the channel. I haven't quite managed that yet.

Each year though there is the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival. And one weekend in winter we get 4 of those French films screened over two days as part of the travelling film festival.

I made it to two of them this year. I hadn't heard of either of them before this event.


Family Photo


The Trouble With You

I enjoyed Family Photo much more than The Trouble With You. Family Photo is an engaging family drama, covering 4 generations, a dementing nana, separated parents, three adult siblings with the daily problems of adult life, and at time tricky interactions with their own children. It was touching and funny, and set in Paris. 



The Trouble With You was a rather bizarre French farce. It was apparently the standout hit of Cannes 2018. Set in Marseilles, it tells a strange story of Yvonne, recently bereaved, and bringing up her young son. She is a policewoman, and her police captain husband died a hero. But all is not what it seems. There were definitely laugh out loud moments and situations, and I really liked our two leading ladies, Adèle Haenel and Audrey Tatou, but the action scenes were too violent for me, and there was a lot of cringing and squinting. 



I missed out on two films. 

Clare Darling
Girl
I'd really like to catch up on  both of those, but Clare Darling appealed more. 




Finding those trailers on Youtube I just discovered that there's already a movie of Heal the Living. Another book in my TBR that is already a movie.


The struggle is real. It's never ending...


3 comments:

Arti said...

Wonderful that you have an annual French film festival even for “a small town in rural Australia”. These look like good ones. I know a few of them had garnered high acclaims. Audrey Tautou always makes me think of Anne Hathaway. :)

Jeanie said...

None of these have EVER been to my city. I always keep hoping a few will come up on netflix!


Thanks for stopping by my place the other day!

Tamara said...

I got to more of the sydney french film festival, but sadly didn't see any of these. I had Girl and Claire Darling on my list. One of my friends came out of Clarie Darling a little disappointed tho. We're very lucky that Alliance Francaise is so integral to our french experience here in Aus.