Le Jeu de l’Amour et de la Vie20

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PROGRAMMEEnglish

2017

Le Jeu de l’Amour et de la VieFrench Films 2017

Harrogate Grammar School French �lm season begins on Thursday 27th April. The participation of £9 or £70 for the 10 �lms includes wine and cheese and the presentation of the �lm. Sessions start at 7pm in the Forum at the school. All �lms have English subtitles.

Thursday 27th April The First Day of the rest of your life (2008) 108 minutesThis is a funny, deeply a�ecting and often painfully truthful movie about families, parenthood, growing up, growing old and dying, devoid of sentimentality, acquiescence in Larkinesque cynicism concerning the horrors of family life, or any Gallic equivalent of Hollywood's "I love you, Dad", "I love you too, son". It covers �ve days between 1988 and 2000, each one seen from the point of view of a member of the Duval family – the taxi driver Robert, his pretty wife Marie-Jeanne, and their children, Albert, Raphaël and Fleur.

Thursday 4th MayRenoir (2013) 107 minutesThe �lm tells the forgotten story of Andrée Heuschling, also known as Catherine Hessling, who was the last model of impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the �rst actress in the �lms of his son, the �lm director Jean Renoir. Andrée was the link between two famous and widely acclaimed artists, a father and son. While the father is at the end his brilliant career, the son is still searching for himself, his great career as one of the most celebrated movie directors having not yet begun. Direc-tor Gilles Bourdos used the services of a convicted art forger, Guy Ribes, to create and re-create the Renoir paintings in live action on screen.

Thursday 11th MayThe adopted (2012) 95 minutesThe �rst feature to be directed by Mélanie Laurent, best known in the English-speaking world for her playing the French heroine of Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, is a soft-centred, romantic movie of love and family life in provincial France. In its whimsical, bittersweet way it's very like Les parapluies de Cherbourg and Les demoiselles de Rochefort without the music. In this case the pretty young women are two sisters living in Lyon, one adopted, the other a single mother with a delightful little son, both close to their tough handsome mother. The adopted girl, Marine, manages a bookshop specialising in Anglo-Saxon literature. The �rst time she appears, she and her boyfriend, Alex, a restaurant critic, re-enact a French version of the bookshop encounter between Bogart and Dorothy Malone from the �lm version of The Big Sleep, which rather sets the general tone. The single mother, Lisa (played by Laurent herself ), writes sad folk songs and works in a music shop. All three characters obsessively watch Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade. It's a wispy, tasteful, touching, very French a�air.

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Thursday 18th MayForbidden Games (1952) 80 minutesOne of the �rst �lms to see the horrors of war through the eyes of children, Forbidden Games was a critical smash, winning prizes from the New York Film Critics, the British Academy, and the Venice Film Festival. Adapted by Francois Boyer, director Rene Clement, and two others from Boyer's novel, the story focuses on Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a �ve-year-old refugee from Paris taken in by a peasant family after her parents are killed during a bombardment of a civilian convoy. Michel Dolle (Georges Poujouly), the family's 11-year-old son, becomes her best friend, and they create a cemetery in which Paulette's dog is interred, along with other animals and insects, some of whom the children kill themselves. The Dolle family is too busy feuding with the Gouards, their neighbours, to notice the absence of the children. Eventually, authorities locate Paulette and insist that she be placed in an orphanage for legal adoption. Unsentimental and yet heart-breaking, Forbidden Games demonstrates the strategies of children who witness war to deal with the constant presence of death. It's also a bitter condemnation of the sel�shness of adults who could o�er their charges more love and protection.

Thursday 25th MayThe man on the train (2001) 86 minutesMilan (Hallyday) arrives in a small town by train at the start of the week. The hotel is closed, but he �nds accommodation via a chance meeting with a retired French teacher, Manesquier (Rochefort). The �lm tells the story of the developing relationship between these apparent opposites, though looming in the background are two unavoidable events that each is expecting to take place on the Saturday - Manesquier is to undergo a major operation, and Milan (though he keeps this secret at �rst) is to lead a bank robbery. Manesquier soon realises Milan's intentions, but this does not prevent a growing mutual respect, with each envying the other's lifestyle.

Thursday 8th JuneCourted (2015) 93 minutes“Here comes Racine, like an icy wind,” mutters a colleague as Luchini’s dour arbiter of justice, Xavier Racine, hu�s into the building, his usual prickliness ampli�ed tenfold by a congested case of la grippe. A big cold �sh in the relatively small pond of provincial commune Saint-Omer, he has a reputation for disproportionately harsh sentencing and snippy interpersonal skills - with his soon-to-be ex-wife among those who would testify to the latter. The pic’s French title, “L’hermine,” refers to the antiquated ermine cloak he still wears to court; it’s as convenient a symbol as any of his uperciliousness, though he later admits to wearing it only out of sartorial cluelessness. Conventional romantic comedy logic would dictate that such a character has a signi�cant tenderizing of heart in his near future, which is partially the case here: Over the course of the �lm’s distractedly dramatized court case, Racine won’t be internally �ooded with the milk of human kindness, but the sadness behind his severity comes to the fore in private.

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Thursday 15th JuneMedecin de Campagne (2016) 97 minutesAll the people in this countryside area, can count on Jean-Pierre, the doctor who auscultates them, heals and reassures them day and night, 7 days a week. Now Jean-Pierre is sick, so he sees Natalie, a young doctor, coming from the hospital to assist him. But will she adapt to this new life and be able to replace the man that believed to be irreplaceable?

Thursday 22nd JuneThe Student and Mr Henri (2015) 95 minutesVeteran star Claude Brasseur plays the cantankerous Henri of the title in this riotous comedy of bad manners and good intentions. Bitterly opposed to the relationship between his son Paul (television comic Guillaume de Tonquédec) and the �ighty Valérie (Frédérique Bel), Henri strikes upon a devious plan. He o�ers free board to attractive student Constance (vivacious newcomer Noémie Schmidt), who, desperate to make her own way, agrees to use her charms to drive the couple apart.

Thursday 29th June Conversation with my Gardener (2009) 109 minutesTwo men �nd themselves sharing a lifetime of experiences and observations over the course of a summer in this low-key comedy-drama from France. After the death of his mother, an artist (Daniel Auteuil) well known for his nature studies inherits his family's vacation house in the country. The artist notices that the house's once-impressive vegetable garden has fallen into neglect, and he hires a local gardener to put it back into shape. To his great surprise, the gardener (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) turns out to be an old friend from his school days, and as the gardener gets to work, he and the artist talk about where their lives have gone since they last saw one another. Over the next several months, the gardener and the painter chat about life, love, work, family, vegetables and anything else that crosses their minds as they casually pass along their life's stories and what they learned along the way under the warmth of the summer sun.

Thursday 6th July La vache (2016) (if available) 96 minutesThe �lm stars Franco-Algerian comic Fatsah Bouyahmed as Fatah, and two Tarentaise-race beauties as Jacqueline, who travel together from the tiny village of Bolayoune all the way to the City of Light, where the two inevitably take a photo in front of the Ei�el Tower. Before they get there, the couple - a running gag is that Fatah is more attached to Jacqueline than to his own wife (Hajar Masdouki) - run into stereotypes like a depressed French noble (Lambert Wilson) in his dilapidating chateau, and a thuggish immigrant brother-in-law (Jamel Debbouze) who lives in a housing project north of Marseille

©Alain Le Bourdon (2017)