ROARING TWENTIES - FILM FESTIVAL
Down by the Seine with debate.
There are few films like this. It is charming, absorbing and delightful by turns. Watch it and switch off all your preconceptions. A début for its female Director, the camera takes us on a 90 minute tour des horizons in contemporary Paris all within one take. Imagine that.. The film is so fresh. It might show us the romantic haunts of the City of Light, the bridges and boulevards, but it is real and immediate and before you know it, the camera has taken you from the elegant École des Beaux Arts in old Paris, to the heights of hip Montmartre.
For openers we meet a strange and strained chap in some agitation . He is tasked with escorting a suspicious young woman to her much loved brother. The encounter is not going well , when in desperation he offers to hypnotise her - it works and the spell is broken - but just as they march off to their rendezvous another couple collide with them and take up the thread of conversation. Two young women stagger along with a sculptural object as they debate the quality of black, why she wonders, is black the colour of evil and darkness - the young woman is herself black - and she objects to Anish Kapoor’s attempted copyright on the colour whilst her friend debates her points with cheerful reproaches. They are now powering along the Left Bank of the Seine ( recently rescued from traffic by Anne Hildalgo, the fabulously radical Mayor). As they leave, they right their sculpture - it is a black gorilla. The baton is taken up by a couple who are trying to expand their sex life ; he is keen to know if she used pornography and clearly does not like the answer. Now we’re on the Metro headed for the Place de la République accompanied by a deranged young woman who plunges into the Place shouting '“Liberty!”. Two shoplifting 13 year olds debate their lifestyle and their illegal acquisitions and wonder what they would do if their children were thieves. It is all so newly. minted and seemingly spontaneous.
Soon we get into more surreal territory, a young woman in a bridal attire and veil is an escapee from her own wedding. She talks to a baby in a pushchair she asks if he is abandoned? Then hitchhikes in an empty street until a scooter pulls up and takes her away on its pillion. Now in the hilly part of Paris, two men of colour talk about the condition of the outsiders in Paris, the organisation of them in the Belle Ville, it is fascinating stuff, casually disclosed and. All of it at a terrifying pace, everyone walks twice as fast as normal.
The cosmos, the future, the sense of time passing all covered in the bandwidth of a walk. Eventually there is a consummation . No one is left out, the talk goes on and the people communicate about their lives and hopes - look out for the hilarious exchange between an actor and his agent. It is all too hypnotically intriguing.Is it improvised a la Mike Leigh or scripted carefully over months of rehearsal? Are they professionals or players - a few well known names hint at the latter. But who cares? It’s a fabulously delightful piece of contemporary Studs Terkel or Charles Dickens. It ends in moving triumph. - it’s and unlikely Must See.
My only gripe is the sub titles, All in ‘American’. Translators please form a queue?e
