[update below]
The French film industry’s carbon copy imitation of the Oscars. The awards ceremony is tomorrow (Friday; it’s normally two days before the Oscars but not this year) The list of nominees is here. Leading with twelve nominations is ‘J’accuse’ (An Officer and a Spy), ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘La Belle époque’ each with eleven, ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’ (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) with ten, ‘Hors normes’ (The Specials) and ‘Grâce à Dieu’ (By the Grace of God), each with eight, and ‘Roubaix, une lumière’ (Oh Mercy!) with seven.
A couple of things. First, I don’t care one way or another about the César awards—it’s just a pretext to write about movies (as with the Oscars, which I care even less about)—but the ceremony will be interesting this year in view of the recent affairs to hit the French film industry: of Adèle Haenel’s bombshell interview last November of the sexual harassment she was subjected to at age 12 by director Christophe Ruggia—as Haenel is a major actress, what she had to say was a big story in the media—and how the film industry missed the boat on the #MeToo movement, and the resignation two weeks ago of the entire board of the César Academy following the open letter signed by 400 filmmakers and actors condemning the Academy’s opacity, elitism, and sexism. Second, there were an exceptional number of very good French films last year, all of which have been nominated for one or more awards. So here goes.
BEST FILM: Les Misérables.
A terrific movie—which I will write about soon—the best of the North/Sub-Saharan African immigrant-populated banlieue ghetto genre in years, if not ever (and it was a big commercial success to boot, with over 2 million tix sold, which is a lot for France). J’accuse (An Officer and a Spy), on the Dreyfus Affair—which I will also write about before too long—is also excellent (and a box office success), as is Hors normes (The Specials), a crowd-pleaser (and box office hit) based on a recent actual story in Paris, of the heroic, almost superhuman efforts of two men (an orthodox Jew and a Muslim, though that’s just a detail, not dwelled upon) who run an association (unlicensed, housed in a Hasidic synagogue) to care for and prepare for adult life severely autistic children and adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been turned out of established institutions, which cannot cope with them, but with the association being threatened with closure by state inspectors (spoiler alert: the ending is happy). Also very good is François Ozon’s Grâce à Dieu (By the Grace of God), about the Bernard Preynat affair, the pedophile priest who sexually abused dozens of boys from the 1970s to the early ’90s in the Lyon area, and of the campaign of three of his now adult victims to bring him to justice—which was achieved shortly after the film’s release—and in the face of stonewalling from the church hierarchy. Likewise with the gritty policier Roubaix, une lumière (Oh Mercy!), described by cinephile and loyal AWAV reader Massilian as a “grand film, without doubt Arnaud Desplechin’s most poignant and heartrending,” and quite simply “excellent” and “formidable.” I was less taken with Céline Sciamma’s Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), considered by a number of US/UK critics to be the best French film of the year but that I thought a little overrated. As for Nicolas Bedos’s crowd-pleasing rom-com La Belle époque, also praised to the high heavens by US/UK critics, it was perfectly watchable but didn’t knock my socks off.
BEST DIRECTOR: Ladj Ly for ‘Les Misérables’.
Eric Toledano & Olivier Nakache for ‘Hors normes’ are also meritorious. Likewise Roman Polanski for ‘J’accuse’, except that it would, for obvious reasons, be unconscionable for the César Academy to give him the award (and he will wisely not be showing up at the ceremony anyway).
BEST ACTOR: Vincent Cassel in ‘Hors normes’.
I have long disliked Cassel but he is quite simply excellent in this. Also tops are Jean Dujardin as Lt. Col. Picquart in ‘J’accuse’, Damien Bonnard as the good cop in ‘Les Misérables’, and Roschdy Zem as the cop (good) in ‘Roubaix, une lumière’. Somehow I won’t be surprised if Daniel Auteuil gets it for his role in ‘La Belle époque’, as a disabused 60-something illustrator en fin de carrière seeking to rekindle the spark with his wife (a crowd-pleasing theme), played by Fanny Ardant (best supporting actress nominee).
BEST ACTRESS: Karin Viard in Chanson douce (The Perfect Nanny).
I actually did not like this film—a (flawed) cinematic adaptation of Leïla Slimani’s 2016 Goncourt-winning novel—which I found creepy and had me uncomfortable throughout (and not to mention the horrific ending), but Viard’s performance as the nanny from hell is disconcertingly powerful. She’s an exceptional actress. Eva Green is also very good in the very good Proxima, in which she plays a French astronaut training for a mission on the Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, realizing the dream of her life but which she has to juggle with her responsibilities as the mother of an 8-year-old child. The film—which is technically very well done (and partly shot in Russia and Kazakhstan)—is a tribute to all the astronaut/cosmonaut women/mothers over the years of all nationalities, indeed to all women who have sought to excel in demanding professions and succeeded, all while raising children. The always pleasant Anaïs Demoustier is likewise good in Alice et le maire (Alice and the Mayor), as the earnest, newly-hired normalienne adviser and speechwriter to the ageing longtime mayor of Lyon (played by Fabrice Luchini, whose character rather obviously conjures Gérard Collomb), who was once full of ambition and bubbling with ideas but is intellectually and politically running out of gas and in need of inspiration (which his perky adviser, Alice, provides). I wasn’t too enamored with Chiara Mastroianni in Chambre 212 (On a Magical Night), who plays a late 40ish university professor and femme volage who walks out on her nice guy husband to spend a night in an apartment across the street (on Rue Delambre in Montparnasse, which I’ve been on several thousand times), where she can revisit (in her head) the moments spent with the many men in her life, including a student (Vincent Lacoste) half her age (a fantasy of male directors) and her husband when they were young. The film didn’t work for me. I was also not too taken with the invariably very good Adèle Haenel in ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’, though am pretty sure that she’ll win the award for this.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Louis Garrel as Alfred Dreyfus in ‘J’accuse’.
This is a coin toss, as Grégory Gadebois is also good as Lt. Col. Henry in the same film. Likewise with Swann Arlaud and Dénis Menochet in ‘Grâce à Dieu’. I can’t speak to Benjamin Lavernhe in ‘Mon inconnue’ (Love at Second Sight), as I haven’t seen this one.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sara Forestier in ‘Roubaix, une lumière’.
Hands down. Also tops is Laure Calamy in Seules les bêtes (Only the Animals), a slick, riveting, non-linear thriller that travels back-and-forth between the rugged Grands Causses in deepest France and teeming Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, and with sudden twists in the plot. Really good movie.
MOST PROMISING ACTOR: Anthony Bajon in Au nom de la terre (In the Name of the Land).
This is a very good film (and was a box office hit) about a farmer (Guillaume Canet) in the 1990s in the Pays de la Loire, who, buried in debt, ends up taking his life; a true story of director Edouard Bergeon (Bajon is him as a teenager) and his father, dedicated to the farmers who, facing financial ruin, commit suicide (and they’re numerous, as we learn in the credits at the end). Alexis Manenti as the bad cop and Djebril Zonga as the conflicted POC cop in ‘Les Misérables’ are meritorious, as is Liam Pierron, the cheeky teen with attitude in La Vie scolaire (School Life), directed by Grand Corps Malade and Mehdi Idir, a first-rate film (and big box office hit), almost documentary-like, about a middle school in Saint-Denis and the interaction between pupils, teachers, and staff. The umpteenth film of the jeunes de banlieue genre but a good one. Benjamin Lesieur is touching as the young Joseph in ‘Hors normes’.
MOST PROMISING ACTRESS: Céleste Brunnquell in Les Éblouis (The Dazzled).
A no-brainer. This 13/14-year-old girl (her age in the pic) is simply stunning in this terrific movie about a devout bourgeois family in the Charente that joins a traditionalist Catholic community, but which turns out to be a cult, with the brainwashed parents under the spell of the community leader-guru (played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin) but the children wiser to what’s going on. Nina Meurisse in Boris Lojkine’s Camille is good in this very good biopic of the intrepid photojournalist Camille Lepage, who was killed in 2014 while covering the civil war in the Central African Republic. A tribute of sorts to the brave reporters who risk their lives informing the world of nasty wars in poor countries that few outside those countries’ regions know or care about. Lyna Khoudri is radiant in Papicha, as a first-year university student in Algiers during Algeria’s 1990s ‘years of terrorism’ (Islamist). And Mame Bineta Sané is memorable in the somewhat surreal Atlantique (Atlantics), set in contemporary Dakar, Senegal, entirely in Wolof and with a migration theme (I was looking forward to this film, which, while good and worth seeing, fell a little short of my expectations).
BEST FIRST FILM: ‘Au nom de la terre’ (In the Name of the Land).
‘Les Misérables’ is the obvious choice but as I’ve already named it Best Film I’m not going to repeat it here. Mounia Meddour’s ‘Papicha’ and Mati Diop’s ‘Atlantique’, though French co-productions, are not stricto sensu French films, so I’m not sure if they belong in this category (I will write separately on ‘Papicha’, in an eventual post on contemporary Algerian cinema). ‘Le Chant du loup’ (The Wolf’s Call) has been well-reviewed but I have yet to see it.
UPDATE: ‘Les Misérables’ happily won best film, Roman Polanski best director (!), Roschdy Zem best actor (deserved, and for his entire career), Anaïs Demoustier best actress (surprising; not an obvious choice), Swann Arlaud best supporting actor (he’s good), Fanny Ardant best supporting actress (pourquoi pas?), Alexis Manenti most promising actor (why not?), Lyna Khoudri most promising actress (nice; A Star Is Born), and ‘Papicha’ best first film (salutary hat tip to the dynamism of contemporary Algerian cinema. which gets little help from the official cultural establishment there). Full list is here.
As for Polanski’s award, this prompted an immediate walkout by Adèle Haenel, followed by Céline Sciamma and others. Polanski is a great director—no dispute about that—and, all things being equal, he did deserve the award for ‘J’accuse’. But all things are not equal and given Polanski’s personal history with women, it was unconscionable to give him the award. It’s almost as if the old men of the César Academy (and maybe some of the old women too) were thumbing their noses at the #MeToo movement. Good for Adèle Haenel.