WELCOME - SPONSORS - TIMETABLE - VENUES
PROGRAMME
GALA SCREENINGS
PANORAMA SECTION
DISCOVERY SECTION
THE RETRO
EDUCATION
EVENTS
FRENCH
FILMS, BRITISH CINEMAS
|
BERTRAND TAVERNIER retrospective
As a director who has never shirked taboo subjects Bertrand Tavernier has carved his own unique niche
in French cinema. Dedicated cinephile, producer, script-writer, and director, his 30 or so films have
ranged from preoccupations with French provincial life, to American jazz. His topics have jumped in
time from the Middle Ages to the Algerian war, to cops in contemporary Paris, the problems of
disaffected youth, and adoption.
Bertrand Tavernier
|
|
Bertrand Tavernier's made his auspicious debut with this seminal
thriller about a watchmaker in Lyon who suddenly is told that his
teenage son has committed a brutal murder.
Harvey Keitel plays a man of the future who has had a camera
implanted in his
Based on a novel by pulp master Jim Thompson's Coup de Torchon is a sardonic thriller that remains true to its source's spirit, even as it transposes the action from the American South to colonial West Africa. Lucien (Philippe Noiret) is the bumbling police chief of Bourkasa, a dusty outpost in rural Senegal. Badgered by local thugs, Lucien initially comes across as a pathetic oaf unable to stand up for himself. Things at home are scarcely better, as Lucien finds himself harried by his nagging wife, Huguette (Stephane Audran), who is carrying on an affair with a man she claims to be her brother (Eddy Mitchell). Without warning, Lucien embarks on a nonchalant killing spree, murdering everyone who has ever mistreated him. This represents a sardonic encounter with film noir traditions and black comedy. Highly recommended. Cast: Stephane Audran, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Eddy Mitchell, Philippe Noiret. Dir: Bertrand Tavernier. 1981. 128mins.
Monsieur Ladmiral is an ageing painter who lives alone in his country house, cared for by his housekeeper, Mercédés. Every so often, his son Gonzague comes to visit him with his young family. One late summer Sunday in 1912, the customary visit is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Ladmiral's unpredictable daughter, Irène... Tavernier offers a
captivating portrait of an early 1900s family sharing a lazy Sunday
afternoon together. The detail lies not in the film's plot, but
in the depth of feeling shown in the characters. By the end you
feel that you know each character personally. Perhaps the most remarkable
aspect is the way in which
Tavernier examines the emotional hurdles that separate rich from poor, men from women, history from truth and regret from hope. A year after the First World War has ended, cynical Major Dellaplane (Philippe Noiret) has the difficult task of identifying and interring thousands of fallen French soldiers. Dellaplane has also become reluctant shepherd to an ad hoc society grown around the legions of widowed wives and mothers combing the French countryside for word of their loved ones. When a buried hospital train yields a fresh source of possibly recognizable bodies, Irene, a haughty Parisian aristocrat and Alice, a hopeful young schoolteacher, form an unlikely alliance with the Major. As the train's surprising cargo is revealed, the three searchers must choose between life in a post-war world stripped of illusions or the seductive self- imprisonment of bitterness and mourning for days, lives and loves gone by. Noiret, a Tavernier regular, won a French C‚sar for his performance opposite Sabine Azema as Irne and it was named best foreign film in the Baftas. Cast: Sabine Azema, Maurice Barrier, Philippe Noiret, Francois Perrot, Pascale Vignal. Dir: Bertrand Tavernier. 1989. 135mins.
A beautifully understated portrait of a father-daughter relationship,
Daddy Nostalgie affords Jane Birkin one of her most memorable screen
roles. She stars
The gritty world of Parisian drug culture is revealed in Tavernier's cinŽma veritŽ style take on the special undercover drug squadron in Paris. L.627 is a gritty, dazzling, and tough-minded look at police work. Using the French anti-drug statute L.627 as its title and collaborating with a 15-year veteran of the Paris police, Tavernier plunges into the story of Lulu, a quietly dedicated narcotics cop who becomes part of a small, ill-equipped, but spirited drug squad often taking the law into their own hands. Like his work, Lulu's private life is marked by his obsessive personality. His is torn by his love for his loyal wife and his mistress, a drug-addicted prostitute. From start to finish, Tavernier delivers a clipped documentary-style film that can be compared to the best French and American police movies of the past, including La Balance, The Sleeping Car Murders, The French Connection, and Serpico. It marked a total change of pace from the leisurely humanistic films such as Round Midnight, and A Sunday in the Country. Cast: Charlotte Kady, Claude Brosset, Didier Bezace, FrŽdŽric Pierrot, Jean- Claude Calon, Jean-Paul Comart, Jean-Roger Milo, Philippe Torreton Dir: bertrand Tavernier. 1992. 145mins. >>TOP
WITH L.627 and L'app‰t Tavernier shows opposite sides of the same coin. Here he employs the same style of swift, energetic camera-work in reconstructing the true story of three young Parisians who cold-bloodedly commit two particularly atrocious murders. The main characters are initially described in a matter of fact way as ordinary members of today's society. The girl has an insignificant job and envies the movie stars their lifestyles and salaries. At night she flirts with wealthy people, film producers or lawyers who might help her into the showbiz world, teasing them with the expectation of an evening in her company. Her boyfriend, the son of a clothes dealer, who dreams of making money in America, devours Hollywood action movies on video. From them, he gets the idea of using his girlfriend as bait in order to get into the flats of her rich acquaintances and empty their safes. This will provide them with the money needed to cross the Atlantic and set up their own business on the other side. Tavernier reveals a lot about a certain kind of contemporary youth, family oriented (they care about their parents), but at the same time utterly irresponsible, living in the midst of an amoral and materialistic society. The film is never fascinated by the violence it shows nor condones its practitioners, neither does it adopt a condescending approach to its young protagonists. Cast: Marie Gillain, Olivier Sitruk, Bruno Putzulu. Dir: bertrand Tavernier. 1995. 113mins.
Bertrand Tavernier captures the social climate of a poverty-ridden
mining town in Northern France and the struggle of fighting the
system yet avoids
Laisser-passer pays homage to film-making during the Nazi occupation, a time often considered to be France's Golden Age of cinema, best remembered for such masterpieces as Marcel CarnŽ's Les enfants du paradis and Les visiteurs du soir. He showcases the turbulent, challenging lives of two minor figures in the industry: the dissident screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Polalydes) and the assistant film director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) who, when he wasn't helping to direct such war-time classics as La vie de plaisir and Au bonheur des dames, was risking his life for the French Resistance. Most of the action takes place either around the offices or on the set of the German-owned Continental studios. Although the Nazis relied on the French press and radio to be tools of propaganda, when it came to filmmaking, they gave French directors and screenwriters such as Jacques Tourneur, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Charles Spaak much more leeway. A superb ensemble cast masterfully succeeds in presenting a riveting microcosm of France during the Occupation. Cast: Jacques Gamblin,, Denis Podalydes, Charlotte Kady, and Marie Desgranges. Dir: Bertrand Tavernier. 2002. 170mins. Full of vitality and humanity, Bertrand Tavernier's new film deals with the total and visceral desire to have a child. Pierre (Jacques Gamblin) and GŽraldine (Isabelle CarrŽ) cannot have children of their own. Determined to adopt, they travel to south-east Asia, where they confront emotional and physical obstacles as they face French and Cambodian authorities, corruption and child trafficking in their quest to adopt a baby. Tavernier collaborates again on this script with his daughter Tiffany and son- in-law Dominique Sampiero, both novelists who worked with him on It All Starts Today about the teaching profession. The director treads the tightrope successfully between a documentary style and fiction in a film that exudes intense waves of emotion and fragility. Cast: Isabelle CarrŽ, Jacques Gamblin, Bruno Putzulu, Maria Pitarresi, Anne Loiret, Philippe Said and Gilles Gaston-Dreyfus. Dir: bertrand Tavernier. 2004. 125mins.
|