The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

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domino harvey
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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#51 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 29, 2020 5:32 am

First post updated with this year's nominees:
domino harvey wrote:
Mon Sep 03, 2018 10:48 pm
2019
Grâce à dieu (Francois Ozon) R2 Artificial Eye DVD
Hors normes (Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano)
J’accuse (Roman Polanski)
La belle époque (Nicolas Bedos)
Les Misérables (Ladj Ly) Forthcoming Amazon Prime streaming
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Celine Sciamma) Forthcoming Criterion RA
Roubaix une lumière (Arnaud Desplechin)

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#52 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jan 29, 2020 10:33 am

Glad to see the Desplechin get some love even with its mixed reception, though he seems to be less controversial in France. Hopefully we'll get a release stateside at some point.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#53 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:11 pm

The smart money is on Les Misérables

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#54 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 29, 2020 2:11 pm

Of course Hors normes is playing at the opposite end of all the other movies I want to see at this year’s Lincoln Center fest, so I’m gonna miss it! Here’s hoping it and the few remaining uncirculating titles materialize by year’s end so I can meet my goal of polishing off this viewing challenge

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#55 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Jan 29, 2020 2:15 pm

Grâce à dieu felt like a Spotlight-esque middle of the road ripped from the headlines film when I saw it but I've thought about it a whole lot since. The performances, especially Swann Arlaud's, are excellent.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#56 Post by domino harvey » Wed Mar 25, 2020 3:36 pm

Just learned Le grand bain’s French Blu-Ray contains a bonus longer version, though confusingly the theatrical one disc and longer two disc editions look identical and it’s unclear if the longer version also has English subs (the theatrical version does). I just ordered a copy off DaaVeeDee on Amazon which is using the ASIN for the two disc set, so hopefully that’s accurate (it looks to be sold out elsewhere anyways)

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#57 Post by domino harvey » Tue Mar 31, 2020 7:00 pm

Unfortunately the version being sold by DaaVeeDee is the single disc version, as I feared. But since I don't know if the longer version was subbed too in the initial release, it may be a moot point

EDIT Confirmation from back channels that the extended version didn’t have subs

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#58 Post by domino harvey » Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:33 pm

I know we're no longer in the heyday of Hollywood adapting popular French films, but I feel like an American remake of La Belle Époque is inevitable because it has a great high concept idea and speaks to where a lot of us are these days. The film's most obvious inspirations are inescapable, as it straddles the line of exactly what a mashup of Kore-eda's After Life and Allen's Midnight in Paris would look like: Guillaume Canet acts as an IRL director who recreates the past via an immersive "real life" film production for those willing to pay (one of the better offhand jokes in the film is that Nazis keep utilizing the service to spend time with Hitler). Enter cartoonist Daniel Auteuil, a man not at ease in the modern technological age. After his therapist wife Fanny Ardant kicks him out (for one of her patients-- are there no ethical therapists in France??), he uses the services to go back to the day in 1974 when he met her. In the process of interacting with his own memories, recreated from his input and drawings, he falls for the actress playing his wife... but is he falling for his idea of her as his wife, or her? And how much of her performance is performance? I think the filmmaking motif here makes a lot more sense than it does in After Life, and I like how writer-director Nicolas Bedos gives us the totality of film in corporeal interactions, as when the music swells within the scenarios, or Canet rattles off the cost of various elements employed in the process. I liked how Auteuil interacts with his memories on set as well, alternately nitpicking and being delighted at what the company gets right and wrong. I think this would make for a good double bill with Tirard's Le retour du héros in how both examine in a comical way the methods we use to construct who we are and, here, who we were. With nostalgia exploitation becoming more and more prominent from the capitalist contingent, it may only be a matter of time til some more realistic variation of Canet's services arise!

Also, I liked how the cold opening of the film essentially parodies all of Tarantino's recent ironic wishful reclamations of the past!

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#59 Post by knives » Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:37 pm

Sounds like a Charlie Kaufman film.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#60 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:45 pm

Or Soderbergh's version of Solaris, on Earth and with a sense of humor

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#61 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:06 am

knives wrote:
Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:37 pm
Sounds like a Charlie Kaufman film.
There’s definitely a Synecdoche, New York kinship without the existential despair or emotional profundity (I was actually reminded of The Truman Show more than any other movie, sans manipulation and heartstring tugs, plus comedy). domino’s analysis is spot on, though the film doesn’t really spend time asking these questions in any depth, instead leaving the concept up for us to decipher based on our own selective experiences - which may be the smarter, but definitely safer, modality. There’s something powerful about a man who spends every night reliving a meeting with his father to experience the catharsis he never had in ‘real life’ for example, but will any opportunity- real or imagined or in memory- ever fulfill that void? Is that even possible? If I think back on all the memories I hold dearest, are the ‘cathartic’ ones enough or do I crave more by wanting to go back and relive them? All fascinating questions (to me) that I think about often, but this film either isn’t interested or doesn’t possess the courage to explore them or meditate for more than a second in a self-conscious space. Instead it opts for the always-funny French witty interplay meshed with drama sourced in that nostalgia, but comfortable grazing its surface in a lighter, jumpy style.

While the nostalgic drama postures towards these questions, what I found most interesting here is how these ideas are created around one person’s memories as if to bathe in an egocentric theme park by design, but we as the audience are afforded witness to an objectivity that continually disrupts this illusion. The cross-pollination in seeing the actress’ and director’s own storylines outside of Auteuil’s scope while he’s feeling a connection to the present moment only heightens the myth of the self as center actor on the stage of life. So the film validates that desire and yet it consistently reminds us of what we lack which is absolute perspective or control, and the need to take a back seat to accept those blind spots to achieve any sense of lasting contentment. My favorite dramatic moment was
SpoilerShow
how Auteuil impacted Canet’s life to degrees he never knew, outside of the spotlight just from being himself. A wonderful reminder that the ways in which we’ve actually been the center of the world for a moment have been in the eyes of another, often without us knowing it, but always subjectively, not through this objective fantasy.
I enjoyed spending time in this 70s milieu, and some of the 70s specific gags in how it contrasts completely with ours, were inspired. There are also a few key moments that play like a sustained perfect memory, which makes the entire game worthwhile, but of course these are fleeting and the interruptions can come across as choppy tangled between one too many characters to emote organically. I wasn’t as interested in whether or not he falls for the actress or the idea of his wife because I think the film makes the barriers clear between his ability to fully access this space, and though the question is briefly prompted it struck me as a shallow wink, but I wish I could be more charitable. As a lover of French cinema I hate to say this, but I can see a remake of this done better.

Also, I think at this point the French see moral ambiguity strung through everything (which I love) to the point where therapists are treated as just as humanly capable of selfish unethical behavior as any other profession (at least they don’t discriminate!) It’s worth noting that the act of therapy isn’t what is being skewered, but rather people as inherently flawed, regardless of profession and so including practitioners. I am happy report that one of the most genuine, sympathetic characters I’ve seen in French cinema is a health care provider, but a doctor, in La maladie de Sachs.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#62 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:14 pm

Le Premier Jour du reste de ta vie: Not as eccentrically perfect as the Desplechin family mess from its year, but in some ways equally powerful at taking a creative approach to flesh out a handful of lives as separate and parts of an organism that is family. Bezançon uses a family system to explore the diversities and commonalities that draw people together and apart by picking five ‘significant events of change’ which serve as focal points for exploring detailed family dynamics and characterizations. These periods mark endings and beginnings as all moments in time do, and Bezançon knows how to focus in on this truth with comedy and drama intertwined (like the initial dog incident) or separated by seemingly miles of parted tonal waves. Much of the brilliance comes in minute manifestations of the connective tissue from experience, like when the two brothers watch the same western and recite the lines alone in their respective spaces yet bouncing off of one another from a collective memory.

The power of memory and time are crafted with stylistic transitions, each of the core scenes unveiling the contributing webs of nostalgia. An air guitar contest inhabits a sense of magic where talent is a quality defrauded in favor of expressive idiosyncrasies that feed attraction and personality. And of course this beautiful moment leads into one of the most profound exhibitions of regret and loss as related to life-altering opportunities, buried forever by time and space.

The transition from youthful to parental perspectives is stirring, as is basically everything attempted here. At times the drama can turn up and characters can exhibit familiar two-dimensional reactions veering toward caricature, but then we get unique scenes like a mother baring her chest for her son in a nonsexual, vulnerable way, and we remember that these relationships dynamics are special and bear deep histories that have shaped them into unknowable definition, the farthest cry from a trope, just like all of ours with our own families.

The montage of the father’s job interacting with all these different people, as an active participant in the world, is humbling after he’s been aloof and challenging for a chunk of the film, and we get an opportunity to join with everyone and question everyone here. This is the power of perspective, the power of complex people, and the power of cinema to offer this opportunity to us as well. That all this is possible in such a short runtime with only 20 minutes to each character’s ‘moment’ is a miraculous achievement, but of course they all seep in to one another’s stories because they cannot grow alone, nor, deep down, would they want to.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#63 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:06 pm

Not nominated for Best Picture at the Cesars (though it did get a Best Actress nom), but re: La Belle Epoque, I watched Nicolas Bedos' previous film, M & Mme Adelman (2017), and its strengths and weaknesses are somewhat overlapping. I feel the same way about Bedos as I did Dupontel's earlier films: I don't think they quite work, but there's enough messy talent here to convince me he could one day make a truly great movie I could enjoy with far fewer reservations. This film is clearly intended to be a star vehicle for Bedos' girlfriend Doria Tillier (who also played the actress in LBE), and he certainly gets his mileage out of playing dress-up with her as she ages nearly fifty years on screen playing the long suffering wife of a complete asshole Writer. This movie has one of the same big problems of Listen Up, Philip, in that its insufferable prick writer is too awful to plausibly be attractive to anyone and both movies only halfheartedly seem to realize this. It is inexplicable from beginning to end to explain Tillier's attraction to Bedos' character, and the film really goes off the rails in the later segments when it unbelievably becomes unironically sentimental and sincere. Which is a problem for a movie where the only parts that work are those that are crude and cutting in their barbs. Take the single funniest moment of the film, and the only part that really seems a worthy successor to the Woody Allen fetish Bedos has: After meeting Tillier's Jewish family, Bedos' struggling writer declares he must be Jewish, since all great writers are. He then takes her last name (hence the title) and positions himself as a new Philip Roth. Now that's a funny idea. It occupies about five minutes in the middle of this 2+ hour movie though. There are some other good laughs, some high brow and some low (and Bedos definitely gravitates towards Apatow-esque vulgarity), but I had the same feeling I had with LBE: this should be funnier than it is. Take the couple's strained relationship with their seemingly retarded son. The parents hate the kid, which could make for some really dark laffs if the film didn't keep tempering it with a kind of "We love him, we just don't understand him" arm's length distancing from the bad taste. Their treatment of him is already pretty outrageous and will be a stopping point for many viewers, so why not just lean in completely as the film does at the end of his storyline? As is, the movie is, like his follow up, frustrating but merits a mild recommendation. Certainly Bedos balances his Allen love (which is not reflected stylistically in either film) with more Scorsese-influenced visuals (which is very much reflected stylistically), which can be a fun disconnect if nothing else.

EDIT: The film is streaming free with subs on Amazon Prime, for those who want to check it out!

I have to say, while I wasn't a big fan of Hazanavicius' first OSS redux (haven't seen the second), Bedos' next film (which somehow doesn't star his ingenue) will pick up the mantle and it has one of the greatest titles I've ever heard: OSS 117 : Alerte rouge en Afrique noire. Given Bedos' clear 70s fetishism in his first two films, I imagine he'll fit right in with the late 60s spy film aesthetic. I kind of doubt this will be the great film I think we'll eventually get from Bedos, but I'll still be watching it (especially since Pierre Niney, memorably called "Dujardin Lite" in 20 ans d'ecart, will star alongside Dujardin!)

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#64 Post by Aunt Peg » Mon Aug 03, 2020 10:34 am

Finally got to see all the nominees. Only took one and a half years.

Anyway, I'd rank them:

Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Celine Sciamma)
Les Misérables (Ladj Ly)
Grâce à dieu (Francois Ozon)
J’accuse (Roman Polanski)
Roubaix une lumière (Arnaud Desplechin)
La belle époque (Nicolas Bedos)
Hors normes (Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano)

Hors normes is the only real weak link in the lineup for me. It is also available on DVD in Australia under the title The Extraordinary.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#65 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 03, 2020 2:06 pm

In celebration of me reaching about the halfway point in my Cesar viewings, allow me to share some comedy graveyard antics: Doria Tillier from La Belle Epoque shamelessly co-opts Between Two Ferns' formatting and plays the Zach Galifianakis role as a tonally opposite rubber-faced American bimbo while French actors are clearly instructed to not react to her shenanigans in Canal+'s the Peepee Malone Show. As you might already guess from that character name, this is about as subtle as someone actually peeing on you. I haven't watched all of them but for me the only enjoyable novelty thus far is hearing how fluent (or not fluent) in English all the modern French stars she interviews are (all of the interviews are in English with French subs, so you can "enjoy" these without knowing French, though if you aren't playing along with this thread you may not recognize some of her interview subjects). I reckon Tillier thinks she's parodying the Ugly American braindead entertainment reporter stereotype, but she doesn't exhibit the range here to do much more than talent show mugging and this idea hasn't been fresh since, well, never. Which is too bad because I thought she was an obvious highlight in both Bedos films and I've seen some of her earlier antics when she (sort of, not really) reported the weather on French TV compiled on YouTube and they're a lot funnier than this. Here's a sample horrible episode (NSFW) relevant to our discussion in which she interviews her IRL boyfriend Nicolas Bedos, director of La Belle Epoque

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#66 Post by domino harvey » Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:19 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:06 pm
I have to say, while I wasn't a big fan of Hazanavicius' first OSS redux (haven't seen the second), Bedos' next film (which somehow doesn't star his ingenue) will pick up the mantle and it has one of the greatest titles I've ever heard: OSS 117 : Alerte rouge en Afrique noire. Given Bedos' clear 70s fetishism in his first two films, I imagine he'll fit right in with the late 60s spy film aesthetic. I kind of doubt this will be the great film I think we'll eventually get from Bedos, but I'll still be watching it (especially since Pierre Niney, memorably called "Dujardin Lite" in 20 ans d'ecart, will star alongside Dujardin!)
Having now seen Hazanavicius' followup OSS 117 : Rio ne répond plus (2009) (which, honestly, for a long time I thought I'd already seen but I guess I had never got around to it after being let down by the first), I'm more excited than ever for a third installment. This has to be one of the biggest leaps in quality from original to sequel I've ever seen. The first film failed because there weren't very many jokes and it seemed to be preoccupied with recreating a slightly doofy version of the 60s movies. The sequel just burns it all down and presses the gas pedal on cartoonish stupidity and also functions as one of the most incredible collections of casually racist jokes ever compiled. Dujardin is a total boor and loser here as opposed to the suaver figure in the first, and some of the best jokes arise from his strident non-questioning faith in his country. I was also delighted to see an aged Rüdiger Vogler as the Nazi scientist baddie, who has a great comic moment when he announces to an audience of Nazis that he's moving past the Fourth Reich and will instead be delivering a Fifth Reich. Like any comedy that throws everything at the wall, not every joke lands, but this movie gave me more big belly laughs than anything I've seen in recent memory. Also, you don't need to have seen the first one to enjoy this one, if anyone wants to save themselves a couple hours

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#67 Post by tenia » Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:01 pm

I've for a long time preferres the first movie, but now prefers the sequel which indeed goes full throttle on making Hubert stupider than ever, but also playing in a more meta fashion that also lands perfectly.
Part of what makes it work a bit more to me also is that while the 1st movie mainly played in 1 area, the sequel plays with the resistance's legend, nazis and Jews, though it's not as if OSS has any nuance in how to deal with any of this !


Completely different topic : I finally saw La belle époque a few weeks ago and was pleasingly surprised by it. My main nitpick would be how Tilier's character kind of get out the movie in an abrupt fashion, but it's otherwise a very well structured movie filled with very good performances. I'm curious about what you'd think about it.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#68 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:10 pm

A few of us weighed in on that film in this thread (on this very page!) I don't think I liked it nearly as much as you both did, but it was interesting and charming enough

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#69 Post by domino harvey » Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:34 pm

I wish it was steaming somewhere legally with English subs. My dad for the first time in his life watched a subtitled film this year with Parasite and is now willing to watch a French movie and I’m certainly not recommending him some art house pic. I described the plot and Daniel Auteuil’s character in the movie to him and he seemed interested, as I knew he would be because these two are both technophobes who’d love nothing more than to go back to the 70s

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#70 Post by tenia » Fri Sep 04, 2020 5:24 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:A few of us weighed in on that film in this thread (on this very page!) I don't think I liked it nearly as much as you both did, but it was interesting and charming enough
Whoops, I completely missed that !
I did find it well constructed and actually was surprised by this. It telescopes extremely well the multiple stories and "timelines" but also the overall way its main couple meet again : Auteuil in the end manages to realise he can quickly adopt (and be adopted by) his current era and stop wanting to live in a fantasized past, while Ardant stops chasing a pointless kind of transhumanist future and gets to enjoy simpler pleasures right here right now (as she demonstrates during the dinner with her friends : they're all stupid, but the dinner was delicious), both ending up meeting again in the present in which they split.

What I liked less was how this suddenly ditched Tilier's character in the middle of the field. It felt abrupt, since the movie doesn't fully catch back on her, so while the other characters are going full circle, hers doesn't seem to get that much care which felt like a shame since she was conveying so much of the emotion and of the movie's structure. But in the end, yes, I thought it would be a much rougher and more clichéd movie and was pleasingly surprised by how much it flied by.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#71 Post by domino harvey » Wed Oct 21, 2020 11:22 pm

If I ever see a film worse than Ma Loute, either for this project or just in general, I might need a new passion in life, because movies aren't worth it. A 2+ hour record of no one at any stage of the production telling any and everyone involved that every single thing they are doing is bad-- a feat made worse by the smugness of its transparent awfulness. At least now I know I truly will finish any movie I start, for better or worse!

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#72 Post by swo17 » Thu Oct 22, 2020 12:39 am

Playful Dumont is clearly not your thing but I'm still curious what you would make of his heavy metal Joan of Arc musical Jeannette

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#73 Post by tenia » Thu Oct 22, 2020 9:39 am

Along with P'tit Quinquin, I quite liked Ma loute, which wasn't a given considering I otherwise usually hate Dumont's works.

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#74 Post by domino harvey » Thu Feb 11, 2021 11:25 am

First post updated with this year's nominees
domino harvey wrote:
Mon Sep 03, 2018 10:48 pm
2020
Adieu les cons (Albert Dupontel)
Adolescentes (Sébastien Lifshitz) Streaming free with English subs on MyFrenchFilmFestival/Amazon Prime (as Adolescents)
Antoinette dans les Cévennes (Caroline Vignal)
Les choses qu’on dit, les choses qu’on fait (Emmanuel Mouret)
Été 85 (Francois Ozon)
All of these except the Dupontel are available with subs on back channels. I'm hoping that one pops up in the Lincoln Center program next month!

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Re: The Alternate César Awards: César du meilleur film (Best Film)

#75 Post by domino harvey » Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:14 pm

No such luck, but the other three narrative films are playing it!

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