En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

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domino harvey
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En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#1 Post by domino harvey » Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:42 pm

Not sure if it has any English-friendly distribution yet, so maybe En liberté!? Arrow is not averse to putting out recent films and it def deserves a larger audience (it didn’t even get a Blu-Ray release in France)

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tenia
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Irresponsible Conjecture

#2 Post by tenia » Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:38 am

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:42 pm
Not sure if it has any English-friendly distribution yet, so maybe En liberté!? Arrow is not averse to putting out recent films and it def deserves a larger audience (it didn’t even get a Blu-Ray release in France)
French movies are getting less and less released on BD in here, but considering En liberté!'s success at the French BO, that came as a big surprise.
I'm less surprised that Paul Sanchez est revenu's awful BD sales are signing the end of Blaq Out in this venture : they sold 88 BD copies of it in 6 weeks (out of a 1000 copies order from the distributor).
On similar profiles :
L'AVENIR : 280 000 tickets / 4 000 DVD / 560 BR
L'ATELIER : 150 000 tickets / 2 700 DVD / 350 BR

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domino harvey
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Irresponsible Conjecture

#3 Post by domino harvey » Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:54 am

tenia wrote:
Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:38 am
domino harvey wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:42 pm
Not sure if it has any English-friendly distribution yet, so maybe En liberté!? Arrow is not averse to putting out recent films and it def deserves a larger audience (it didn’t even get a Blu-Ray release in France)
French movies are getting less and less released on BD in here, but considering En liberté!'s success at the French BO, that came as a big surprise.
I'm less surprised that Paul Sanchez est revenu's awful BD sales are signing the end of Blaq Out in this venture : they sold 88 BD copies of it in 6 weeks (out of a 1000 copies order from the distributor).
On similar profiles :
L'AVENIR : 280 000 tickets / 4 000 DVD / 560 BR
L'ATELIER : 150 000 tickets / 2 700 DVD / 350 BR
I imagine if more French labels went through the effort of making English subs, their sales would at least attract imports. Though the effort may not result in enough sales to offset the expense anyways based on some of those figures!

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tenia
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Irresponsible Conjecture

#4 Post by tenia » Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:02 am

I believe that those who do include English subs (when contractually allowed to) don't sell much more copies, though I suppose every little helps.


Back on Arrow announcements :
Crime and Punishment (von Sternberg)
Hold Back The Dawn (Leisen)

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Irresponsible Conjecture

#5 Post by Aunt Peg » Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:30 am

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:42 pm
Not sure if it has any English-friendly distribution yet, so maybe En liberté!? Arrow is not averse to putting out recent films and it def deserves a larger audience (it didn’t even get a Blu-Ray release in France)
En liberté has Australian distribution and just started it's 'offical release' tomorrow. It played at the recent French Film Festival with celebrated its 30th Anniversary. Its the largest festival of French films in the world outside of France with over 60 films programmed. In Sydney it runs for 5 to 6 weeks in numerous venues and on multiple screens (the main cinema I attend devotes its 3 largest cinemas for the entire run to the festival - day and night). Most films are screened multiple times in what amounts to more screenings that most smaller films in general releases get. En liberté is beginning advertised as the "No. 1 Hit of the French Film Festival" and when I saw it at the festival with a very sizeable crowd (and this was at a daytime session during the week!). At the festival they also show trailers to other films playing at the festival and the En liberté trailer always received a good response from audiences. I actually didn't care for the film too much. A friend that came with my partner and I said he thought the film was silly and that was exactly my reaction. Great premise but it just never clicked with me. Though having said that it has one of the best running jokes I've ever seen in a French comedy - if anyone has seen the film they will know exactly what I am referring to.

So given its Australian release, even if it is not picked up for US or UK distribution there should be an English friendly DVD later in the year through Madman Films. They rarely do Blu Ray releases unfortunately and even more so for foreign language films (Cold War being a recent exception).

Most of the films at the festival started with an Australian distributor logo before it - Australian audiences have a strong love affair with French cinema.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Irresponsible Conjecture

#6 Post by Aunt Peg » Sun Jun 02, 2019 3:35 am

Aunt Peg wrote:
Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:30 am

So given its Australian release, even if it is not picked up for US or UK distribution there should be an English friendly DVD later in the year through Madman Films. They rarely do Blu Ray releases unfortunately and even more so for foreign language films (Cold War being a recent exception).
En liberté! is being released on DVD only in Australia on August 7 as The Trouble With You. So if it doesn't turn up in the UK or US there is another option. The page says 'region free' but I wouldn't take that as gospel: https://www.madman.com.au/catalogue/vie ... e-with-you

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domino harvey
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Re: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

#7 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:42 pm

Haenel also starred in another of my favorite comedies this year, En liberte!, which I thought had a brilliant conceptual idea: what would modern cinema look like if it was bound to the same genre ideas of the studio system? Namely, the film presents an alternate world experience where screwball comedies are still being made, not as an homage but as an unironic embodiment of a current, relevant genre. Needless to say, it’s as contentious a film as classic screwball comedies are for modern audiences, but I think in its way it’s the best post-classic screwball ever made for so completely inhabiting the ethos

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Re: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

#8 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 04, 2019 8:26 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Nov 04, 2019 4:42 pm
Haenel also starred in another of my favorite comedies this year, En liberte!
I’ve been trying to track this one down, but I can’t find it anywhere with English subs, including backchannels. Where were you able to see it, domino?

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Re: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

#9 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 04, 2019 8:46 pm

It was the opening night film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous With French Cinema festival earlier this year. Aunt Peg tipped me that it got a subbed DVD release in Australia, though (as now shown above in this newly made thread!)

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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Irresponsible Conjecture

#10 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 04, 2019 9:02 pm

Aunt Peg wrote:
Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:30 am
Though having said that it has one of the best running jokes I've ever seen in a French comedy - if anyone has seen the film they will know exactly what I am referring to.
Absolutely, that running gag is the best Wilder joke Wilder never came up with (or was allowed to do). I later heard two older couples bitch about how much they hated the film using the gag as an example, and a third older couple sitting in front of me at my screening left during probably the third iteration of it. I was a little surprised that the older crowds had less patience with what the film was doing than the middle aged attendees (there were precious few young people in the theatre— me and Pio Marmai were probably the youngest in attendance and we aren’t that young), but then again, these may have been anti-Hollywood folks even back in the day

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domino harvey
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Re: En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#11 Post by domino harvey » Thu Nov 21, 2019 3:14 am

I've been working my way through Salvadori's other films, and it's obvious that the man loves his old school Hollywood films (indeed, he told my audience at the above screening that while his colleagues were influenced by the French New Wave, he was influenced by Leisen and Wilder) and it's interesting to see how many stabs at finding the right balance of screwball lunacy and real world appeal it took to get it right with En liberté! (and that balance is of course only struck by completely rethinking what is meant by "real world" via re-contextualizing the "real world" wholly into the internal logic of a 30s screwball). I'm five films in and only one of his movies doesn't operate within this fantasy world of an era gone by [Les apprentis (1995), a pleasant enough minor key comedy far more indebted to the low budget indie tradition than classical Hollywood]. On a basic level, I don't think De vrais mensonges (2010), a would-be comic farce of anonymous letters of love in a hair salon, works at all because Audrey Tautou's character is unlikable to such a level that it comes across as a gross miscalculation (and here is the danger of going too far and just saying, "Well, she's Audrey Tautou, the audience will like her regardless" when filming...), and Nathalie Baye is unlikably pathetic to almost the same degree. Like that film, Après vous... (2003) also struggles (though more successfully) with balancing its darker elements with the studio system machinations of plot, as maître d Daniel Auteuil saves Jose Garcia from killing himself and then finds him a job as a sommelier at his restaurant, despite Garcia being an emotional wreck with zero knowledge of wines. The movie is only intermittently funny, but there's one show-stopping scene
SpoilerShow
--the job interview with Auteuil trying to pantomime answers to an unbelievably clueless Garcia, complete with the unforgettable comic image of Auteuil trying to imitate a lobster--
that is so perfectly realized and filled with belly laughs that I suspect the whole movie was built around it. But I think his most successful film apart from En liberté! is the one that looked least-promising going in, Hors de prix (2006), which starts with a simple idiot plot premise (gold-digger mistakes hotel worker for a sugar daddy) and shifts to increasingly funnier and more complex comic ideas until we get a romance that functions more on the level of a buddy picture as Tautou and Gad Elmaleh navigate the world of being trophy mates for rich undesirables. The moral morass of the protagonists' actions is wonderfully navigated and there's a real tenderness to their behavior, which is sort of amazing when you look at this movie with any kind of objectivity apart from the fantasy of the world it presents. Probably the sweetest movie about prostituting yourself I imagine I'll ever see!

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Re: En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#12 Post by domino harvey » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:19 pm

Just discovered Kino Lorber picked this up for distribution! Considering the French titles with far less star power they've given Blu-rays to, I'm very hopeful that this will make its worldwide Blu-ray debut soon!

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Re: En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#13 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 24, 2019 11:47 pm

Excellent news!

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Re: En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#14 Post by domino harvey » Tue Dec 31, 2019 1:43 am

How's this for a stellar way for Kino to end this decade: this will of course be DVD only, out in February

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Re: En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#15 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 29, 2020 6:35 pm

A nice-looking HD copy with subs has finally popped up on back channels and I'm breathing a sigh of relief. I'd gladly buy this on Blu-ray, though, should Kino Lorber recognize their error here (or if some other territory steps up to the plate), but for now I'm glad to have a nice English-friendly version to watch again. If you can watch this, go watch this!

EDIT: You can also rent it on Amazon right now. As Pio Marmaï amusingly said when he introduced the film's American premiere, it's not an arthouse gala event but a four or five dollar movie (which I think offended a lot of my fellow audience but I thought it was hilarious), so there's an endorsement of money well spent!

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Re: En liberté! [The Trouble with You] (Pierre Salvadori, 2018)

#16 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 31, 2020 2:27 am

Unsurprisingly I loved this. I find domino’s modern screwball comedy reading fascinating because while that’s so right, it’s coating pockets of pathos and meditations on real issues (processing grief and loss, undoing of personal narrative/reality, trauma, injustice, suicidal ideation, marital failing) as if the film is in part trying to be an honest drama but can’t help to fall back to the magic of movies a la Bogdanovich as if the creativity in this wonderful film was the magnetic default or easier path for filmmakers to go with! Really, it seems like they just can’t help themselves which is so lovely to see what defines cinema for them. Even the way this is shot evokes a raw intensity at times, following a tug-of-war of sorts with jarring, abrasive shots reverting back to rapid, relaxed shot-reverse-shots as the vibe sporadically calms down. I can’t count how many times I was tricked into thinking that this was going to remain tonally serious before it floored me with another layered series of genius gags and had me laughing myself to death. The film is like a schizophrenic brainchild of a mad scientist movie-god.

For the screwball elements, some highlights:
SpoilerShow
The phone call at the carnival with the misunderstanding of sounds as innuendo is like what all the Austin Powers movies tried to do countless times finally done perfectly.

The S&M gags were all great, from the guy who asked for the handcuffs to be tighter to the masks that make weird voices. It was a very clever use of new modern props for humorous ideas and the team found enough creative ways to use them to bleed this idea dry for the sorry sucker who thinks of this next.

The idea of giving credence for the innocent to commit crimes is hilarious in its absurdity. I’m sure one could draw parallels between this aspect and Le daim but each film is too original to deserve comparison, though I suppose that’s quite the compliment to both films for only the other unique movie to even be considered a reference point.

I like how the male part is the screwier Hepburn role, shifting up gender expectations in this modern take on the genre, but even still his eccentric behavior is not a quirky innate trait, but a product of antisocial conditioning from trauma as a result of injustice! It’s a wonderfully comic cinematic performance born from the darkest waters of the harsh realities we live amongst.

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