French Film Festival 2011

The annual French Film Festival has become a much anticipated event - one that is not to be missed as it features films that would otherwise rarely make it to New Zealand.

The festival's fifth year has 23 films (20 features and three documentaries) screening in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch (details below).

They range from historical costume dramas to comedies along with thrillers and dramas that reflect social, historical and political aspects of France.

La Princesse de Montpensier, directed by Bertrand Tavenier, is set during the religious wars of the 16th century while the gangster movie Hors-la-loi (Outside the Law) is set in Algiers and France during the 1920s. The latter is one of five contenders for the best foreign film Oscar this year.

One of the other costume dramas, Nannerl, Mozart’s Sister, tells the story of the composer's older talented sibling, who became part of the French court. The lush film was filmed partly at Versailles.

There is also a major documentary on the life of Yves Saint Laurent and his lifelong pursuit of art collecting along with his friend Pierre Berge.

One of the eccentric, comic dramas is Tournée (On Tour), which features Mathieu Alamric starring and directing in his first cinema feature since 2001. The film gained international acclaim at the 2010 Festival of Cannes, where it won Best Director and the International Federation of Film Critics Award.

Alamric plays Joachim, a former television producer, who has returned to France with a troupe of burlesque dancers he assembled while in America. This road trip film takes in some of France’s Atlantic coastal towns - Le Havre, Nantes and La Rochelle - before ending up at the river mouth of the Gironde.

Along the way the women cope with being away from home, performing in slightly seedy venues, finding solace in their own company and the bottle. At the same time Joachim, who has two ex wives, a couple of children, a string of debtors and hardly any pulling power in the industry, slowly starts to fall apart.

There is a taut quality to the film that occasionally seems like a documentary as the dancers create their own environment in which they are sealed off from the rest of the world, including their audiences, whom we seldom see.

The women, who are not the most svelte or classically sexy, create shows that are only slightly voyeuristic. They use the tour to create clever and witty new routines, which are expressions of their own sexuality and fantasies.

Another worth noting is The Age of Reason, a comedy starring Sophie Marceau as a high powered business woman who is having an affair with colleague, played by New Zealand-born Martin Csokas.

The Penthouse Cinema
Wellington
February 9-17

Academy Cinema & Devonport Victoria Picture Palace
Auckland
February 16-24

Regent on Worcester
Christchurch
February 22-27