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Alliance Française French Film Festival 2012

07-25 Mar ,

War

From all-time classics to unexpected action, the best in French cinema hits Melbourne hard in March

First published on 3 Mar 2011. Updated on 26 Mar 2012.

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It’s easy to stereotype any nation’s cinema. Japanese films are insane, Russian films are depressing, Korean films are even more insane – and French films are always romantic, effortlessly cool, and oscillate between farce and tragedy.

The selection of titles at this year’s Alliance Française French Film Festival, however, show it’s impossible to generalise so wildly. It launches with France’s submission to this year’s Academy Awards: Valérie Donzelli’s gruelling family drama Declaration of War (La Guerre est declare). And it ends with a classic: François Truffaut’s The Last Metro (Le dernier métro). A story of love and art in Nazi-occupied Paris, The Last Metro stars both Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu, and therefore couldn’t be more French unless it was all performed in mime.

Between these two points are light-as-air comedies, legal dramas snatched from painful history, and many other surprises. If still you think French cinema’s all dark-eyed nihilists smoking cigarettes in black and white? Make sure to see Fred Cavayé’s Point Blank (À bout portant). It’s an old school thriller about a nurse in training who saves the wrong man’s life. He’s forced into a dangerous, double-crossed run through the streets of Paris to save his pregnant wife.

Point Blank opens with a bang and never slows down over its blink-and-it’s-over 80 minute run time, embracing familiar action clichés with such earnestness they seem fresh again. It’s proof that all cinema, no matter what country it comes from, appreciates the ridiculous joy of watching someone escape their enemies with a last-minute jump into the path of a speeding train.

Alliance Française French Film Festival takes place at Como, Balwyn, Westgarth and Brighton Bay Palace cinemas as well as Kino Cinemas.

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Words by Martyn Pedler