The New York Festival Scene: Rendezvous with French Cinema

Here in New York, the taxes are excessive, rent is exorbitant, and our elected leaders are national laughing stocks, but if you love going to the movies, it is one of the best places to live. We are usually the first and sometimes only city to get most theatrical releases, particularly idiosyncratic documentaries and foreign films. We also get a chance to see thousands of unsold films playing New York Film Festivals, often in hopes of attracting a distribution deal. This is the beat I have covered for four years on my blog and will now periodically report on for Big Hollywood, provided I keep it fresh and snappy.

Of course, festivals vary widely in terms of size and quality, but the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Rendezvous with French Cinema is a fair place to start. Every time an Eastern European festival opens, it is like an early Christmas for me, because there will always be several films deeply critical of their former Communist overlords. Yet, it seems even the French are more even-handed than Hollywood when addressing the Cold War on film. A case in point was Rendezvous’s opening selection, Christian Carion’s Farewell, which was inspired by the real life case of KGB Colonel Vladimir Vetrov (renamed Grigoriev in the film).

The disillusioned Colonel was charged with reviewing every last piece of Soviet intel, so he understands full well the extent to which western intelligence agencies were compromised. As a result, he approaches a bewildered French businessman unconnected to the espionage world to pass on his staggering cache of classified information.

Big Hollywood readers could have a lengthy debate over the merits of Farewell. It certainly captures the oppressive drabness of the Brezhnev era, but it also posits a certain moral equivalency between the American and Soviet spymasters. Most intriguing is the portrayal of President Reagan by American actor Fred Ward. Refreshingly, Farewell clearly presents Reagan as a decisive and engaged leader, never calling his competency into question. However, some of his decisions come across as somewhat ruthless in the context of the film.

Politically, Farewell is more of a mixed bag than a stacked deck. Ultimately, BH readers will probably enjoy Farewell for Emir Kusturica’s compelling performance as Grigoriev, the brainy scenes of cat-and-mouse espionage, and its depiction of Communism as a decaying ideology, but we can have that debate in earnest when NeoClassics releases it in theaters in a few months.

On the other hand, subtlety is in short supply in Philippe Lioret’s oh-so ironically titled Welcome, which also screens during Rendezvous. Desperate to reach his girlfriend in England, a Kurdish illegal alien starts taking swimming lessons at a Calais rec center, hoping to cross the Channel the hard way. Though his teacher tries to dissuade him, he is touched by his romantic ardor and before you can say “frog’s legs” he has invited the young man to share his apartment.

If viewers try to anticipate the most manipulative possible plot developments at each turn, they will never be surprised by Welcome. Though it does address the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime in passing, the film is clearly far more outraged at the prospect of France enforcing her own immigration laws (Mon Dieu, indeed). As an unfortunate result, Vincent Lindon’s remarkably humane work as the reluctant swimming teacher is drowned out by the film’s didacticism.

That is what most festivals are like–there is both the good and the bad. Usually though, an intrepid conservative blogger can find something interesting to write about at most fests. Rendezvous runs at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Film Center through March 21st. Next up on the festival circuit, New Films/New Directors, which based on the press screenings so far, will also have some BH worthy highlights, when the time comes.