Category: FFF

Kompromat is the name the KGB gave to the classic move of using damaging information, real or false, to destroy someone’s reputation. It has the desired effect of isolating them from any support, and ensuring no one will give a fuck about what happens to them after that point.

This film is loosely based on the experience of Yoann Barbereau, who was the director of the French cultural exchange organisation Alliance Francaise in Siberia. He was labelled a pedophile and arrested by the FSB. That’s about as much as the film has in common with reality, which it uses that as the jumping off point for a tense if occasionally outlandish political thriller.

The main character is the most frustratingly naive guy you ever met. He stands up at the opening of their first dance production and explicitly thanks by name a local bigwig for his support. Then proceeds to put on the queerest dance show you ever saw, with two nearly nude men rolling around on stage, making out. Now, that’d be a five star review from me, but I wouldn’t expect that to go over smoothly in the back arse of Siberia, especially when you just made it clear to everyone present that they had the local honcho to thank for making it happen. At the afterparty, he unknowingly dances with the daughter-in-law of the local FSB heidy. Every foot he puts down in cow shit.

Anyway, in a very short space of time, he’s run out of goodwill, and the FSB storm his house, accusing him being a pedophile. As labels go, it is an excellent one for ensuring you will be murdered in prison, and no one will give a fuck. Also a classic one for anybody associated with queerness in any way. The rest of the film follows his attempts to escape back to France.

The film’s biggest strength is how unbelievably tense some of the scenes are. There were times I heard myself gasp, and from behind me someone suck their teeth, and the whole audience was holding its breath. At one point I covered my eyes, because I just couldn’t bear to watch this idiot make another dumb mistake. That’s the thing, a lot of these incredibly tense scenes are driven by the main character underestimating what he’s up against. He thinks naively that his innocence will protect him. And he doesn’t have the requisite level of paranoia to keep him safe. He doesn’t have any experience of dealing with the law, and his idea of how arrest works for straight, white, middle-class men in France doesn’t equate to what happens to someone seen as queer-adjacent in Russia.

As for weakness, the film’s inclusion of a romantic subplot was, in my opinion, unnecessary. It’s like it’s considered mandatory to have some romance in a French film, even if it simply distracts from the storyline and adds nothing. Also, the first half stays very tense and self-contained and close to reality, but as the film tries to ramp up towards the end, things get more and more unbelievable. I felt a trim to the runtime would have done Kompromat the world of good, and kept the focus on the plot tight.

Overall though, good film, tense and gripping.

Tonally disjointed murder-mystery comedy.

It starts with an actor keeling over on stage, whispering into the ear of his friend, “I’ve been murdered . . . the green perfume”. Classic Agatha Christie shit. Good setup, I was eager to see where it went.

But it then becomes overly complicated when the main character is then bundled off by a mysterious figure and given a long speech about political consciousness in the younger generation, a scene which plays as irritating and tedious for the audience as for the story’s hero. And this kinda kicks off the film’s problems. Because the mystery part of the plot is needlessly overly-complicated, bringing in espionage and corruption and ludicrous cybersecurity McGuffins. So much so my attention just dropped off it entirely. It’s not hard to follow, just boring and irrelevant, needlessly wordy for something that doesn’t touch on any of the characters beyond a reason for them to get to a place or grab a thing.

With the mystery part being such a bloated drag on the film, the light-hearted comedic scenes are thrown off-kilter. There should be a bit of silliness and laughs to balance out the drama, and you can see what they were going for, but with the dramatic exposition so stodgy, the comedy feels out of place, too whimsical after you’ve been flattened by an anvil-drop of infodump.

Weirdly the thing that works the best is the chemistry between the two main characters. It really is the movie’s saving grace. Vincent Lacoste plays the normally cool and collected, charming young 20-something actor. Sandrine Kiberlain plays the drama junkie cartoonist that he stumbles across, who helps him solve the first piece of the puzzle, only to become addicted to seeing how it all plays out. She is a woman who has red flags written all over her, first seen arguing on the phone about a decade-long family feud she is insistent on prolonging, and then becoming entranced when a stranger tells her he is being framed for murder. The actor falls for her, both as the saviour who comes to his rescue, and because her constant exuberance seems totally at odds with his muted and a touch melancholy character. It’s an unlikely pairing, and yet is the most believable thing about the film. The best scene in the whole movie is the one where the two of them are alone, making pasta for dinner together.

And that’s my whole thing about the film, that scene, the pasta scene, isn’t like a murder-mystery comedy at all. It’s like a character-centred drama, something small-scale and domestic. And it’s wedged into the rest of this film, like pushing a fine brooch onto a lopsided jean jacket. The shifts in tone from scene to scene are all over the place.

I have to say, I did find myself liking the film more as it went on, with the developing on-screen chemistry compensating for the frankly boring plot. But it is too much of a mess to really recommend seeing.

French Tech is a comedy set in the gig economy. Three middle-aged single parents have to stick together in the 24/7 availability world of bullshit work.

Alexandre is a stay-at-home father whose submariner wife wants a separation after he had an affair with the woman at the unemployment office where he picks up his dole money. Desperate to prove to himself to her, and having to survive without her paycheck, he goes back out into a labour market he barely understands. He blags a job at a start-up where both the job and the business remains unclear to him. It’s one of those actualising integrated solution optimization horseshitathons. Everyone’s sitting around in deckchairs or yoga balls, wearing tshirts that say Be Kind or Total Wellbeing, while no one has sick pay or paid holiday leave.

He is helped by single father Arcimboldo, whose income is patched together from a thousand different app gigs. He Ubers, upcycles shit on ebay, collects and charges courier drones, and is a stand-in for folk who want to attend protests (but maybe don’t want to have their head caved in by the cops). Together they juggle childcare responsibilities as Arci explains some of the more basic jargon to Alex.

Alexandre’s work contact is Severine, a frazzled but efficient businesswoman, who understands and negotiates the bullshit soup that is her job but hates every minute of it. Alexandre finds her intimidating, but Arci takes a liking to her. She eventually reveals she is also struggling with the same issues as the others.

The film is about how the shine of technology and the Orwellian use of bullshit language have obscured the fact that labour rights have slid back to Victorian times. In a world where we are all constantly working, there seem to be no employers. In one scene, Alex’s Uber driver almost falls asleep at the wheel, apologising that he’s been driving for 14 hours. “They don’t let you take a break?” he asks him. “I’m my own boss,” the driver retorts.

For me personally, I almost couldn’t find this funny, because it’s so accurate. A joke’s sweet spot is to be somewhat true and somewhat an exaggeration, otherwise it’s just a statement of fact or it doesn’t make sense. French Tech falls too much towards the statement of fact end of the spectrum for me. I know too many people working 2 and 3 jobs – I’ve been someone working 2 and 3 jobs – and watching this, I wasn’t so much laughing as going, “Yup. That’s what it’s like.” As traditional employment gives way more and more to the gig economy, this dystopian hellscape is going to become our standard reality.

Favourite part of this was the banjo version of Daft Punk’s Da Funk.

Adrien is asked to give a speech at his sister’s wedding while sat round family dinner, which sends him spiralling back through his love-life in a state of existential dread. Narrated directly to camera by the main character, The Speech has the theatrical feel of a one-man play. He introduces characters by their foibles, mutes their conversation, or pauses the action. The scenery falls away or slides in as he moves from scene to scene in his memory.

In the repressed and ritualistic family dinner with his parents and sister, Adrien silently broods on the recent break in his relationship with his girlfriend, Sonia. In a family where everyone plays their parts, and the conversation is as predictable as it is repetitive, Adrien quietly cracks up over a text he sent after a month of ‘space’. To add to his stress level, his future brother-in-law asks him to give a speech at the wedding. Playing out every possible outcome, and tracing back the causes of its inevitable disaster, The Speech paints a comical portrait of a family of characters, helmed by a protagonist that is self-obsessed, neurotic, and identifiable.

There is something a bit contrary in me that whenever I hear something described as a classic, I am immediately skeptical I will like it. Maybe it’s the years in school being scolded with the most tedious tomes as examples. But with Vivre Sa Vie, I was dead wrong. They say it is a perfect film, and I have no arguments. Almost unearthly beautiful, and a joy to watch.

Nana is 22 and leaves her husband and son to pursue her dream of being a movie actress. A bit self-involved, but she is awfully young. She feels she needs to give it a shot.

Because this is a black-and-white French film, she inevitably becomes a prostitute. Unable to make ends meet working in a record store, she gets lifted by the polis for trying to filch 1000 francs off a woman. With nae cash and a criminal record, she ends up staying in a neighbourhood with day hookers. There she picks up the local trade, and is in the swing of things in no time.

An aside that isn’t strictly about reviewing the movie, but it must have been gui colder in those days. All the lassies are in cardigans and wool skirts. No a body stocking between them.

One of the nicer things about Vivre Sa Vie is that it doesn’t deny Nana agency, or say that because she has wound up in sex work after the loss of her dream, she views herself as in any way a victim. Nana remains who she has been, someone sensitive to beauty and art, with a questioning, dreaming mind. She is friendly with other working girls and kind. She kinda sleepwalks into becoming a full-time hooker, not really knowing at what point she let go of ever becoming an actress. She is content merely to be making ends meet, and after her first john, she seems nonplussed by her work. She doesn’t seem to be looking to a future, seeing her work more as a means allowing her to live her life, not thinking beyond the horizon.

While Nana seems insulated by the worse elements of the sex trade, the men in the film are under no illusions what game they are playing. Her pimp insults her, instructs her to refuse no one, takes her earnings, and is indifferent to her emotional life.

The ending is abrupt and brutal. Nana’s idea of her life and that of the men around her intersect. In a way, it is good that it is so brief, as it allows the focus to remain of Nana as the main actor in her life, and her character to be centre of the tale.

Really excellent film. All the hype is justified.

My Father’s Stories is about Emile’s childhood growing up with his manic depressive, paranoid delusional father. Set in the 60s in France, the breakaway of Algeria triggers an obsession in his father that becomes dangerous.

The film starts as kind of kiddie caper, as the pair of them play at spies for the anti-independence resistance, but quickly becomes a lot darker. Benoit Poelvoorde expertly plays the terrifyingly manic father, Andre, whose paranoia results in increasingly violent behaviour towards his wife and son. Emile’s journey goes from the youthful adventures of a father and son to the bitter realisation that his own actions and impacts on others have been warped by his father’s madness.

Emile’s mother tries to hold it together, protecting her son as much as she can, and keeping a lid on her husband’s violent extremes. Somewhere in there is the man she married and she still has loyalty to him.

Also, this is the 60s, so really, what can she do? This is before the public had any ready awareness of mental health conditions like bipolar disorder. It’s before there were ready pharmaceutical treatments. You were either normal and in society, or mad and in the loony bin. There was no sense of a continuum of mental health through mild, moderate, and severe symptoms.

Also, divorce was still rare in the 60s, as was awareness of domestic abuse or child abuse. Women’s refuges were only just being set up. For the kind of intermittent erratic violence that goes on in Emile’s home, most women would be expected to put up with it. So they were really on their own.

When Emile recruits a schoolfriend into his father’s imaginary resistance cell, the threads start to unravel. To prove the reality of his claims, Emile uses deceit and lies, realising in doing so how easily someone can be manipulated into believing something based on fabricated proof.

The whole way through the film, there’s just a little knot of dread of how this will all pan out. The relatively light beginning, where you hope that this will simply fade into Emile’s memory of childhood, gives way to multiple serious consequences that can’t help but impact the lives of the characters. You can only pray the bumpy landing back down to reality will leave everyone intact.

My Father’s Stories is a family drama about just what extremes can be hidden in plain sight.

Sisters is a story about Zorah, who writes a play about her horrorshow of a childhood, to the dismay of the rest of her family. She claims it is an act of catharsis, but there is so much unresolved anger, it could as equally be an act of revenge.

Sisters is about inherited national trauma. The Algerian struggle for independence from France looms large in the lives of all the characters, being the genesis of all their torment. This is an intergenerational trauma, that you can see in the film being passed down from mother to daughter.

Their mother fought as a maqui in the Algerian War of Independence. Upon capture by the French, she was brutalised. Female fighters were raped, tortured and shot. Their father was in the Algerian forces that liberated the holding camp she was in, and they met and fell in love. As horrific as the violence was, for them this was still a hopeful period, fighting together, devoted to their cause and each other.

Eventually, out of necessity, they escaped to France, and made contact with the Algerian resistance there. Unfortunately their father was betrayed by his contact there. It was unclear to me if it was a literal brother or simply a brother-in-arms, but the treachery was real. Their father ended up imprisoned for 4 years.

During this period a darkness entered him, and he emerged a much more violent man. It’s like he’d lost everything. Algeria was independent, but it was not the Algeria he had fought for. He seems disillusioned with the outcome of his sacrifices, and bitter about his betrayal to the enemy. What’s worse is he is now stuck in fucking France. To compensate, he turns his home into Algerian soil, and himself into its dictator. There, everything will be as it should. He runs drills with his daughters, getting them to salute and sing the Algerian national anthem. He is determined they will not grow up to be French.

Naturally, this is impossible and only results in increasingly violent acts of domestic abuse towards them and their mother. Their mother tries to protect them, and then eventually says she will divorce him. His reaction is to hold a gun to her head in front of her daughters.

They do finally escape him, and their mother divorces him, but he abducts the two youngest kids, Norah and her brother Redah. Norah is about 6 at the time, and Redah is an infant, barely walking on his own. He takes them both back to Algeria.

Their mother absolutely loses her mind with grief, and Zorah has to step up as the eldest to reunite the family. They get a court to recognise the abduction, but it counts for nothing in Algeria, where men have complete authority over their children. Their mother attempts suicide, and is only saved because she is found by her daughter, who calls for help and tries to stem her bleeding.

A rescue attempt is made to try and get Norah and Redah back, with Zorah being sent in her mother’s place to retrieve them. However they are caught, and Zorah is only able to save Norah, leaving Redah behind.

This is all told in flashback and in scenes of Zorah’s play. Now as a 40-year-old adult, she is trying to exorcise these demons. But knowing that this will go down like a lead balloon, she has kept the fact from everyone at home. Only her daughter knows, as she has been cast as Zorah’s mother in the play.

The wound that this whole nightmare has inflicted on them is still unhealed to this day. Redah is missing, not dead, so can never be mourned, so his mother can never find peace. Her responsibility for him ends with her dying breath, and she has not given up the hope he will be found and restored to her.

“You failed,” she tells Zorah. Zorah listens placidly as she has clearly heard it a hundred times. She doesn’t argue because she doesn’t disagree. As the eldest she was as good as a parent, and when faced with her Sophie’s Choice moment of saving Norah or going back for Redah and risking them all being caught, she as good as abandoned her little brother.

As a result of this, you get the feeling Zorah has kinda abdicated her position as eldest child. Because it is the middle sister, Djamila, who acts most like the eldest sister. She’s fiercely loyal to their mother, and a high achiever. She is the chair of the local council, and pristinely put together. She feels like she’s holding it together while Zorah daydreams in her theatre, and Norah is off being a fuck-up.

Norah struggles to hold down a job or keep an apartment, she frequently lashes out, as a ball of barely contained rage. Her mental health has been impacted badly by all of this, and she blames everyone else, including their mother, for the warzone of a childhood she was given.

Norah is particularly angry at Zorah when she finds out about the play. Zorah has used performance to get distance from the pain of these events, but Norah does not have that. She tells her frankly that she doesn’t want a piece of entertainment made out of the thing that destroyed her.

About halfway through the film, they get word that their father has had a stroke. Their mother begs them to go to his bedside and ask him, as his children, where he has hidden their brother. He might want to clear his conscience in his final days.

The three sisters have to face the prospect of traveling to the land which saw so much of their childhood strife, and confront the one person who terrifies them most in the world. By turns they come together for support, and fall apart to tear at each other in anger and pain.

Allegorical for the tumultuous life of Algeria, the family’s violent and conflicted character casts a long shadow into the present. The constant tension between their status as both French and Algerian, when that has been a national battlefield, recurs again and again.

It is also a female viewpoint of war. Their mother fought for Algeria’s independence, only to have no right to her own children in it. She endures the brutality of the French in war, only to endure the brutality of her husband in her home. For women, the war never ends. There is no ceasefire. And revolutions that bring about new worlds are much like the old ones for them.

Sisters is an interesting film. A bit wooly and oddly-paced in parts, it is nonetheless compelling in its story and the portraits of its characters.

The title Robust refers to the character of its female lead as much as her physicality. Deborah Lukumuena plays Aissa, a security guard assigned to look after a famous movie star whose regular handler is on leave. The famous movie star in question is Gérard Depardieu, who plays (*checks notes*) George.

Barely a pseudonym, George is a cantankerous, aging, out of shape actor, who frequently bails on his films and rehearsals and other commitments. A BoJack Horseman of comfort eating, he rattles around in his massive home, pretty much devoid of human contact. The sole occasion where he meets someone not trying to hound him about work, it’s when gets a visitation weekend with his kid, and actually lightens up for once. He nightly takes panic attacks, which he is convinced are cardiac incidents, and phones his doctor in the middle of the night, probably just to hear a human voice.

Throwing his fragility into contrast is Aissa. She shows up, 50 years his junior, self-assured, competent, organised, and self-possessed. A wrestling champ, she is excelling as an athlete at the same time as taking pride in her work, eager to overcome the sexism in the industry to get high-profile security assignments to politicians and government officials. Where he is flighty, she is steady. Where he is mercurial, she is constant. Where he is irritable, she is patient.

Despite the age difference, she is more like a parent to him, organising his life, running his lines with him, and chiding him into behaving responsibily. And despite their differences as people, they begin to enjoy one another’s company. Gérard – I mean George – who can’t stand anyone’s company for very long without slipping out the patio doors and running away, asks her to stay longer, and makes up excuses why he needs her. She too finds that she likes this bear-like manchild, admiring the passion in his changeable moods rather than put off by them. His vulnerability and loneliness elicits from her kindness without pity, a sincere willingness to share time and herself with someone missing real connection.

The dynamic of aging white guy/young black woman in his employment is one I’ve found to be problematic in other films, but here I think it works. The power dynamic feels like it has a lot more symmetry. George needs Aissa far more than Aissa needs George, and she could easily simply ask for reassignment if she had enough of his shit. Plus, she is arguably far more the focus of the movie, showing her relationships with her family, her fuckbuddy, her supportive best friend, and her dedication to her wrestling training. Aissa has a full life.

This is not a film of obvious character arcs and dramatic declarations. It is about the subtler and more realistic interplays people have in one another’s lives. Moments of connection that anchor and comfort, whose changes might not be wholly apparent immediately.

What George gets from Aissa is pretty obvious. She stays over the night his wee boy is there, blowing off her fuckbuddy to do so, and it is the one night we see George sleep peacefully throughout. What Aissa gets from George is maybe a bit less obvious. In some ways, just their contrast solidifies her belief in herself.

The film’s dramatic climax for me is when Aissa is out on a date with her man, and George interrupts her on her night off to ask to come and pick up his spare keys from her. This is total bullshit, and he deliberately locks his keys in the house so he has an excuse to see her. He crashes her date, and sits down at their restaurant table to interrogate her man. He demands to know if he loves her, repeatedly driving for an answer after being told politely, and then less politely, to fuck off. “You don’t love her!” he accuses him. Aissa’s patience finally snaps, and she says, “I know he doesn’t love me! I just don’t want to hear it.” It’s a shitty thing to do, and a selfish thing to do, and a self-destructive thing to do in this valued friendship, but despite all that, it is also undeniably an insistence on Aissa as deserving of love. It is George’s way of demanding she be treated in a manner she is worthy of.

This is not a film about one magical summer where all a character’s flaws and defects are reversed. And for Deborah, you’d think she’d have the harder job with Aissa’s character, who starts and ends the film as the pretty self-assured person she is. But watching this film which plays up subtler kinds of changes, Deborah’ s performance is actually the strongest. You’d think it would have nowhere to go, but you just sense such a depth to the character, and percolation of ideas, whose effects will display is long, smooth waves, rather than the careening spikes of Gérard’s character.

Robust puts its two big-bodied leads front and centre, and allows their talent to carry the film. A two-handed character study, with as much dry humour as subtly played drama.

A beautifully satirical political drama focusing on the assassination of a pacifist politician. With the tone of something like Doctor Strangelove, it unfortunately remains strikingly relevant today.

The film starts with the armed forces of the state sitting around talking about how to get rid of the corrupting influence of this increasingly popular politician who stands for peace and nuclear disarmament. Obviously they are not monsters, and this is a democracy, so they will graciously permit him to speak at his rally. They will just obviously ensure that he gets to experience the consequences of his actions.

What I like about this is it is not overly characaturish, while still dealing with universally recognisable tropes in the theatre of political oppression. Meaning this is no Punch and Judy show between evil baddies and noble goodies, where one lamps the other. Instead, everyone in this acts in their own interest, and are simply lined up like dominoes by the regime and allowed to fall in the way expected.

The polis don’t just blow Z’s head off like in some tinpot dictatorship, no! This is a civilised democracy after all, and the opposition must be seen to have the same chance as anyone. But if this guy loves peace so much, let’s see how much he likes it when the polis practice pacifism when the fash show up.

The trouble comes when a local magistrate doesn’t seem to understand how this works. At first in fact, he seems irked that the polis haven’t done a good enough job at covering their tracks, that he’s going to be caught out with such obvious, unignorable facts contradicting the police’s official version of events.

Added to this is a local reporter who took a chance on covering the rally rather than the swanky Bolshoi ballet event that night, and thus was one of the few on the scene for the assassination. He now feels he has an exclusive, and digs around to daily find a new angle to keep himself on the front page. Again, he is not billed as some angel of the fourth estate. He’s frequently unethical and wholly self-serving. It just so happens that on this occasion, it lines up with uncovering the truth.

Between the pair of them, they uncover an embarrassment of evidence showing police collusion and potentially instigation of the assassination, but the journey there is hilarious with subtle wit and acerbic truths.

Deeply recognisable even today. The obvious implication of, “Don’t you know how this all works?” only shows up how ludicrous it would be to the audience were they to actually bring those responsible to justice.

It’s a more than 50-year-old film, but it showed to a sold-out audience tonight that laughed uproariously at how identifiable it all was.

Nora is a middle-aged granny on an estate, staying in her small flat with her 20-something weans, and wee granweans. She works two jobs to keep a roof over their heads, getting up at the crack of dawn to take buses to the airport, then as a home help looking after an elderly neighbour who is more like a friend. Nora is well-respected by everyone she meets, whether it’s her co-workers at the job, or the drug-dealers on the estate, or the family of her elderly neighbour.

Contrasted to this is Nora’s daughter, Sabah, who she doesn’t get on with. Sabah has a 4-year-old daughter, and is frustrated with her inability to provide for her financially. Unemployed, over the course of the film she tries to train as a dominatrix, but finds it difficult to hold on to even that. Where Nora is forbearing, Sabah is full of complaints. Where Nora takes any job, even two, Sabah reviles the low-paid jobs, relying either on sex work or benefits. Where Nora meets with respect from everyone, Sabah is treated like dirt by everyone, including her mother.

It really hurt me to see Nora’s interaction with Sabah. Nora has one son in the jail, another lying sleeping in his bed while she cleans and cooks after working two jobs. To them she is nothing but a font of patience and praise. When her daughter leaves the granwean alone in the next room while she takes a shower, Nora talks to her like a piece of shit, reduces her to tears, and effectively tells her she’s a bad mother who puts her kid’s life at risk.

When Nora’s son needs money to pay his lawyer, she pawns all her jewellery down to her wedding ring. When Sabah comes home and hands over nearly half the amount due from her earnings, Nora’s first word is, “Is this money haram?” No “Thanks”. No “Cheers hen, that’s guid of you.” No, only suspicion and insinuation she’s done something wrong.

Sabah’s not likeable like Nora, because she’s not a martyr like Nora, but my heart just broke for her. Where’s her support? Jesus, they’re both single mums, how about a bit of solidarity?

Good Mother asks what is a good mum? Does it have to be about living as a paragon of work and sacrifice? Or is Sabah prioritisation of finding a way to provide for her daughter financially enough?

This film is carried on the excellent performances of the cast, every one of which are great, but especially those within the central family unit. I wondered if they all hung out between shoots, because they really felt like a family. Talking over one another, slagging each other off. The family dinners are just full of warmth and chatter, and the 4-year-old gives such a natural performance, you think she must have felt very comfortable and at home.

Good Mother is about the pillars who hold up society and the family. They are nameless and invisible and go largely unsung, but their contribution is most treasured by those they touch.