The Stranger - d. François Ozon
François Ozon adapts Albert Camus' perennial work of the same name, set in French colonial Algeria in the 1940s. It concerns a senseless murder of a young Arab man by an emotionally stunted French national, and the subsequent murder trial and conviction.
Ozon prefaces the film with the newsreel footage of Algeria under French colonialism, and how the Algerians are treated like second class citizens in their own country: excluded from restaurants, movie theaters, shops and public transports. Not in so many words, Ozon is suggesting that Meursault's ennui and senseless actions are deeply rooted in colonialism and injustices that were out in the open for everyone to see.
The images by Manuel Dacosse (Evolution, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears) are striking and memorable in their high contrast monochrome. The scene of a guillotine on the top of the hill has a feel of surrealist master Luís Buñuel's work and the sun-kissed, enigmatic images of Algiers resemble the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Benjamin Voisin (from Ozon's Summer of 85) does a terrific job embodying an empty man who swears off the existence of god and embraces life's meaninglessness. A great supporting cast includes Denis Lavant, Rebecca Marder and Swann Arlaud (hot lawyer from Anatomy of a Fall, plays a hot priest here).
The subtext to Ozon's very closely adapted The Stranger, based on the existentialist, absurdist classic, is that Meursault's self-imposed isolation and his atheistic world view are the symptoms of witnessing decades of inhumane colonialism and experiencing rootlessness, not as much by the German invasion of the greater Europe and WWII. His rootlessness is mentioned twice in the film - when Marie suggests that after they get married, they go back to France, he responds, 'but this is my home,' and when his boss at the firm gives him an opportunity to station him in their Paris office, he declines.
The Stranger subtly shows the entitlement of the occupiers living in a foreign land as if they are living in Paris and considering it as their home without a second thought. Some twenty years later, after The Stranger was written, with armed struggle against the French, Algeria finally earned their independence in 1962, ending more than a century of French Colonial rule. The film gives a deeper context of understanding Meursault's actions, based on France's racist colonial history.
Case 137 - d. Dominik Moll
Everyone knows when it comes to mobilizing street demonstrations, no one does it better than the French. We've seen on social media of burning cars, violent confrontations with cops in riot gear, spraying manure on government buildings -- they don't mess around when it comes to protesting.
The Yellow Vest protests/movement, a recent nationwide populist mobilization, where working class people dissatisfied with the economic policies of the Centrist Macron government that caused a rising cost of living -- in gas prices, wage stagnations and higher taxes -- while wearing neon yellow-colored work vests, associated with manual labor, dominated airwaves in 2018-19. Dominik Moll, the mystery and psychological thriller specialist (The Night of the 12th, With a Friend Like Harry, Lemming), approaches the subject from the point of view of an Internal Affairs agent named Stéphanie Bertrand (Léa Drucker). Bertrand is to investigate the case of Girard, a young protester who was shot in the head by a police palette gun and is in critical condition.
Case 137 plays out like a typical police procedural, as Bertrand scrubs through the CCTV and interviews witnesses. She and her team find out that a squad of plain clothes special units, the Brigade de Recherche et d'Intervention (BRI), were present at the scene where young Girard was shot. The BRI denies everything at first, but pressed with the recording of the incident, they claim that they were just doing their job and protecting their colleagues.
Moll makes a case for Bertrand's situation, who finds herself between a rock and a hard place, hated by the public for being a cop, and also by the fellow cops (including her ex-husband who is also a cop) for investigating them for their misconduct. Taking sides is largely swayed by emotions in a highly polarized political environment. And because of Bertrand's human relations with the victim's family (turns out that Bertrand and the Girards are from the same small town), she was biased against cops, her superior concludes.
The film captures the zeitgeist of the moment against authoritarianism, the rich and the powerful, but no matter what your intentions are, how easily you can find yourself in a murky reality.
The Girl in the Snow - d. Louise Hémon
A young idealistic teacher Lazare (Galatéa Bellugi) arrives in a small village in hte Alps on the eve of the 20th century. There she encounters a tight community of mountain folks still very much steeped in traditions and superstitions.
Small things Lazare does -- like bathing her little pupils, in order to improve their hygiene and their health -- are met with deep skepticism and ridicule by the village elders. With her apple cheeks and wide eyes, Lazare attracts the attention of young men around, and her own loneliness and desires don't help the matter from village folks' scrutiny.
Death and avalanches are part of life in the region, and frozen ground makes mountain folks resigned to 'let the Spring release the dead', if their search and rescue operations become futile. The old folklore tells the story of a beautiful woman luring men to icy death and Lazare is deemed cursed since two young men disappear around her. And there will be consequences.
Stunningly shot in the snow capped Alps, and deploying non-actors, documentarian Louise Hémon's narrative debut, The Girl in the Snow, about a rift between pioneering feminism/idealism and traditions/superstitions, is a beautifully realized period piece veering into the folk horror/fantasy category.
Two Pianos - d. Arnaud Desplechin
Mathias (François Civil), a one time piano protégé, is summoned back from Japan to Lyon to accompany his mentor/teacher Elena (Charlotte Rampling) in Bartok's two piano concertos. There he runs into an old flame, Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), who was the reason that he fled in the first place. The shock is too great; he faints.
Claude is now happily married and has an 8-year old son, Simon. It turns out that Simon, who has a striking resemblance to Mathias as a child, is, in fact, his son, conceived when he had an affair while his best friend and Claude were a couple.
Mathias is in shambles, can't concentrate and comes in late for rehearsals; meanwhile, the concert is in just four days. Steely Elena is not happy with Mathias. Then she drops the bombshell. She has memory loss and suspects she has early symptoms of Alzheimer's. This will be her last concert and she needs some assurance that Mathias will be by her side and not fuck up her last concert.
Once again, Desplechin weaves the lives of these characters with beautifully nuanced script about regrets, ambition, art and love, with great performances by both Civil and Rampling. The supporting cast includes Hippolyte Girardot as Mathias's devoted agent and Alba Gaïa Bellugi as a jealous friend of Claude.
