February 28-March 10, 2019
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, New York, NY
filmlinc.org
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| Mikhaël Hers’ Amanda |
The 24th annual edition of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s long-running Rendez-Vous with French Cinema is highlighted by Amanda, Mikhaël Hers’ sensitive and touching drama about a carefree young man close to his single-mom sister and her young daughter who must man up once their world is changed by a traumatic event. Vincent Lacoste and young Isaure Multrier make a poignant pair as the devastated uncle and niece who try to start a new life together, and although Hers skirts melodrama, he never succumbs to it, making their relationship that much more heartrending.
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| Emmanuel Mouret's Mademoiselle de Joncquieres |
Emmanuel Mouret, maker of second-rate Woody Allen relationship comedies, switches gears with Mademoiselle de Joncquieres, a clever period piece a la Les Liaisons dangereuses, based on a Diderot story. Although the film sags and eventually wears out its welcome, Mouret’s entertaining revenge comedy has a subtle performance by Cecile de France as a widow who hatches an elaborate plan against the regent who has wronged her.
Director Mia Hansen-Love seemingly can’t find her way back from her earlier observant relationship dramas like Father of My Children and Goodbye First Love; instead, like her recent Eden and Things to Come, her newest, Maya, has the ingredients of a powerful character study, following a war correspondent just freed from capture by Muslim terrorists who finds himself unsettled by his experience and travels to India, where he strikes up a relationship with a free-spirited young woman. Unfortunately, Hansen-Love’s directing and writing once again lack focus and insight.
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| Patricia Mazury’s Paul Sanchez Is Back! |
Some films are distinguished by bravura acting. In Patricia Mazury’s serial-killer black comedy Paul Sanchez Is Back!, the shifts in tone are jarring but partially redeemed by Zita Hanrot as one of several inept local police officers; she finds the humanity and humor in what’s on paper a complete caricature. Similarly, Adele Haenel—who has done memorable work in such disparate films as Water Lilies, The Unknown Girl and BPM—gives an affecting portrayal of the widow of a heroic police officer who discovers he wasn’t all he was cracked up to be in Pierre Salvadori’s otherwise banal romantic comedy The Trouble with You.
And teenage newcomer Zea Duprez singlehandedly makes Meteorites—Romain Laguna’s heavyhanded portrait of a teenager who sees a meteor streak overhead and proceeds to have a memorable summer, punctuated by a fraught relationship with her first real boyfriend—watchable with an incisive portrayal that outclasses the perfunctory drama she’s stuck in.
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