March '26 Digital Week II

Film Series of the Week/Rendez-Vous With French Cinema

Case 137 

(Film Movement)

The great French actress Léa Drucker adds another sharply-etched characterization to her résumé as Stéphanie, an internal-affairs investigator in the Paris police force on a case of police brutality during the “yellow jacket” protests of 2018 in Dominic Moll’s low-key procedural that persuasively encompasses the complicated political aspects of class and race hanging over the investigation. Drucker is unwaveringly good whether subtly taking the temperature of those she’s looking into or handling her skeptical ex-husband (a fellow cop), loving young son, and cantankerous mother. A top-notch supporting cast and Moll’s documentary-like visuals strongly contribute to this deeply moral, unnerving drama. 

Colors of Time 

(Distrib Films)

In Cédric Klapisch’s latest drama, four cousins meeting for the first time explore their celebrated ancestor Adèle’s home—as we meet Adèle herself (a fine Suzanne Lindon) as she leaves the sticks for Paris at the zenith of the 1890s Belle Époque and befriends artists like Claude Monet, who ends up having more to do with the extended family than expected. Typically flavorful and spirited, lavish but not overstuffed, Klapisch’s film might be schematic in its crosscutting between the present-day cousins’ endless zoom calls about Adèle’s valuables—including a painting that may have a surprising provenance—and her adventures in the dazzling city of lights, but it’s a delight from start to finish. 

Festival Film of the Week/True-False Film Fest

Who Moves America 

(Sidereal Time Production)

This entry in the annual nonfiction film festival in Columbia, Missouri (the latest edition ran March 5-8) takes the pulse of the UPS workers preparing for—and, in many cases, dreading—a possible strike when the Teamsters contract with management ends in the summer of 2023. Yael Bridge—who has made other films chronicling labor strife in America—provides an honest if necessarily one-sided chronicle of how so many workers who rely on their paycheck to get by respond to the possibility of losing money (and maybe more) for an important cause in a country that has been steadily, often ruthlessly whittling back workers’ rights at the expense of their corporate bosses’.  

Streaming Release of the Week 

Dracula 

(Vertical Releasing)

French director Luc Besson returns with this downbeat, mostly colorless adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic, with Caleb Landry-Jones hamming it up mightily as the Count—his spectacularly grotesque makeup is the memorable part of the character. Surprisingly—but in a good way—noted scenery chewer Christoph Waltz gives a nice low-key turn as the priest (Van Helsing in all but name) who tracks Dracula down, while Zoë Bleu plays Mina, Dracula’s paramour, with satisfying brio. Besson, a veteran of large-scale canvases, seems to have come a cropper with this umpteenth version of a well-worn tale, as he brings to it little energy or vitality. 

In-Theater Release of the Week

For Worse 

(Brainstorm Media)

Amy Landecker makes her triple-threat debut as writer, director and star in this agreeable romantic comedy about Lauren, a newly divorced woman who begins an on- and off-again relationship with Sean, a much younger man in her acting class, until they attend a wedding that marks a real turning point in her life. Although much of this is mined for superficial comedy—Lauren’s ex has a hot yoga instructor as a girlfriend, Lauren’s best friend Jessi (a funny Missi Pyle) very much wants her to take the plunge with Sean, and the classes are led by no-nonsense instructor Liz (a too dour Gaby Hoffman)—Landecker makes an appealing heroine and as a filmmaker finds her feet in the second half, when Lauren meets two men with opposite designs on her (played by Landecker’s own husband, Bradley Whitford, and Ken Marino, the latter amusing in an obnoxious role).

March '26 Digital Week I

In-Theater Release of the Week 

Wuthering Heights 

(Warner Bros)

In Emerald Fennell’s latest pseudo-provocation, Emily Bronte’s classic novel has been transformed into an often risible and limp romance that drags along for more than two hours: if Margot Robbie (as Cathy) and Jacob Elordi (as Heathcliff) remain watchable, it’s due more to their movie-star magnetism than Fennell’s labored direction and soggy writing. The kids playing the star-crossed couple as youths— Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper—are quite natural and might have come across better in a less pretentious context, but unfortunately we’re stuck with Fennell’s ugly visuals, choppy editing, on-the-nose symbolism and a score that’s not so much played as smeared over every frame.

Film Series of the Week

Rendez-Vous With French Cinema (Film at Lincoln Center)

The Stranger 

(Music Box Films; opens April 3)

This popular series of new French films returns for its 31st year at the Walter Reade Theater in Manhattan. For opening night, there’s prolific director François Ozon’s latest, a B&W adaptation of the classic Albert Camus novel about Meursault, a nihilistic young French man in Algiers, who kills a local man in cold blood and stoically faces the consequences. Although Ozon follows Camus’ plot closely, there’s a bloodlessness, so to speak, to his filmmaking, as if he’s mimicking the protagonist’s distance from others, including Marie, the willing young woman he’s sleeping with. Benjamin Voisin, typecast as Meursault, is almost too inscrutable; his opposite number, Rebecca Marder, invests Marie with pathos, sympathy and humanity.

Two Pianos 

(Kino Lorber; opens May 1)

Iconoclastic director Arnaud Desplechin—whose My Sex Life and A Christmas Tale are remarkable portraits of messy relationships—returns with another skewered tale of screw-ups: classical pianist Mathias returns to his hometown Lyon from Japan, where he’s been teaching, to perform with his mentor, Elena. Butting heads with her during rehearsals, he finds himself drawn back into the life of his ex, Claude, whose husband has just died. Mathias befriends her young son, who looks strongly like him. Desplechin revels in throwing these characters into highly emotional moments to navigate, and if he sometimes veers into melodramatic territory—Mathias feints when he sees Claude upon his return—his observations are deeply felt, as are the performances by François Civil (Mathias), Charlotte Rampling (Elena) and Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Claude).

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t 

(Universal)

In the second sequel to the surprisingly successful 2013 heist movie, the group of illusionists called the Four Horsemen rounds up new recruits to help with their latest caper: going up against the ruthless head of a diamond company, Veronika Vanderberg, who’s also a money launderer. Rosamund Pike is deliciously evil as Veronika, but the large cast of Horsemen, old and new—Jessie Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman and an always welcome Lizzy Kaplan alongside newcomers Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa and Ariana Greenblatt —are interchangeably bland, even though they try hard to be clever. Despite its far-flung locations, Ruben Fleischer’s crime flick is quite familiar and monotonous. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include featurettes and deleted and extended scenes, along with a director’s commentary.

DVD Release of the Week

The Time It Takes 

(Distrib Films)

Francesca Comencini’s film is a touching if occasionally saccharine reminiscence about growing up the daughter of Luigi Comencini, one of the most successful filmmakers during Italy’s cinematic golden age. Francesca dramatizes life with a famous father as something that was simultaneously wondrous and strange, culminating in her drug addiction before straightening herself out and becoming a filmmaker in her own right. There are delightful moments on the set of Luigi’s films, and the splendid performances of Fabrizio Gifuni (Luigi), Anna Mangiocavallo (young Francesca) and Romana Maggiora Vergano (adult Francesca) help smooth over the film’s sentimental lapses.

Film Series Roundup—Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024

Through March 10, 2024

Film at Lincoln Center, New York, NY

filmlinc.org

Back for its 29th edition, Film at Lincoln Center’s long-running annual series included 21 new films. Here are my reviews of a half-dozen of those entries.

The Animal Kingdom (Magnolia Pictures; opens March 15)

In Thomas Cailley’s dystopian drama, some humans have started mutating into wild animals including some who have developed large wings and try to fly; is civilization unraveling, or is it a new type of evolutionary leap into the future? François (Romain Duris), worried about his afflicted wife, moves with his teenage son Émile (Paul Kircher) to be close to her, and they enter a world of hybrid humans. Calley’s conceit is certainly a high-wire act—eye-popping makeup, effects and photography vividly bring this bizarre but all too real new universe to life—yet his film often wavers, whether in the obvious metaphors for the fear of outsiders or in a wan subplot featuring Adèle Exarchopoulos, an actress incapable of a false note, but who is hamstrung by her role as a sympathetic cop. She and Duris deserve better scenes than Cailley gives them. 

Consent 

Vanessa Springora’s soul-baring 2020 memoir created a sensation in France as she described a nonconsensual relationship with writer Gabriel Matzneff, who was 50 when he groomed her as his lover at age 13, and now Vanessa Filho—who adapted the book with Springora—has made a daring, often difficult to watch adaptation that clearly details how the self-admitted pedophile (who wrote quite openly about his scandalous sexual behavior with young boys and girls but was shielded by a literary establishment that looked askance at the real-life consequences) stealthily to her under his wing, emotionally and sexually. Jean-Paul Rouve is creepily persuasive as the destructive Matzneff, Laetitia Casta is scarily pathetic as Vanessa’s complicit mother and the great Elodie Bouchez has a magnificent cameo as the adult Vanessa. But it’s the simply spectacular Kim Higelin, as Vanessa from ages 13 to 18 (Higelin is 24 in real life), who is the beating and bleeding heart of the film, a dynamic piece of acting that is also emotionally shattering to watch.

Just the Two of Us (Music Box Films)

Writer-director Valérie Donzelli pairs with current French cinema It Girl, Belgian actress Virginie Efira, for a twisty thriller that begins as a whirlwind romance when Blanche (Efira), still hurting from a recent breakup, falls for the charming Grégoire (Melvil Poupaud). They immediately marry, but it’s not long before she realizes he’s not the man of her dreams: yet it takes several years and two children before she finally takes action to escape his emotional and physical abuse. Efira is her usual powerhouse self, both as Blanche and her suspicious twin sister Rose, but not enough is made of the siblings’ relationship (or with that of their mother) to justify the amount of screen time it receives. Surprisingly, this routine feature was co-written with Audrey Diwan, who wrote and directed last year’s memorable abortion drama, Happening, doubling the disappointment.

Marguerite’s Theorem (Distrib Films US)

Co-writer-director Anna Novion has created pulse-pounding suspense from the seemingly mundane subject of math: a grad school numbers whiz, Marguerite (a superlative and complex turn by Belgian actress Ella Rumpf), sees her academic life fall apart when it’s discovered that the theorem she has worked on for years has a fatal error. Novion’s brilliantly observed character study follows a young woman who realizes that her life can consist of much more than mere numbers and proofs on a blackboard; director and actress make Marguerite one of the most compelling characters I’ve seen onscreen in some time, and it’s easy to share in her triumphs (her first orgasm is particularly wittily shot) and cheer for her ultimate mathematical—and personal—redemption.

On the Adamant

In a very distinguished career, French documentarian Nicolas Philibert has made insightful films about subjects ranging from French national radio to rural schooling—in his latest, he aims his sharp eye and lens on the Adamant, a barge on the Seine that serves as a mental health daycare center for adults and provides nurturing activities with a dedicated staff. Philibert, in his usual discerning way, records the interactions between the patients and the doctors and other staff members, along with perceptive and touching interviews, making for another in a long line of generously humane portraits.

Red Island

Robin Campillo’s most recent film, 2017's BPM: Beats Per Minute, was a feisty, angry and absorbing chronicle of ’90s AIDS activism in France and the formation of ACT UP. His latest, equally autobiographical, feature returns him to childhood, growing up on a French military base on the island of Madagascar. The young protagonist, Thomas, feels left out of family activities and often passes his time daydreaming about a superhero comic book—whose adventures are amusingly visualized by Campillo—and then finds a fellow friend in a young Vietnamese girl, Suzanne. Campillo has made a moody if diffuse work that shows a sympathetic eye but also too often a preference for visual audacity over depth.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2023

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2023

Through March 12, 2023

Film at Lincoln Center, New York, NY

filmlinc.org

Of the 21 films in this year’s annual slate of new French films—I managed to catch a baker’s dozen—several were nominated for the Cesar Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars), and at last weekend’s ceremony a couple features actually won some of the biggest prizes. Here are reviews of 10 Rendez-Vous selections.

Revoir Paris

Revoir Paris (Music Box Films; opens June 23), Alice Winocour’s latest psychological study of individuals under duress, alternates between perceptive and cursory as it follows Mia, a Russian translator who survives a horrific mass shooting in a  Parisian café and tries to deal with its disastrous emotional and physical aftermath. As Mia, Virginie Efira won the best actress Cesar for her devastating performance, which goes a long way toward making the film seem more penetrating than it is. 

Other People's Children

Efira performs a similar miracle in Other People’s Children (Music Box Films, opens April 21) as Rachel, a schoolteacher without her own children who loves her boyfriend Ali’s young daughter Leila as if she was her own—until his ex-wife initiates a reunion that might squeeze Rachel out of their lives altogether. Rebecca Zlotowski’s delicate writing and directing provide Efira with another showcase for her emotionally shattering acting; ideally, she should have won the Cesar for both of her draining portrayals.

The Night of the 12th

The big Cesar winner, The Night of the 12th, Dominick Moll’s absorbing police procedural, captured six awards, including best film, director and screenplay. Beginning as an investigation into a young woman who is gruesomely burned to death after leaving a friend’s house one night, it soon morphs into something completely different—the case is never solved but Moll damningly shows how misogyny permeates every facet of French society; even the magistrate who takes over the case after several years (played the excellent and long-missed Anouk Grinberg) cannot force the issue to her eternal regret.

Brother and Sister

After his disappointing last feature, Deception—a wan Philip Roth adaptation wasting both Denis Podalydès and Léa Seydoux—director Arnaud Despleschin returns with a much more characteristic drama, Brother and Sister, with Melvil Poupaud and Marion Cotillard as siblings who fell out years ago and who must try to navigate the broken shards of their dead relationship after their parents are in a horrible car accident. Despleschin dives headlong into these characters’ careening emotions with his usual encompassing sympathy and occasional bemusement, complemented by the harrowingly real performances by Poupaud and Cotillard.

Smoking Causes Coughing

Quentin Dupieux is a taste I’ve never acquired, but his latest, Smoking Causes Coughing (Magnolia Pictures, opens March 31), while as absurd as his other forays into weird horror and silly genre-bashing, wears its absurdism far more entertainingly than his earlier forays into goofy nastiness. A quintet of superheroes must attend a retreat to fix their bad group dynamic, which leads to a series of moronic campfire tales that Dupieux chronicles with off-kilter amusement. Of course, having a great cast—Adèle Exarchopoulos, Vincent Lacoste, Gilles Lellouche, and especially Anaïs Demoustier—doesn’t hurt.

Diary of a Fleeting Affair

Another director whose reputation is vastly overinflated is Emmanuel Mouret, whose Diary of a Fleeting Affair is a third-rate romantic comedy aspiring to be second-rate. Two people meet and decide to be friends with benefits: until she finds love with another woman and he—already married, with children—can’t handle it. It all comes off as rather regressive and tired, something that even Woody Allen (whom Mouret desperately wants to be) would leave in a bottom drawer. Vincent Macaigne and Sandrine Kiberlain, able actors both, have never been more irritating.

The Origin of Evil

In Sébastien Marnier’s The Origin of Evil, a working-class ex-con, Stéphane, introduces herself to Serge, a wealthy patriarch, as his long-lost daughter—they tentatively bond but his wife and grown children suspect her motives because they don’t want to give up the gravy train. Maurnier’s solid direction makes his film nastily enjoyable, but even Laure Calamy’s persuasive and sympathetic Stéphane is unable to keep it from being familiar and predictable.

The Green Perfume

Similarly, Nicolas Pariser’s The Green Perfume starts out slyly when actor Martin begins investigating the mysterious death of a colleague who collapses onstage during a performance. But as he gets into the weeds—helped by Claire, an implausibly energetic author who drops everything to join him—the film starts spinning its wheels for the rest of its running time. Vincent Lacoste and Sandrine Kiberlain keep our interest as long as they can, but even they eventually lose out.

Forever Young

Forever Young is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s autobiographical drama about her memories of being in the class of the iconoclastic director and acting teacher Patrice Chéreau—who made a provocative Wagner Ring cycle and films like Queen Margot—in all its emotional exhaustion and ultimately artistic triumph. With a magnetic Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Tedeschi’s stand-in, who goes from wide-eyed naiveté to bruised but resourceful actress, Forever Young is as alternately brilliant and exasperating as the celebrated Chéreau, played smartly by Louis Garrel, was.

Winter Boy

Finally, Christoph Honoré’s messy Winter Boy, which was also based on his own experience, features a sensitive Paul Kircher as a teenager grasping at dealing with his father’s death that may not have been an accident. Although Honoré is unable to completely avoid sentimentality, the scenes between Kircher and an equally compelling Juliette Binoche are vividly authentic.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2022

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2022

Through March 16, 2022

Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

filmlinc.org

In March 2020, Film at Lincoln Center was in the midst of its annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series when it was shuttered by COVID. Last year, Rendez-Vous returned in a hybrid form, with in-person screenings complemented by streaming, which allowed French film fans, near and far, to see their favorites without leaving the house. Now, in 2022, as things get back to what might charitably be considered comparatively normal, Rendez-Vous has returned for its 27th season, back in its fully in-theater model.

Of the series’ 23 films—many New York premieres and a classic by director Jacques Becker, 1954’s Touchez pas au grisbi—I got to see ten (three of those already have a distributor and are scheduled to be released at some point this year). 

Between Two Worlds

Films about women taking on others’ identities make for a fascinating sidebar. In Emmanuel Carrère’s Between Two Worlds (Cohen Media Group, to be released later this year), Juliette Binoche gives her usual intensely committed performance as Marianne Winckler, a writer posing an an unemployed divorcee who takes a menial cleaning job in order to detail an exposé about corrupt practices. Based on investigative journalist Florence Aubenas’ book—a French bestseller when it was published in 2010—Binoche and Carrère have created an incisive look at a harrowing, mainly women’s problem.

Madeleine Collins

For most of Antoine Barraud’s mysterious movie, the viewer won’t understand why it’s titled Madeleine Collins: Virginie Efira is spectacular as Judith, a professional with one family in France and another in Switzerland. Slowly, Barraud reveals why Judith lives a double life, and the culmination of this slow-burn psychological study is devastating, dramatized with steely resolve by Efira’s performance and Barraud’s insightful writing and precise direction.

Secret Name

Set during World War I, Aurélia Georges’ Secret Name follows Nélie, a young nurse at the front who hatches an audacious scheme to take the place of Rose, whom she believes is killed in an attack, to become reader and confidante to Eléonore, an elderly widow. Nélie soon becomes a member of the family until Rose, who has survived, tries to disrupt her scheme. With understanding and subtlety, Georges has made a multilayered exploration of identity, lost and found, with fantastic acting by Lyna Khoudri, remarkably poised as Nélie, the ageless Sabine Azema as Eléonore and Maud Wyler as Rose.

Gallant Indies

Gallant Indies (Distrib Films US, to be released later this year), a bracing, exhilarating documentary by director Philippe Béziat, chronicles the sweeping production of French baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau’s epic opera Indes galantes at the Paris Opera in 2019, staged by director Clément Cogitore and choreographer Bintou Dembélé, who push back against racist tropes in the story by casting dancers and performers of all genres and backgrounds to create a work that transcends all categories. 

The Horizon

Environmental activism is the theme of The Horizon, an intelligent character study about 18-year-old Adja, aloof and uninterested in anything outside her friends, but who finds herself changed when she falls for a guy who’s part of a local group of young activists. Soon she is tagging along and participating in more dangerous protests, and finds her life changing irrevocably. Emilie Carpentier’s direction is spot-on, and Tracy Gotoas’ Adja is a powerhouse at the movie’s center.

Our Boys

Our Boys is Rachel Lang’s unflinching look at how war destroys relationships alongside bodies and minds, as French soldiers at an outpost in Corsica deal with being away from their wives and girlfriends back home, who are actually the focus of Lang’s penetrating but thoughtful gaze. Louis Garrel and Aleksandr Kuznetsov are fine as the soldiers, but Camille Cottin (as Garrel’s wife) and especially Ina Marija Bartaité (as Kuznetsov’s fiancée) give performances of touching elegance.

Petite Solange

Petite Solange, an exquisitely crafted character study, is writer-director Axelle Ropert’s insightful glimpse at Solange, a teenager unmoored from her family, friends and school following her parents’ sudden separation and divorce. Buoyed by the exceptional acting of young Jade Springer as Solange, Ropert’s engaging coming-of-age film nods to Francois Truffaut’s classic debut, 1959’s The 400 Blows, with its own ambiguous final freeze-frame.

A Tale of Love and Desire

Leyla Bouzid’s A Tale of Love and Desire (Distrib Films US, to be released later this year) threads the needle between modern and traditional in a sensitive love story of people who meet in an Arab poetry class: Ahmed is a conservative young Algerian while Farah is a modern young Turnisian. Bouzid explores with great resourcefulness and tact how differences in outlook threaten to torpedo their relationship, but she’s after something deeper: a thoughtful, poetic study of the diversity of Arab cultures in the heart of thriving metropolitan Paris. There are two wonderful performances at the film’s center: Sami Outalbali (Ahmed) and newcomer Zbeida Belhajamor (Farah).

Bruno Reidal—Confessions of a Murderer

Bruno Reidal—Confessions of a Murderer follows the eponymous teen in early 1900s France who kills a young child in cold blood, even decapitating him in a grisly manner. This sordid true story is brought to the screen by director Vincent Le Port, who never shies away from the more unpleasant parts of Bruno’s depressing existence—there are a few ugly moments that however need to be shown—and his psychologically acute direction is complemented by Dimitri Doré’s miraculous portrayal of Bruno as a confused young man, not a mere monster.

Robust

Pampered, aging hill actor Georges has a new assistant, Aïssa, a female wrestler, and Constance Meyer’s Robust runs through all the predictable situations of this odd couple to arrive at a familiar but entertaining vibe, mainly thanks to the inspired pairing of Gérard Depardieu—who gives an amusingly self-aware performance—and Déborah Lukumuena, whose empathetic presence prevents it from ever getting too sappy.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2020

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema
Through March 15, 2020
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, New York, NY
filmlinc.org

The Truth 

At the 25th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema—Film at Lincoln Center’s longest-running series—the most memorable film is by one of our best current directors: Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda. And if The Truth (opens this summer) isn’t up to the level of his greatest films (Like Father Like Son, Maborosi, Still Walking), it does have his profoundest qualities in abundance as he observes, with sympathy and not a little amusement, the ongoing power play between a past-her-prime superstar movie actress and her contentious screenwriter daughter, both played with zesty humor and real emotion by Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche.

Who You Think I Am

Binoche also stars in Who You Think I Am (opens this summer), Safy Nebbou’s banal twist on the rom-com: despite her usual elegance, Binoche is unable to do much with Claire, a middle-aged professor who—after being dumped by her younger boyfriend—makes a fake Facebook account to spy on him and ends up ruining his roommate’s life. Deneuve’s daughter, Chiara Mastroianni somehow won best actress at Cannes for being her usual charmless self in On a Magical Night (opening March 27) (for once, the original French title, Chambre 212, is less evocative), Christophe Honoré’s slight fantasy about a long-married couple’s rocky relationship triggering visits by past lovers (mostly hers). Too bad neither film does much with fairly intriguing ideas.

Alice and the Mayor

Alice and the Mayor’s Anaïs Demoustier just won the Cesar (France’s Oscar) for Best Actress for her beguiling portrayal of an aide to Lyon’s mayor who makes him rethink his approach to governing. Nicolas Pariser’s comic drama isn’t earthshattering by any means, but Demoustier and the always invaluable Fabrice Luchini have such undeniable intellectual chemistry in the title roles that they make this an entertaining battle of wits.

Deerskin

Two of France’s most accomplished stars, Oscar winner Jean Dujardin and Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s Adèle Haenel, team up for Deerskin (opening March 20), the latest piece of insane inanity from Quentin Dupieux, creator of earlier “gems” Rubber and Reality. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I found this brief (but still too long) satire of masculinity and midlife crisis—centered around a deerskin jacket and a lame parody of filmmaking—hamfisted and painfully unfunny, despite Dujardin and Haenel’s star wattage.

Perfect Nanny

Based on the unnerving novel by Leïla Slimani, Lucie Borleteau’s Perfect Nanny slowly builds suspense as a well-to-do Parisian couple hires the so-called title character, but it loses something along the way with a lazy finale that recalls mindless slasher flicks more than sophisticated thrillers. As the nanny, the otherwise persuasive Karin Viard is undercut by Borleteau’s reliance on too many clichés. Burning Ghost, Stephane Batut’s enigmatic debut feature, follows Juste, a young man who leads the newly deceased into the afterlife, and how he reacts to Agathe, a long-ago acquaintance back in his life. Although Batut’s Paris is eerily mysterious, the director loses his grip and ends up awkwardly straddling reality and otherworldliness, like his protagonist.

Joan of Arc

Two Rendez-Vous vets return with films that pale next to their earlier work. Bruno Dumont, whose last film, Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, was a misconceived heavy-metal musical biopic, has made a sequel, Joan of Arc, with the intense but miscast 10-year-old Lise Leplat Prudhomme in the title role, as she was in Jeannette. Dumont records Jean’s questioning by unsympathetic church investigators with dull literalness. In Someone, Somewhere, Cedric Klapisch’s limp shaggy-dog tale of near-romance, two neighbors go about their business separately without noticing each other until the very end. Ana Girardot and Francois Civil give this wispy entertainment more gravity than it deserves.

Papicha

Finally, two female directors come to Rendez-Vous with impressive films on dicey subject matter. Sarah Suco’s The Dazzled is a sympathetic study of 12-year-old Camille (an indelible Celeste Brunnquell), who realizes that the closed religious sect her family belongs to is tearing them apart. Equally illuminating is Papicha, Mounia Meddour’s insightful dramatization of college student Nedjma (Lyna Khourdri, heartbreaking) and her brave display of resistance in a conservative religious world.