Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival, 2017

Abstract

Reviews 273 Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival, 2017. . SIFF’s forty-third edition festival trailer invited movie-goers to gather round for awe-inspiring tales from across the globe. The twenty-seven Francophone films, although varied in tone and genre, displayed a common tendency to intertwine social, political, and economic issues with engaging character studies, a majority of which featured central female characters played by exceptional actresses. The newly restored Criterion version of the Marseille Trilogy—Marius (Alexander Korda, 1931), Fanny (Marc Allégret, 1932), César (Marcel Pagnol, 1936)—played to rapt admiration in the Archival Program; and Sébastien Laudenbach’s painterly, minimalist La jeune fille sans mains graced the animation section. This latter, in an elegantly metaphorical manner, adapts a Brothers Grimm tale of a girl who, deprived of her hands, nonetheless learns to prendre sa vie en main. A quartet of documentaries explored intriguing topics. Michaël Prazan begins with a 2006 recording his father Bernard made for the INA of his experience as a hidden child—information previously unknown to the family. Using archival material, reenactments, and interviews—including with the smuggler who saved Bernard’s life—La passeuse des Aubrais shares this complex, novelistic family history. L’Opéra (Jean-Stéphane Bron), filmed during preparations for the autumn 2015 season,“visits” with the new director and various artists and crewmembers as they plan, rehearse, create, discuss.We meet a young Russian with a remarkably powerful voice and a string orchestra composed of under-privileged kids.A strike threatens in the wings; a live bull lumbers on-stage. The terrorist attacks bring a moment of silence. A wonderful, informative look inside a grand Paris institution! Merzak Allouache’s docu-fiction Enquête au paradis follows a young female investigative journalist through an extensive series of interviews to research what “paradise” means to her fellow Algerians. A broad spectrum of interviewees offers some expected comments, and a good number of unexpected ones. Highly informative , this project offers 135 minutes of absorbing cultural observations. Voyage à travers le cinéma français, 195 minutes, is every bit as fascinating. In a chatty tone Bertrand Tavernier shares his wide-ranging experience in the movie business, calling on his encyclopedic knowledge of films, and enlivening his observations from a rich store of personal memories. Dedicated to Jacques Becker and Claude Sautet, this is his“expression of gratitude”to all the filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, and musicians he has met along his way. Two biopics with documentary overtones: Jérôme Salle’s L’odyssée aims to reintroduce Jacques Cousteau (a credible Lambert Wilson) to younger generations. Reinforced by stunning photography, Salle focuses on the famous ecologist’s evolving relationship with nature—a timely message nowadays. La fille de Brest (Emmanuelle Bercot) traces whistleblower Irène Frachon’s crusade to reveal the cardiac dangers of a commonly prescribed weight-loss drug. Frachon, a provincial physician, defied not only a powerful pharmaceutical company, but also condescending, skeptical Parisian bureaucrats. More clearly fictional,the human heart also beats at the center of Katell Quillévéré’s Réparer les vivants: an accident, a brain-dead adolescent son, grieving parents, and the matter of a heart transplant. Vignettes from the lives of the boy, his girlfriend, his parents, hospital personnel, and a possible recipient and her family create a thoroughly engrossing consideration of the situation’s emotional, philosophical, and medical aspects. The death of another adolescent son in Moka (Frédéric Mermoud) triggers a taut cat-and-mouse thriller: a grieving mother (Emmanuelle Devos) seeks revenge on a suspected hit-and-run driver (Nathalie Baye). In the end, however, vengeance becomes self-discovery. Gentrification, globalization, employment, drugs, consumerism provided the canvas for a trio of noteworthy debut features. Les derniers Parisiens (Mohamed Bourockba, Ekoué Labitey) contrasts the lives of two brothers, small entrepreneurs, as they attempt to cope with the insurmountable forces of gentrification. Set on the directors’home turf, this film offers an untraditional view of life in Pigalle. Set in Mali against conditions leading to a 2012 coup d’État, Daouda Coulibaly’s crime-thriller Wùlu follows the ascension and inevitable fall of twenty-year-old...