Seattle Sightings

Abstract

Reviews 205 (268) de la superproduction américaine La grande évasion (Sturges, 1963). Les gags burlesques et l’insolence de Thibon,facteur des armées (CharlesAznavour) le distinguent du héros rebelle hollywoodien Captain Hilts (Steve McQueen). Robic-Diaz conclut avec des annexes riches en notices filmiques,une filmographie succincte (chronologique et par genre) et une impressionnante bibliographie classée par discipline. Une riche sélection d’images en couleurs s’échelonnant sur seize pages illustre un travail magistral sur les multiples enjeux de la représentation de cette guerre dans le cadre des théories postcoloniales. Huston-Tillotson University (TX) Anne Cirella-Urrutia Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival, 2015. . Following last year’s fortieth anniversary euphoria, this year’s edition of the country’s “Most Attended Festival” offered a calmer experience. French-language cinema remained well represented among the 282 feature-length works screening; and several moved directly from SIFF to the commercial circuit, among them La French (Cédric Jimenez), Les combattants (Thomas Cailley), and Gemma Bovery (Anne Fontaine). Each of these pictures features an exceptionally strong performance by a lead player, Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel, and Fabrice Luchini, respectively. A number of Francophone works explored political, social, and economic issues which bedevil developing nations. Ousmane Sembène’s classic La noire de... (1966), in a restored copy, led this list. Morbayassa (Guinean Cheick Fantamady Camara), like Sembène’s film, focuses on women’s stories. Bella, prostitute for a vicious pimp in Dakar, manages to escape him and travels to Paris on a quest to locate the infant she was forced to abandon at age fifteen. The lost daughter has grown up as “Vanessa,” daughter of a well-to-do Parisian couple. The director thoughtfully examines the emotional and cultural challenges such situations (not uncommon today) can generate for all parties. Run opens on the assassination of a Prime Minister and then loops backwards into the young gunman’s life and the picaresque apprenticeships (to a rainmaker, a professional eater, and a gangster) from which he has run and which have shaped his life. A briskly-paced allegory, this debut feature from Ivorian Philippe Lacôte evokes the last twenty years of his country’s turbulent history. Debris from the 2012 earthquake in his native Haiti provided Raoul Peck both inspiration and a set for Meurtre à Pacot. Using melodrama as a vehicle, he dissects issues of class, sex, racial origin, and international aid in a society attempting to recover from catastrophe. Besides La French, SIFF programmed two other French crime-thrillers likewise based on real events in the 1970s—La prochaine fois je viserai le cœur (Cédric Anger) and La rançon de la gloire (Xavier Beauvois). Anger’s film follows the double life of a man who was simultaneously a gendarme assigned to apprehend a devious serial killer and the actual murderer himself. A bluish palette in a winter setting, a first-person point-of-view, scarce dialogue, and a terse, absolutely convincing stellar turn by Guillaume Canet create a killer’s portrait that succeeds precisely in its disconcerting impenetrability. Crime films usually contain answers at the end. Not so in Anger’s film. One leaves the auditorium both intrigued and haunted by the question of what made this man go on a killing spree. To the contrary, Beauvois’s picture provides a satisfying conclusion to the adventure of two down-on-their-luck immigrants in Switzerland who steal the body of Charlie Chaplin to solve their financial problems by demanding a ransom. Rich in humor (occasionally black) as well as suspense (as one might well expect from the presence of Benoît Poelvoorde and Roschdy Zem as the grave-robbers), this engaging movie also represents a homage to Chaplin’s genius (sustaining family tradition, son Eugene Chaplin and grand-daughter Dolores have small roles). International festivals provide opportunities to see the recent work of familiar performers who do not work in Hollywood. Two notable instances here: Jean Reno as a former hippy, now grandfather, growing olives in Rose Bosch’s sunny family drama Avis de mistral and Romain Duris in François Ozon’s thought-provoking Une nouvelle amie—both...