Cannes — One of France’s most highly-regarded young women filmmakers, Rebecca Zlotowski, has won the Directors’ Fortnight prize for best French-language movie for “An Easy Girl,” a sensual coming of age tale set on France’s Cote d’Azur.
From reviews published to date, “An Easy Girl” marks a return to form for Zlotowski after the disappointment of her third feature, 2016’s “Planetarium” starring Natalie Portman and Lily Rose Depp.
Written with frequent collaborator Teddy Lussi-Modeste, director of “The Price of Success, “An Easy Girl” turns on Naima, who’s 16 and has just finished high-school, who is taken under her wing by her cousin, Sofia. 22, highly sexualized, and played by actress, model and lingerie designer Zahia Dehar. Sofia takes her off for the summer, onto the boat of a wealthy collector, Andres.
It’s in the cliché busting portrait of Sofia in particular that the film comes into is own,...
From reviews published to date, “An Easy Girl” marks a return to form for Zlotowski after the disappointment of her third feature, 2016’s “Planetarium” starring Natalie Portman and Lily Rose Depp.
Written with frequent collaborator Teddy Lussi-Modeste, director of “The Price of Success, “An Easy Girl” turns on Naima, who’s 16 and has just finished high-school, who is taken under her wing by her cousin, Sofia. 22, highly sexualized, and played by actress, model and lingerie designer Zahia Dehar. Sofia takes her off for the summer, onto the boat of a wealthy collector, Andres.
It’s in the cliché busting portrait of Sofia in particular that the film comes into is own,...
- 5/23/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Sidebar winners directed by Nicolas Pariser and Rebecca Zlotowski.
Nicolas Pariser’s drama Alice And The Mayor and Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl have scooped the top prizes at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
The selection is non-competitive but there are a number of partner prizes.
Pariser’s intelligent comedy-drama, starring Veteran French actor Fabrice Luchini as a jaded mayor, who seeks the advice of a brilliant young philosopher, played by Anaïs Demoustier, won the Europa Cinema Label for best European film.
It was decided by a jury of four exhibitors from the pan-European network.
“Our selection of Alice And The Mayor was a unanimous one,...
Nicolas Pariser’s drama Alice And The Mayor and Rebecca Zlotowski’s An Easy Girl have scooped the top prizes at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
The selection is non-competitive but there are a number of partner prizes.
Pariser’s intelligent comedy-drama, starring Veteran French actor Fabrice Luchini as a jaded mayor, who seeks the advice of a brilliant young philosopher, played by Anaïs Demoustier, won the Europa Cinema Label for best European film.
It was decided by a jury of four exhibitors from the pan-European network.
“Our selection of Alice And The Mayor was a unanimous one,...
- 5/23/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival
Plenty of films have dealt with the longing for a child or the emotional and political ramifications of adoption. But Holy Lola, Bertrand Tavernier's vivid and affecting new film, immerses viewers in the experience of foreign adoption. Revolving around a French couple's moment-to-moment endurance test through hope, red tape and an unfamiliar culture as they try to adopt a child in Cambodia, the film convincingly re-creates the semi-stateless state of Westerners who travel abroad in pursuit of a baby to love. At once thoughtful and visceral, the well-acted drama, which screened at the City of Lights, City of Angels fest, deserves wider stateside exposure.
Holy Lola is similar in setup to John Sayles' Mexico-set Casa de los Babys but without being static or didactic. Tavernier wastes no time on background before plunging into the humid downpours of monsoon season in Phnom Penh, where 40-ish "country doctor" Pierre Ceyssac (Jacques Gamblin) and his wife, Geraldine (Isabelle Carre) -- a bespectacled blonde who's weary of being told how young she looks -- have come to adopt a child. Along with other guests at their hotel, which caters to French would-be adopters, the Ceyssacs inhabit a strange limbo somewhere between tourism and exile.
The script by Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier and the director is refreshingly free of psychologizing; through shorthand and the cast's naturalistic work, we know all we need to know about the hotel's cross-section of France, from working-class couple Marco and Sandrine (Bruno Putzulu and Maria Pitarresi) to Annie (Lara Guirao), alone and especially resilient. Whether still searching for a child or awaiting exit paperwork, they seesaw between hope and disappointment for weeks on end.
The drama's moral questions are as implicit as the need to care for a child. In postcolonial Cambodia, where bureaucrats quote Hugo or appreciate offerings of Shalimar, Westerners' only power is money. Wielding the most power are the story's unseen Americans, while the Ceyssacs ply local orphanages with food and toys, hoping to be in the right place at the right time when a child becomes available. They befriend a clinic doctor (Vongsa Chea) who helps them navigate the labyrinth. An encounter with baby traffickers in the impoverished, mine-dotted countryside proves dispiriting on many levels.
There's a wonderful moment when the Ceyssacs and another couple cross a dangerously busy thoroughfare four abreast, arms linked. It's a lovely picture of the way they collectively withstand the dislocation and try to make sense of a formidable bureaucracy. The equanimity Pierre and Geraldine attain during months of uncertainty becomes clear only when new people arrive at the hotel, anxious and green.
Alain Choquart's ace camerawork captures the intimate drama with immediacy, and Henri Texier's propulsive music is a major contribution.
HOLY LOLA
A Little Bear/Les Films Alain Sarde/TF1 Films Prods. production with the participation of Canal Plus, Sofica Valor 6, Sogecinema 2
Credits:
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier
Producers: Frederic Bourboulon, Alain Sarde
Executive producers: Agnes Le Pont, Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Production designer: Giuseppe Ponturo
Music: Henri Texier
Costume designer: Eve-Marie Arnault
Editor: Sophie Brunet
Cast:
Dr. Pierre Ceyssac: Jacques Gamblin
Geraldine Ceyssac: Isabelle Carre
Marco Folio: Bruno Putzulu
Annie: Lara Guirao
Xavier: Frederic Pierrot
Sandrine Folio: Maria Pitarresi
Michel: Jean-Yves Roan
Dr. Sim Duong: Vongsa Chea
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes...
Plenty of films have dealt with the longing for a child or the emotional and political ramifications of adoption. But Holy Lola, Bertrand Tavernier's vivid and affecting new film, immerses viewers in the experience of foreign adoption. Revolving around a French couple's moment-to-moment endurance test through hope, red tape and an unfamiliar culture as they try to adopt a child in Cambodia, the film convincingly re-creates the semi-stateless state of Westerners who travel abroad in pursuit of a baby to love. At once thoughtful and visceral, the well-acted drama, which screened at the City of Lights, City of Angels fest, deserves wider stateside exposure.
Holy Lola is similar in setup to John Sayles' Mexico-set Casa de los Babys but without being static or didactic. Tavernier wastes no time on background before plunging into the humid downpours of monsoon season in Phnom Penh, where 40-ish "country doctor" Pierre Ceyssac (Jacques Gamblin) and his wife, Geraldine (Isabelle Carre) -- a bespectacled blonde who's weary of being told how young she looks -- have come to adopt a child. Along with other guests at their hotel, which caters to French would-be adopters, the Ceyssacs inhabit a strange limbo somewhere between tourism and exile.
The script by Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier and the director is refreshingly free of psychologizing; through shorthand and the cast's naturalistic work, we know all we need to know about the hotel's cross-section of France, from working-class couple Marco and Sandrine (Bruno Putzulu and Maria Pitarresi) to Annie (Lara Guirao), alone and especially resilient. Whether still searching for a child or awaiting exit paperwork, they seesaw between hope and disappointment for weeks on end.
The drama's moral questions are as implicit as the need to care for a child. In postcolonial Cambodia, where bureaucrats quote Hugo or appreciate offerings of Shalimar, Westerners' only power is money. Wielding the most power are the story's unseen Americans, while the Ceyssacs ply local orphanages with food and toys, hoping to be in the right place at the right time when a child becomes available. They befriend a clinic doctor (Vongsa Chea) who helps them navigate the labyrinth. An encounter with baby traffickers in the impoverished, mine-dotted countryside proves dispiriting on many levels.
There's a wonderful moment when the Ceyssacs and another couple cross a dangerously busy thoroughfare four abreast, arms linked. It's a lovely picture of the way they collectively withstand the dislocation and try to make sense of a formidable bureaucracy. The equanimity Pierre and Geraldine attain during months of uncertainty becomes clear only when new people arrive at the hotel, anxious and green.
Alain Choquart's ace camerawork captures the intimate drama with immediacy, and Henri Texier's propulsive music is a major contribution.
HOLY LOLA
A Little Bear/Les Films Alain Sarde/TF1 Films Prods. production with the participation of Canal Plus, Sofica Valor 6, Sogecinema 2
Credits:
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier
Producers: Frederic Bourboulon, Alain Sarde
Executive producers: Agnes Le Pont, Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Production designer: Giuseppe Ponturo
Music: Henri Texier
Costume designer: Eve-Marie Arnault
Editor: Sophie Brunet
Cast:
Dr. Pierre Ceyssac: Jacques Gamblin
Geraldine Ceyssac: Isabelle Carre
Marco Folio: Bruno Putzulu
Annie: Lara Guirao
Xavier: Frederic Pierrot
Sandrine Folio: Maria Pitarresi
Michel: Jean-Yves Roan
Dr. Sim Duong: Vongsa Chea
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes...
- 4/13/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Bertrand Tavernier fuses documentary principles, a searing, angry lament for adult responsibility and the necessity for political accountability in his feature "It Starts Today".
The strategy doesn't always work; the film occasionally prefers didactic exchanges to make its dramatic points. However, this unconventional, absorbing work is beautifully constructed and quietly moving. The film, properly handled, should connect with upscale art house audiences at home and abroad.
A former film critic, Tavernier has made brilliant documentaries on varied subjects in his distinguished career. Like the films of British director Ken Loach, Tavernier suffuses this movie with a spontaneity and improvisational feel for unexpected moments and quiet revelations. But he also creates highly formal narrative strategies offset against haunting shots of landscape that mark the passage of time. The work features excellent stage-trained actor Philippe Torreton, whose mesmerizing lead performance in Tavernier's "Capitaine Conan" earned him a best actor Cesar.
In "It Starts Today", Torreton plays Daniel Lefebvre, a passionate and charismatic director of an ambitious kindergarten trapped in bleak Hernaing in northern France. The economically devastated community is laden with acute social problems, resulting in devastating consequences on the school's trained and highly motivated staff.
Lefebvre works tirelessly to facilitate the children's curiosity and mental agility. However, his efforts are handicapped by the ugly realities of the highly restricted economic area. Crises stem from heavy incidents of alcoholism and physical and sexual abuse.
Like Francois Truffaut's superb work on children and more recently, Jacques Doillon's "Ponette", Tavernier doesn't sentimentalize the children or their poverty. He gives them vivid, sharply delineated voices and an emotional range that grounds the material to the specific and concrete. Working with a largely nonprofessional cast, Tavernier strips bare their frailty and naked vulnerability, though always granting them a decency and honesty -- and a hope the film never quite loses despite the mounting hardships and tragedies. Unfortunately, the absence of a unifying narrative diminishes the depth of the work and the stylistic variety, failing to make this a transcendent piece of art.
The succession of verbal confrontations between Lefebvre and the traumatized bureaucracy he constantly battles -- local politicians, ineffective social service workers and overmatched parents -- is needlessly repetitive. It also changes the film's balance, threatening to turn the movie into a social policy primer. Fortunately, Torreton's electric and concentrated performance anchors the film. He not only provides a valuable human dimension, he radiates an intensity and directness that illuminates a corner of the world that too often remains in the dark. Technically, befitting a Tavernier film, the movie is a marvel, with stand-out contributions from great cinematographer Alain Choquart.
IT STARTS TODAY
Alain Sarde and Frederic Bourboulon present
a Les Films Alain Sarde, Little Bear and TFI Films production
Producers: Alain Sarde, Frederic Bourboulon
Director-screenwriter: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Music: Louis Sclavis
Sound: Michel Desrois, Gerard Lamps
Art director: Thierry Francois
Costumes: Marpessa Djian
Editors: Sophie Brunet, Sophie Mandonnet
Production manager: Francois Hamel
Color/stereo
Cast:
Daniel: Philippe Torreton
Valeria: Maria Pitarresi
Samia: Nadia Kaci
Mrs. Leinard: Veronique Ataly
Cathy: Nathalie Becue
Inspector: Didier Bezace
The Mayor: Gerard Giroudon
Running time --117 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The strategy doesn't always work; the film occasionally prefers didactic exchanges to make its dramatic points. However, this unconventional, absorbing work is beautifully constructed and quietly moving. The film, properly handled, should connect with upscale art house audiences at home and abroad.
A former film critic, Tavernier has made brilliant documentaries on varied subjects in his distinguished career. Like the films of British director Ken Loach, Tavernier suffuses this movie with a spontaneity and improvisational feel for unexpected moments and quiet revelations. But he also creates highly formal narrative strategies offset against haunting shots of landscape that mark the passage of time. The work features excellent stage-trained actor Philippe Torreton, whose mesmerizing lead performance in Tavernier's "Capitaine Conan" earned him a best actor Cesar.
In "It Starts Today", Torreton plays Daniel Lefebvre, a passionate and charismatic director of an ambitious kindergarten trapped in bleak Hernaing in northern France. The economically devastated community is laden with acute social problems, resulting in devastating consequences on the school's trained and highly motivated staff.
Lefebvre works tirelessly to facilitate the children's curiosity and mental agility. However, his efforts are handicapped by the ugly realities of the highly restricted economic area. Crises stem from heavy incidents of alcoholism and physical and sexual abuse.
Like Francois Truffaut's superb work on children and more recently, Jacques Doillon's "Ponette", Tavernier doesn't sentimentalize the children or their poverty. He gives them vivid, sharply delineated voices and an emotional range that grounds the material to the specific and concrete. Working with a largely nonprofessional cast, Tavernier strips bare their frailty and naked vulnerability, though always granting them a decency and honesty -- and a hope the film never quite loses despite the mounting hardships and tragedies. Unfortunately, the absence of a unifying narrative diminishes the depth of the work and the stylistic variety, failing to make this a transcendent piece of art.
The succession of verbal confrontations between Lefebvre and the traumatized bureaucracy he constantly battles -- local politicians, ineffective social service workers and overmatched parents -- is needlessly repetitive. It also changes the film's balance, threatening to turn the movie into a social policy primer. Fortunately, Torreton's electric and concentrated performance anchors the film. He not only provides a valuable human dimension, he radiates an intensity and directness that illuminates a corner of the world that too often remains in the dark. Technically, befitting a Tavernier film, the movie is a marvel, with stand-out contributions from great cinematographer Alain Choquart.
IT STARTS TODAY
Alain Sarde and Frederic Bourboulon present
a Les Films Alain Sarde, Little Bear and TFI Films production
Producers: Alain Sarde, Frederic Bourboulon
Director-screenwriter: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Music: Louis Sclavis
Sound: Michel Desrois, Gerard Lamps
Art director: Thierry Francois
Costumes: Marpessa Djian
Editors: Sophie Brunet, Sophie Mandonnet
Production manager: Francois Hamel
Color/stereo
Cast:
Daniel: Philippe Torreton
Valeria: Maria Pitarresi
Samia: Nadia Kaci
Mrs. Leinard: Veronique Ataly
Cathy: Nathalie Becue
Inspector: Didier Bezace
The Mayor: Gerard Giroudon
Running time --117 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/22/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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