Heartbreaking/groundbreaking nostalgia in Catherine Corsini's best so far: SUMMERTIME

Taking place in France in the 1970s, among a group of early feminists pushing the boundaries of the French in ways -- women's rights, gay rights, abortion -- for which the French were unprepared, Catherine Corsini's newest film is up there with her best, which would include for my taste The New Eve (1999), La répétition (2001), Leaving (2009) and Three Worlds (2012). In fact, I think SUMMERTIME (La belle saison) is her best yet. It takes us back to a period that the older of us will remember well (even if we weren't in France at the time, what occurred there was simultaneously going on throughout much of the western world), and Ms Corsini captures both events and characters with a hand as deft as it is subtle & cinematic.

The filmmaker, shown at left, casts her films especially well, too -- sometime surprising us with her choice of stars. Emmanuelle Béart made a fine impression in La Repetition, and more than any other of Karin Viard's films, The New Eve helped place this supporting actress on the map to stardom. Kristin Scott Thomas is always fine, but Leaving gave her one of her strongest roles, while Three Worlds offered Clotilde Hesme and Raphaël Personnaz characters that brought out new richness and depth in both performers.

Corsini tends to tackle themes involving both class issues and "the other," with the latter sometimes hinging on one's sexual orientation. So it is again with Summertime, in which a beautiful young farm girl, Delphine (a glowing performance from Izïa Higelin, below), after enduring her parents' constant pushing her into marriage with some local boy and when a secret lesbian affair goes south, takes off for the big city in an attempt to discover another life. Which she manages -- in spades.

In Paris, Delphine falls into an activist women's group, where she meets Carole (another knockout performance from César-winning actress Cécile De France, shown below),  and a relationship blooms.

How this happens is presented believably on both an emotional and societal level, with genuine feeling and attention given to Carole's male partner (beautifully nuanced by Benjamin Bellecour) whom she must give up for Delphine. The same feeling and caring is provided the young man in Delphine's farm community who has been in love with her since childhood (a wonderful, heartbreaking performance from Kévin Azaïs. below, right).

The only other major character is played by that fine French actress, Noémie Lvovsky, below, who brings enormous strength and anger to her role of Delphine's mother, who cannot begin to accept anything but the standard straight-and-narrow sexual relationship for her daughter. Ms Lvovsky has one of the film's strongest and most difficult scenes, and she wipes the floor with it.

But Corsini's movie rightly belongs to her two lead actresses, who play with and off each other quite beautifully throughout. Ms De France's versatility is by now well known. Here we view more of her physically than we ever have, and she proves something to see. As does Ms Higelin (this film should ramp her career into high gear), who has such a buoyant and contagious liveliness than viewers of any gender or preference should easily fall for her -- either/both sexually and/or aesthetically. She is something special.

Corsini's strength here is in bringing us equally close emotionally to the highs and lows of the relationship, as well as making us understand and feel the social/societal difficulties implicit in such a bonding back in the distant 1970s. Both these strands come together to deliver a richly textured, marvelously empathetic movie. Don't miss it.

Summertime -- from Strand Releasing (this independent/foreign film distributor is on one hell of a roll lately!) and running 105 minutes -- opens this Friday, July 22, in New York City (at the IFC Center and Film Society of Lincoln Center) amd in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7 and Claremont 5), and then in another half dozen or more cities in the weeks to come. Click here, then click on Screenings on the tool bar halfway down the screen to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

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Catherine Corsini, farming, feminism on film, France in the 1970s, French cinema, GLBT films, love stories, SUMMERTIME,

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At FIAF this coming Tuesday: Brigitte Sy's deep, dark and beautiful ASTRAGAL

Coming up at FIAF's CinéSalon this Tuesday, July 21, is a film of which I'd never heard but am very pleased to have now experienced. ASTRAGAL (L'Astragale) is a gift from actress/ writer/director Brigitte Sy, who, as director and adapter of a landmark French autobiographical novel of the same name (by Albertine Sarrazin), brings us the adventures, usually pretty dark, of a smart Algerian girl in France during the 1950s. TrustMovies best knows Ms Sy as an actress (Genealogies of a Crime, Regular Lovers, Declaration of War) but he has also seen her earlier work as writer/director, Free Hands. He finds Astragal an enormous improvement over that former film.

What seems most remarkable is how well Ms Sy (shown at left) succeeds on every level she attempts, all the more surprising because Astragale is a period piece, and Sy captures that period, with the help of her cinematographer (Frédéric Serve) and production and costume designer (Françoise Arnaud) so very well. The look, the feel, the detailing all seem extraordinarily precise and right. Even better, though, is the casting of the film, which includes two fine French actors: the beautiful Leila Bekhti, whom I've often enjoyed (A Prophet, All That Glitters) but had no clue that she possessed the ability to the handle a complex role like this one, and Reda Kateb (Me, Myself and Mum and Far From Men, among his many other choice roles) 

Ms Bekhti (above and below, right) plays Albertine, the heroine of the film, whom we first meet escaping from prison and taking a fall that will damage her ankle for life. Rescue comes in the form of M. Kateb (above and below, left), who plays Julien, a criminal with a kind heart but former obligations. And so begins a relationship that will start and stop and start again for a decade or more, as Julien attends to his life and loves and Albertine, constantly in hiding, finds employment as a prostitute, even as she begins writing poetry and prose that show a distinct and deepening talent.

Astragal is one of the more genuinely poetic films I've seen in a long time, and its poetry extends not only to the writing we occasionally hear spoken, but to the look of the film (the black-and-white cinematography is splendidly of its time and simply gorgeous to view); the "feel" of the period that Sy, along with her crew and actors, conjure; in the performance of the two leads and their supporting cast; and the entire "spirit" of this project -- in which incipient feminism appears on the French scene and the "place" of women begins to change. Albertine, of course, is in that double bind of being both female and Algerian.

Our heroine spends the film "on the lam," as it were, not exactly running from the authorities (she has broken out of prison, after all) but keeping quietly under wraps (she's often in a blond wig, as above, for disguise). As the small incidents build, so do the characters of Albertine and Julien. When her best friend from prison, Marie (Esther Garrel, above and below, left), suddenly reappears, Albertine must choose and grow.

How this works out and what happens to both the novelized and actual Albertine we learn as the end credits roll and more information is passed to us. The effect is sad because all this seems so unnecessary, but Astragal is about both the past and the change to come. The latter, I suppose is what makes the former more bearable. That, and this film's enormous truth, beauty and spirit.

You have the chance to view Astragal, this coming Tuesday, June 21, at FIAF in New York City. (There's one showing only, at 4pm!) Click here to learn more and/or to purchase tickets. (And remember: FIAF members get into the the CinéSalon programs free of charge.)

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Algerians in France, ASTRAGAL, Brigitte Sy, feminism on film, FIAF, France in the 1950s, French cinema, gorgeous cinematography, poetry,

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Dissecting Israeli culture via the getting of a gett: Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Elkabetz's quiet shocker GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM

It says much about the riveting urgency of this new film from the brother/sister team of Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz that, although their movie takes place entirely within the confines of a drab Israeli office building and courtroom and lasts for nearly two hours, it will keep intelligent adult audiences (who either understand Hebrew or are willing to read subtitles) alert, captivated and probably very angry for its entirety. "Gett," you see, is the word for divorce in Hebrew, and a gett is exactly what our heroine Viviane cannot get from her intransigent husband nor from the court made up of three rabbis at whose feet she pleads. Can it be true that, in Israel today, there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce? That's what happens when a government-sponsored religion asserts far too much control.

The Elkabetz siblings (shown at right, with Ronit on the left) deserve thanks for bringing this situation to our attention and praise for doing it so damned well. Acting as writers and directors, the two have created in GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM a testament to a culture that, for whatever else it has gotten right, remains both misogynist and backward in its placement of religion above law, and men above women. What the Elkabetzes have managed so cleverly and intuitively via showing us only the lengthy trial -- it goes on over a period of years -- is nothing less than a dissection of a huge slice of Israeli culture and social mores involving law, family, marriage, religion, synagogue life and the place of women in all of this.

So much is packed into this single trial that pits wife and her lawyer against husband and his (that lawyer is actually a would-be rabbi who is also the husband's brother). Witnesses include a couple of her family members and his neighbor, the neighbor's wife (who commands, haltingly but thoroughly, her definitive scene), and a few others, each of whom plays a distinctive and necessary part in demonstrating what Viviane (played provocatively and well by Ms Elkabetz, shown above, with her lawyer, beautifully played by Menashe Noy), and by extension Israeli women, are up against.

The husband is played by an actor, Simon Abkarian, whom we more often see as the hero in his films (The Army of Crime, Yes). He is equally fine here, playing a pungent and quietly nasty piece of manhood.

As the trial moves onwards, we piece together more and more of what this marriage was about, as well as how the state forever insists upon a kind of hypocritical reverence of god and the male and how this creeps into nearly every piece of cultural, social and personal life.

The smart screenplay uses its characters, including its triad of judges (above) both as living, breathing beings who matter and to point up the inconsistencies and inequities of Israeli life and law. Each new witness and scene opens up a different can or worms or nest of vipers. And the reactions to all of this by the various personages at the trial makes the movie a nonstop roller-coaster of ups, downs and surprises.

Only at the film's final scene, which for some reason focuses suddenly on the actors' feet, does the movie falter a bit. I must be missing something, but I failed to understand the significance here. This is relatively minor cavil, however, for otherwise this film is eye-opening, moving and sometime shocking.

Gett: The Trial of Vivane Amsalem -- from Music Box Films and running 115 minutes -- opens this Friday, February 13, in New York City (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema), Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal), and Delray (Movies of Delray) and Lake Worth (Movies of Lake Worth) Florida. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and then click on the word THEATERS midway down your screen.

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"family" films, divorce, feminism on film, GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM, Israeli cinema, Israeli entitlement, misogyny, Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi Elkabetz,

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Ana Lily Amirpour's Amer-Iranian vampire film noir: A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT

If you want "specialized," you can't get much more so than the new American-Iranian film-noir vampire-flick with a western motif, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. It's got "arthouse" written all over it -- except that its subject matter would normally turn off the crowd that attends arthouse cinema. It's also got "feminist" written all over it, which should bring in the younger crowd, both women and some men. The film is also rather beautifully crafted -- shot in gorgeous black-and-white with some striking compositions and music that resounds.

The film's writer/director is a young woman named Ana Lily Amirpour (shown at left), and although I feel this particular film of hers has been rather wildly over-rated, still, the lady has talent and we're sure to be hearing from her again. What she does not have, at this point in her career, is the ability to provide enough content to fill out her film's 99-minute running time. She's got the look down pat, along with the various victims and their stories. But a sense of repetition sets in far too early, and there is not enough real content to fill the remaining minutes. There's about an hour of actual movie here. The rest is vamping. Lovely-to-look-at vamping, but vamping nonetheless.

To give credit where it is most due, I must praise the cinematographer, Lyle Vincent, for his really spectacular work here. The creamy grays, the elegant compositions, and all else that goes into crack black-and-white.

If I go into much details about the "plot" of this movie, I am likely to give away just about everything there is to spoil. So let's just say that this is a noirish, feminist, vampire tale in which our vampire -- a good woman, of sorts anyway -- does away with much of the scum of society (all men, don'cha know?) to make the world a better place. That's she's wearing a chador just adds to the originality and fun. Supposedly set in Iran but filmed in California (some of the locations look like CA suburbia), for the most part Amirpour and Vincent capture what passes for the Middle East.

And once folk start dying, each for his own good reason -- nasty behavior toward women, drug addiction, being homeless (Huh? Well, a girl's gotta eat) -- while the movie picks up some speed, it also begins to grow a tad repetitious. In its most charming scene, a certain character of shorter stature is warned not to become like all these other (dead) men.

From the beginning, as we're gifted with that great cinematography, more of those Persian Cats, a mass grave, oil and even the Persian James Dean (above), it is almost too much of a good thing. With the addition of suspense, gore and a villain (below) about whom we're more than happy to see dispensed, it appears we're really going somewhere. But soon enough we note that Ms Amirpour is too locked into the look and atmosphere of her movie to turn out a genuine vampire film.

The best of this particular genre -- from Hammer's Horror of Dracula to Bigelow's Near Dark -- moves! This one, as it confronts everything from avenging angels and their diet to family trauma and romance, grows sleepier and more "artistic." Still, it's an interesting and relatively original start, so we'll look forward to Ms Amirpour's next venture.

Meanwhile, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night -- from Kino Lorber -- plays at the St. Louis International Film Festival (today, Nov 18) and opens theatrically this Friday, November 21, in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at Landmark's NuArt. Over the weeks to come it will open in another 13 cities. View all the currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, by clicking here and scrolling down.

Note: Writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour will appear in person 

at NYC's IFC Center on Friday, November 21, at the 7:25 show, &

at the NuArt in L.A. on Saturday, November 22, for a Q&A 

after the 7:30pm show and to introduce the 9:50pm show. 

She will also appear at the NuArt on Sunday, November 23 for a 

Q&A after the 5:00pm show, and for an introduction to 

and a Q&A after the 7:30pm show. 

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A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, Ana Lily Amirpour, feminism on film, film noir, genre mash-ups, Iranian film (sort of), Vampire movies, Westerns,

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