French films are shit. Porquoi?

Very torn on Trilogy. Liked One and Three, but felt none of them excelled as single films but the combined effect was really interesting. Apparently in France they showed them Two, One, Three: I don't think I would have gone back if I had seen two first. Yes to Irma Vep, and Read My Lips (thopugh it wastes its premise a touch). Last year was again a relatively mediocre year for French film though: if whatever Artificial Eye is distributing is to go by (but then every year seems a mediocre one for Artificial Eye: this year has already started with the ropey Kiss Of Life).

I saw a v good film in same vein which is out in France this month: 'Work Hard, Play Hard'. Hope it crosses channel.

If I could generalize a bit, one thing I notice in french films is a certain embodiment, and a linking of this embodiment to pleasure. This happens to two bodies: the bodies of the actors, and the body of the film.

The actors in french films have bodies, and enjoy them. (As opposed to British and American films, where plot and concept are seen to be the only legitimate concerns. I think this is what Pete is complaining about, in a very anglo-saxon way, when he says of 'Betty Blue' that they should have done the whole hog and made it pornography. He doesn't think the body has any business in anything except pron.)

Then there is 'embodiment' on the level of the film itself. The film has a body: it is not just a transparent 'window on life', but a thing we are invited to pay attention to as an artefact. In this sense, Godard is not so far from 'Les Demoiselles de Rochefort'. Both show an awareness of the film as something artificial, something being shaped, chopped, constructed, played with. The pleasure of playing with the medium is not restricted to the film-makers. The audience can share this pleasure.

My two eurocents.

Momus, much of what you say about French films re:the body is even truer of many recent Spanish films.

I'm off to see 'Lost in Translation' in a couple of hours. And I expect that I will find it full of cultural jokes, plot, character and situation stuff, but somewhat lacking in the bodily aspects of what it's like to be in Japan. But let's see.

i wouldn't make any generalizations about "french films," although if you break it down by generation one can notice different trends and counter-trends at work. france is "the republic of images" and the cinema here is simply too historically and otherwise extensive to sustain generalizations.

momus has a good point here, in that this DOES seem to be a cardinal (which is to say classical) aspect of the screenwriting ethos in america, which is unfortunate i think.

some american directors are able to animate their characters as COMMUNITIES and lend to the audience remarkably vivid and unpatronizing impressions of the secondary and even tertiary characters...john ford at his best does this.

and then there are directors who seem to aim for a level of abstraction even for the primary characters, like hal hartley. this achieves something different from the "centers of goodness" momus laments, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Any talk of French movies being all about people sitting about talking in cafés or dinner parties is about 30 years out of date. Actually, one of the interesting things about the French film industry today is that one actually exists, unlike anywhere else in Europe. The British, Italians, Germans etc. make movies but they don't really have a dedicated industry any more because the number of movies they make are so small.

There are an awful lot of crappy, middlebrow movies made in France which are never shown internationally, but no more so than there are crappy American movies. I can think of several French movies I've seen recently which I thought were pretty good - Irreversible, Harry L'ami qui vous veut du bien, L'Adversaire...

Good night everybody.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/story.jsp?story=483695

The last of these, 'Bob Le Flambeur,' was released in 1956! It's either the last film in the pre-war spirit or the first new wave film. I haven't seen all of these by any means, but he's dead-on about the Renoir -- it's an absolute corker.

there's a long, not brilliant essay on him in the current sight & sound by david thomson.

Sight and Sound is so expensive here!

however it does have a wonderful quote by rivette on the abnormality of the film-making process: 'it is normal not to make films.'