Notizie

The past year was a big one for autobiographical filmmaking, with James Gray’s childhood heartbreak in “Armageddon Time,” Sam Mendes’ ode to moviegoing in the UK with “Empire of Light,” Alejandro G. Iñarritu’s dreamlike self-reflexive filmmaker odyssey “Bardo,” and, of course, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” which turned the world’s most successful director into an Oscar frontrunner for his most personal movie. The others came up short in their own campaigns, but the best autobiographical movie of the past year was one the awards season never fully embraced.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s “One Fine Morning” is only the latest sensitive and personal project from the French auteur to build its drama from her own life. Among the recent movies that fall into that trend, it provides the strongest example of a filmmaker attuned to the challenges of drawing from her own story, as Hansen-Løve has done for years.

Parenthood, relationships, and the creative process: three key elements of the cinema of Mia Hansen-Løve casually combine in Bergman Island, a playfully self-aware meta-portrait of the filmmaker and, indeed, of filmmaking itself. Introspective, inventive, and effortlessly calm; it follows a couple, both screenwriters, on an idyllic work retreat to Fårö, an island in the Baltic Sea (population: 498) just off the South East of Sweden. It’s the place Ingmar Bergman called home for the majority of his life, where he made many films and eventually died.

A story of prickly truths but no shortage of levity, it is a clear passion project for Hansen-Løve, a director whose work has always leaned as much toward the biographical as the cinephilic. Vicky Krieps stars as Chris, a filmmaker with a case of writer’s block, and Tim Roth is Tony, her older, more famous boyfriend. Hansen-Løve opens on their ferry ride to Fårö,...

Palestine’s Oscar® 2019 Entry for the Best International Feature ‘It Must Be Heaven’Elia Suleiman’s ‘It Must Be Heaven’, sweetly surreal, as whimsical as a Jacques Tati film, and with a hilarious cameo with Gael Garcia Bernal introducing Suleiman to his agent, wryly observes our human race.

Es escapes from Palestine, putting away his parents’ effects, and sets out to seek an alternative homeland only to find that the absolute absurdities of his home in Palestine are equal to those in “the west”. Palestine trails behind him and the promise of a new life turns into a comedy of drole misteps taking him from Paris to New York and back to what must be heaven.

From the award-winning director Elia Suleiman, this comic saga explores identity, nationality and belonging, in which Suleiman asks the fundamental question: where is the place we can truly call home?

Elia Sulieman in ‘It...

Jeremy Irons is in many respects the quintessential English film actor. That’s not simply because of the honeyed diction and innate elegance, but the versatility that has enabled him to travel with ease between romantic leading man, edgy character actor and sinister villain, towards an Indian summer of ever-dependable supporting player.

Read More: Jeremy Irons Knocks ‘Batman v Superman’: It’s ‘Overstuffed’ & ‘Very Muddled’

Think James Mason. In fact, Irons and Mason even have a role in common – the riskiest of roles, Nabokov’s infamous pedophile Humbert Humbert, Mason most famously in Kubrick’s “Lolita” of 1962, Irons for Adrian Lyne in 1997. It’s difficult to imagine many Americans jumping at a character who came second in Time’s “Top 10 Worst Fictional Fathers,” or possessing the nuance necessary to make us almost like the man.

Again like many Brits, Irons is classically trained (at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School,...

Exclusive: Drama starring Isabelle Huppert due to shoot this June.

Les Films du Losange has taken on sales of Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come (L’Avenir), starring Isabelle Huppert as a woman embarking on a new life after her husband leaves her for another woman.

“We’ll kick off sales at Cannes on the back of the script. The film is due to shoot in Paris in June,” said Les Films du Losange head of sales Agathe Valentin.

Huppert stars as Nathalie, a settled philosophy teacher who has been married for years to Heinz, with whom she has two grown-up children. They stay together out of habit and common intellectual pursuits – he also teaches philosophy — rather than for love.

But one day Heinz announces he has fallen for another woman and moves out. At the same time, Nathalie’s possessive, time-consuming mother passes away. As the summer holidays loom, Nathalie is staring...

French-Algerian filmmaker and producer Rachid Bouchareb, who is being honoured with a career achievement award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, talked extensively about his career at a special ‘in conversation’ event.

Born to Algerian parents who moved to Paris just after the Second World War, twice Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb recounted how he was originally destined to work in manufacturing like his father.

“I was sitting at work one day when I decided to call the offices of a local broadcaster. I got through to a receptionist who I asked ‘how do people get into cinema’. She had more important things to do than talk to me but she gave me some names of schools nonetheless,” said Bouchareb, who would go onto make his first feature Bâton Rouge in 1985 with the support of the late producer Humbert Balsan.

The director, whose best known credits include Oscar-nominated Days of Glory and Outside the Law as well as...

French-Algerian filmmaker and producer Rachid Bouchareb, who is being honoured with a career achievement award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, talked extensively about his career at a special ‘in conversation’ event.

Born to Algerian parents who moved to Paris just after the Second World War, twice Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb recounted how he was originally destined to work in manufacturing like his father.

“I was sitting at work one day when I decided to call the offices of a local broadcaster. I got through to a receptionist who I asked ‘how do people get into cinema’. She had more important things to do than talk to me but she gave me some names of schools nonetheless,” said Bouchareb, who would go onto make his first feature Bâton Rouge in 1985 with the support of the late producer Humbert Balsan.

The director, whose best known credits include Oscar-nominated Days of Glory and Outside the Law as well as...

Mia Hansen-Løve proves that less is more in a beautifully observed tale of a student's romantic entanglements

The critic and columnist Alan Brien once told me about a friend consulting him about an autobiography he'd been asked to write. It was the mid-1950s when angry young men were all the rage, the friend was about 30 and clearly the publishers expected him to deliver something socially significant. "In 1939," he asked, referring to his sixth-form days, "whom should I have been reading and what should I have been thinking?" Somewhat mischievously Brien suggested he should have discovered Orwell, become disillusioned with Auden and Isherwood, had a sceptical approach to the Popular Front but a high regard for John Strachey, and so on. When I checked out the eventual book these were precisely the attitudes expressed, though whether these aspects of the author's intellectual development all came from Brien's tuition I can't be sure.

by Vadim Rizov

Father of My Children was inspired by producer Humbert Balsan's 2005 suicide. Before his death, Balsan's company was set to produce Mia Hansen-Løve's first feature All Is Forgiven, thereby raising her name to the ranks of his prestigious collaborators: Lars Von Trier, Claire Denis, Youssef Chahine, Elia Suleiman, et al. Here, he's imagined as producer Gregoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), largely dedicated to financing the terminally underseen and marginally profitable, perpetually on the run, driving badly while taking calls, dealing with spiraling problems on multiple productions. His attention to family is equally intense and fragmentary: what he's really worried about is as unknown to his children as to the audience. Frantically walking down the sidewalk, he barely stops long enough to shoot himself, a shocking moment no more understandable for being seen. Such is the grim premise for this uplifting movie. "I seem to remember reading...

"The Resident" (2011)

Directed by Antti Jokinen

Released by Image Entertainment

This actually isn't the first time Hilary Swank has seen one of her films go direct to DVD after the films "Red Dust" and "Birds of America" suffered the same fate, but surely there was more riding on this horror film from the resurgent Hammer Films about a recently separated doctor who learns her Brooklyn loft isn't quite as wonderful as she thought it would be. "Secretary" screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson co-wrote this film, which co-stars Christopher Lee, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Lee Pace.

"The Mikado" (1939)

Directed by Victor Schertzinger

Released by Criterion Collection

"Topsy-Turvy" (1999)

Directed by Mike Leigh

Released by Criterion Collection

Sold separately, Criterion is making no secret of trying to appeal to Gilbert and Sullivan fanatics with special editions of "The Mikado," a straight-up adaptation of the musical duo's most famous opera, and Mike Leigh's "Topsy-Turvy,...

"35 Shots of Rum". Two couples live across the hall in the same Paris apartment building. Neither couple is "together." Gabrielle and Noe have the vibes of roommates, but the way Lionel and Josephine love one another, it's a small shock when she calls him "papa." Lionel (Alex Descas) is a train engineer. Jo (Mati Diop) works in a music store. Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) drives her own taxi. Noe (Gregoire Colin) claims only his much-loved cat is preventing him from moving to Brazil.

The four people are in and out of both apartments so readily, we sense they're a virtual family. One night they head out together in Gabrielle's taxi for a concert. The taxi breaks down, it rains, they shelter in a Jamaican cafe, there's good music on the juke box, they dance with one another. During the dancing and kidding around, it becomes clear to them, and to us,...

Whether it's about a disco dancing French legionnaire, underworld organ trafficking or vampires, Claire Denis's enigmatic films have been enrapturing cinephiles around the world since her debut feature Chocolat (1988). With her thrilling new film White Material opening statewide on November 19th, and the retrospective- No Fear: The Films of Claire Denis at IFC starting this week, I sat down with Denis for a brief interview. She was very personable and gracious, offering long and thoughtful responses.

It's been 22 years since Chocolat and more than 10 years since Beau Travail, what prompted you to shoot a film in Africa again?

A while ago, Isabelle (Huppert) mentioned if I would be interested in adapting Doris Lessing's book The Grass is Singing. The book is set in South Africa right after the WWII. It's about Lessing's British ex-pat parents trying their hands in farming which they were terrible at. But even though it's a great book,...

"I hesitate to proclaim Mia Hansen-Løve's Le père de mes enfants (The Father of My Children) the best film of the year so far, or Hansen-Løve as the strongest French director to emerge in the last decade," begins Dan Sallitt, "not because I have doubts, but because her films creep up gradually, and might be harmed by excessive fanfare. Still, publicity first. Like Hansen-Løve's equally good first feature, 2007's Tout est pardonné (All Is Forgiven), Le père de mes enfants devotes its entire first half to a development that only in retrospect can be perceived as prologue. French film producer Grégoire Canvel (Louis de Lancquesaing), modeled after the late Humbert Balsan, is introduced via a comic device — as he wanders the streets of Paris and drives to his provincial home, Hansen-Løve cuts between his mobile phone conversations with a myriad of professional contacts — that synopsizes his character, creates expectations of forward narrative motion,...

Mia Hansen-Løve may initially seem like an odd person to make a film about the death of a film producer. Although the young actress-cum-director has been intimately involved in the world of cinema since her appearance at the age of 18 in director Olivier Assayas's "Late August, Early September" (1998) (she even wrote for the iconic journal Cahiers du Cinéma for a while), she freely confesses to not being a big cinephile: "My life and my work aren't really about films and the film world," she says. But -- perhaps in the same way that Assayas (now her fiancé, and the father of her child) has made films about the way business and industry infiltrates the lives of the people around it -- she turns out to have a compelling approach to this subject matter.

Based around the 2005 suicide of legendary French producer Humbert Balsan, "The Father of My Children" is...

A bisected portrait of two families -- one small and thriving, one sprawling and dysfunctional -- both headed by the same, charming man, The Father of My Children examines the shipwreck of suicide and the grief of those left stranded in its wake. Writer and director Mia Hansen-Løve based the character of Grégoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) on French independent film producer Humbert Balsan, with whom she was briefly acquainted before he committed suicide in 2005. A champion of her first film, All Is Forgiven, the paradox Balsan's death presented -- how could one so artistically vital and outwardly charismatic succumb to self-destruction? -- inspired the 29-year-old director's second, remarkable effort.

As a teenager, 29-year-old writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve was plucked from theater classes at her Paris lycée and cast in Late August, Early September (1998) by Olivier Assayas, a heady experience that would come to shape her future endeavors. After a brief detour into academia, she made a few short films and, like Assayas (to whom she’s now married), briefly contributed to Cahiers du cinéma before embarking more seriously on the path of becoming a film director. Early on, the late producer Humbert Balsan (champion of Elia Suleiman and Claire Denis, among others) took an interest in Hansen-Løve and helped finance her debut feature, All Is Forgiven (2007). Although the seemingly indefatigable Balsan took his own life two years before the...

Heartbreaking and life-affirming, “The Father of My Children” is a lovely follow-up from Mia Hansen-Løve inspired by her encounter with Humbert Balsan. Modeled after the French producer, Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) is a passionate, charming filmmaker with a cell phone attached to his ear when he isn’t in his Moon Films office. Managing a troubled production with a demanding director in Sweden and anticipating the imminent arrival of a Korean crew in Paris, he maintains an upbeat demeanor despite immense pressure and constant challenges.

Perhaps this is because his home life is so idyllic. Wife Sylvia (Chiara Caselli) and three brilliant, imaginative daughters wait for him at their weekend house in the country, as loving and jovial when they pick him up from the police station for one too many speeding tickets as when they’re putting on a play in the family living room. But his creative...

In Mel Brooks's "The Producers," a team of theater people opt to make money by deliberately producing a flop on Broadway. The 1968 movie won the Oscar as that year's comic highlight. By contrast, Mia Hansen-Løve's "The Father of My Children" is a deadly serious tale, based on the true event about the 2005 suicide of French producer Humbert Balsan, born into an upper-class family and known as a champion of Arab cinema who was found dead by hanging in his production office.

Inspired by the life and death of the late, legendary French film producer Humbert Balsan, Mia Hansen-Løve’s film is a work of two halves. The first follows the business dealings of Grégoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), frantically shuttling between office and home, juggling the demands of artistic egos, lawyers, and bankers, and the needs of his beloved family—not to mention his surrogate family at work. Then the focus shifts dramatically to Grégoire’s ...

Inspired by the life and death of the late, legendary French film producer Humbert Balsan, Mia Hansen-Løve’s film is a work of two halves. The first follows the business dealings of Grégoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), frantically shuttling between office and home, juggling the demands of artistic egos, lawyers, and bankers, and the needs of his beloved family—not to mention his surrogate family at work. Then the focus shifts dramatically to Grégoire’s ...

Chicago – We’re back with week two of the 13th Annual EU Film Festival at the Siskel Film Center, one of the best film events of the year in the Windy City. If you missed part one of our coverage, and want to relive highlights of last week, check it out here. On to week two…

This year’s edition, running from March 5th to April 1st, includes high profile films from world renowned filmmakers like Peter Greenaway, Jacques Rivette, Neil Jordan, Catherine Breillat, Amos Gital, Bruno Dumont, Jan Hrebejk and Caroline Link. Moviegoers should take note of the fact that several of these titles won’t be screened outside of the EU festival in Chicago, making their appearance here all the more priceless.

The 13th Annual European Union Film Festival includes 59 feature films, all of which are making their Chicago premiere. If you’ve had your fill with Hollywood,...

An outstanding, undemonstrative family drama about depression. By Peter Bradshaw

A warning about spoilers is necessary before rehearsing the question at the heart of this deeply intelligent film: why do people commit suicide? Is our catch-all diagnosis of "depression" a glib, quasi-clinical alibi which masks our incomprehension? Is suicide a spasm of despair, or rather something calmly envisioned years or even decades before the act itself, like emigration or retirement, and in fact the neurotically comforting option which has been the sole foundation for carrying on with the business of life? Mia Hanson-Løve has made an outstanding, undemonstrative family drama based on troubled film producer Humbert Balsan, who took his own life in 2005.

In the busy heart of cosmopolitan Paris – established with a superbly invigorating, uncliched montage over the opening credits – Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) is a film producer: a handsome man in early middle age forever on the move,...

First up, Catherine Shoard and Xan Brooks join Jason Solomons to take a punt on the likely winners at this weekend's Oscars, and who they'd like to win. The critics' predictions are all over the map – Jason wraps himself in the union flag and plumps for An Education, Carey Mulligan and Colin Firth for best picture, best actress and best actor; Xan Brooks sticks to his guns for The Hurt Locker and Jeff Bridges; while Catherine Shoard suspects the Academy voters will go for Hollywood favourites Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman and Quentin Tarantino.

Next, the young French director Mia Hansen-Løve tells Jason about her new film, her first to be released in the UK. Father of My Children is inspired by the admired, charismatic French film producer Humbert Balsan, who brought Middle Eastern directors such as Elia Suleiman, Youssef Chahine and Youssry Nasrallah to an international audience. Hansen-Løve reveals her own debt to Balsan,...

Dir: Mia Hansen-Løve Cast: Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Chiara Caselli, Alice de Lencquesaing, Eric Elmosnino Hansen-Løve was inspired to create The Father of My Children following the tragic suicide of Humbert Balsan in 2005. Balsan was a prolific producer and one of the most respected figures in French cinema, and his suicide sent shock waves through the industry, but the fact that one of those waves resulted in this beautiful and touching film will surely stand as a testament to his spirited life. The film follows ‘Gregoire’ (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) as he struggles to keep Moon Films afloat. This is no colourful and romanticised vision of the film industry (as Gene Kelly and Pedro Almodovar would have us see it); it is a realistic and almost mundane insight into the artistic alienation and financial suffocation that great producers suffer from. Gregoire is a champion of artists, and is happy to take huge...

Can Martin Scorsese pull off a horror movie? Is Glasgow the new Venice? And what's Ricky Gervais up to in Reading? Our critics pick next year's hottest tickets

Film

Cemetery Junction

Having conquered Hollywood, Ricky Gervais is coming home. With his long-time collaborator Stephen Merchant, he has set out to create a British film in the tradition of Billy Liar and the Likely Lads – and of course his own masterpiece The Office – about three blokes working for the Prudential insurance company in Gervais's hometown of Reading. Released on 7 April.

A Single Man

The smart money says Colin Firth will be bringing home a certain gold, bald-headed statuette for his performance as a bereaved gay man in Los Angeles. Based on the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood, the movie – fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut – follows one day in the life of Firth's literature academic as he confronts his own mortality. Released on 12 February.

I have a quirky policy about writing of films from a film festival. In the early years, I tried to avoid an actual "review," especially negative, because I believed a film deserved a chance to open before I laid into it. This was grandiose--as if the world was awaiting my opinion. Then I began suggesting my thinking, without going into detail. Then, being human, I allowed that approach to enlarge into specific descriptions of films I really loved, or hated.

Alex Vo, editor of Rotten Tomatoes: No Meter when he needs it most.

That's now the strategy I use, with amendments. I can only review a film for the first time once, and if I've used all my energy in rehearsal, what have I saved for opening night? I'll reflect the general reception of certain films, however, if only in the spirit of providing news coverage. The first year I was here,...

I think I may have just seen the 2010 Oscar winner for best foreign film. Whether it will win the Palme d'Or here at Cannes is another matter. It may be too much of a movie movie. It's named "A l'origine," by Xavier Giannoli, and is one of several titles I want to discuss in a little festival catch-up. Based on an incredible true story, it involves an insignificant thief, just released from prison, who becomes involved in an impromptu con game that results in the actual construction of a stretch of highway. At the beginning he has no plans to build a highway. He simply sees a way to swindle a contractor out of 15,000 euros. He is sad, defeated, unwanted, apart from his wife and child, sleeping on a pal's sofa. What happens is not caused by him nor desired by him. It simply happens to him.

This is one...

PARIS -- In 2001, three of France's most respected independent producers -- Humbert Balsan, Paolo Branco and Gilles Sandoz -- formed a distribution alliance called Pirates.

Five years later, Balsan tragically has committed suicide, his company's financial troubles believed to have contributed to his worries; Branco's company, Gemini Films, filed for bankruptcy protection last November; and Sandoz admits he's finding it increasingly tough to complete financing on projects.

Branco and Sandoz are not the only auteur producers in France finding it tough going. "Producing auteur films is no longer viable," says Denis Freyd, who produced the Dardenne brothers' Palme d'Or-winning film "The Child" under his Archipel 35 banner. "It's a sad certainty that the financing and production of auteur films in France is becoming increasingly difficult," echoes Martine Marignac, veteran producer of auteurs Jacques Rivette, Otar Iosseliani and Jean-Marie Straub.

So who is to blame for the demise of the art house producer in the country that invented the genre?

Branco, who has already launched a new company, Alma Films, is unequivocal: "Today it is channel chiefs and banks who decide which films get made," he said in a candid interview with film review Les Cahiers du Cinema.

Marignac concurs: "While fully respecting their legal obligations (to invest in local movies), the channels think quite logically not in terms of cinema but in terms of primetime. When they read a script, they don't think whether it's a good theatrical film but if it'll be good for their ratings at 8:30 p.m."

On top of this, pay channel Canal Plus has radically reduced the sums it puts into auteur pre-buys.

PARIS -- In 2001, three of France's most respected independent producers -- Humbert Balsan, Paolo Branco and Gilles Sandoz -- formed a distribution alliance called Pirates.

Five years later, Balsan tragically has committed suicide, his company's financial troubles believed to have contributed to his worries; Branco's company, Gemini Films, filed for bankruptcy protection last November; and Sandoz admits he's finding it increasingly tough to complete financing on projects.

Branco and Sandoz are not the only auteur producers in France finding it tough going. "Producing auteur films is no longer viable," says Denis Freyd, who produced the Dardenne brothers' Palme d'Or-winning film "The Child" under his Archipel 35 banner. "It's a sad certainty that the financing and production of auteur films in France is becoming increasingly difficult," echoes Martine Marignac, veteran producer of auteurs Jacques Rivette, Otar Iosseliani and Jean-Marie Straub.

So who is to blame for the demise of the art house producer in the country that invented the genre?

Branco, who has already launched a new company, Alma Films, is unequivocal: "Today it is channel chiefs and banks who decide which films get made," he said in a candid interview with film review Les Cahiers du Cinema.

Marignac concurs: "While fully respecting their legal obligations (to invest in local movies), the channels think quite logically not in terms of cinema but in terms of primetime. When they read a script, they don't think whether it's a good theatrical film but if it'll be good for their ratings at 8:30 p.m."

On top of this, pay channel Canal Plus has radically reduced the sums it puts into auteur pre-buys.

PARIS -- French producer and actor Humbert Balsan, chairman of the European Film Academy and a board member of the Cinematheque Francaise, died Thursday. Friends of the director said he committed suicide in the Paris office of his production company, Ognon Pictures. Born in 1954, Balsan carved a niche for himself on the European art house scene, encouraging Middle Eastern and Arab filmmakers to make their political statements to audiences in Europe and the United States.

The most recent films of Youssef Chahine, Egypt's greatest director, aren't the sort normally associated with 73-year-old filmmakers. Neither serene nor particularly contemplative, they burn up the screen with fury and imagination. Chahine works in very popular forms (musicals, comedies), though he enlivens them through his affinity for melodrama interwoven with some startling formal and conceptual strategies.

Chahine's new film, "The Other", a French/Egyptian co-production that initiated the Un Certain Regard programming, expands on the themes and preoccupations of "Destiny", his 1997 Cannes prize winner. While Chahine created some distance from the previous film by setting it in the 14th century, the current work is unmistakably a piece of its time. It examines with immediacy issues of class, personal and cultural repercussions of globalization and the harrowing devastation of political and religious fanaticism. But it also plays beautifully with form and style. At its best moments, "The Other" is a provocative, boldly delirious piece of work, though it is burdened by some didactic passages and a highly problematic central performance. It's a natural festival film that should deepen Chahine's reputation among specialized audiences.

It is a love story, though one complicated and traumatized by the strained social dynamics obvious in the partners' radically different backgrounds. Adam (Hani Salama), a young UCLA student, is the scion of a politically connected, socially privileged family. Following his return home, Adam is instantly drawn to the driven, beautiful Hanane (Hanane Tark), a smart, ambitious reporter desperate to improve her economically marginal existence. Their burgeoning relationship reaches its zenith in a spectacular, albeit surreptitious, wedding sequence unfolding in a rain-drenched desert landscape, the first of several incredibly vivid tableaux Chahine executes with daring and panache.

Following the publication of Hanane's article exposing the corruption of a prominent land development involving Adam's family and American entrepreneurs, the relationship of the couple is severely tested. The expose incurs the wrath of Adam's mother, the American-born Margaret (Nabila Ebeid). It parallels the essential conflict between the two women, a battle of control over Adam's attention (Chahine includes several overt suggestions of Margaret's sexual attraction to her son).

The movie suddenly veers into outright melodrama, the plot now aggressively predicated on Margaret's perverse attempts to undermine the couple's relationship, including her unholy alliance with Hanane's outlaw terrorist brother. A cross between Lady Macbeth and Imelda Marcos, Margaret dominates -- to exceedingly poor effect -- the final third of the movie, with Ebeid giving a performance so overscaled and overplayed that it becomes oppressively abrasive and strident.

Even more so than "Destiny", "The Other" is a stylistic tour-de-force, a colorful and imaginative blending of disparate styles, Brechtian interpolations (including an incredible sequence that incorporates sublime dance footage from a Julien Duvivier film), special effects, gaudy dance numbers, and moments reminiscent of Woody Allen's "Manhattan" (contemporary images of Times Square under the ironic accompaniment of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue") and Blake Edwards' "10" (a hilarious use of Ravel's "Bolero"). In the end, these electric, absorbing components are enough to compensate for the film's deficiencies.

The Other

A Humbert Balsan production

A Misr International Films release, in association with

France 2 Cinema, Canal Plus and CNC

CREDITS:

Director/writer:Youssef Chahine

Screenwriter:Khalid Youssef

Cinematographer:Mohsen Nasr

Editor:Rachida Abdel Salam

Music:Yehia El Mouguy

Costumes:Nahed Nasrallah

CAST:

Margaret:Nabila Ebeid

Khalil:Mahmoud Hemeida

Hanane:Hanane Tork

Adam:Hani Salama

Hanane's mother:Lebleba...

Dominated by co-writer and director Brigitte Rouan's courageous lead performance as a 40-year-old married woman embarking on a wildly liberating but dangerous affair with a man half her age, "Post-Coitum, Animal Triste" is a compelling, expertly fleshed-out drama.

The first of three new French films in the "Cannes 50" celebration of the world's most famous film festival, "Post-Coitum" screens tonight at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The unwieldy but appropriate title aside, Rouan's fine subtitled feature should spruce up many a festival lineup. Alas, its chances of regular domestic distribution are iffy at best.

We're introduced in the first scene to Diane (Rouan), a publisher's editor writhing in emotional and physical agony over a scuttled relationship. Although the film ultimately takes us through the stormy waters of Diane's post-affair journey into near catastrophe, Rouan backtracks to revel in the raw passions and naughty behavior that sweep up the wife and mother when she surrenders to the advances of gorgeous, attentive Emilio (Boris Terral).

A hydraulic engineer who works primarily in the Third World, Emilio is the roommate of Diane's most promising author, Francois (Nils Tavernier). Stymied by writer's block, Francois relies on Diane for professional help, and it's through him that she first encounters Emilio. In a jarring disruption to the lightly comic first act, an older woman (Francoise Arnoul) murders her aging husband by stabbing him in the neck with a fork.

The lawyer defending Arnoul's character is Diane's husband Philippe (Patrick Chesnais), who soon suspects his wife of having an affair but does not directly confront her. Quiet and decent, he connects on a personal level with his client and comes to understand her motives for ending 40 years of marriage with violence.

With a sly approach, Rouan and her co-writers eventually create a satisfying cinematic tragicomedy devoted to the sadness of those experiencing loss of love. It's an occasionally rough viewing experience and also quite sexy but nothing less than truthful and timelessly relevant.

The film is a showcase for Rouan's prodigious thespian talents as she moves from girlish abandon to anger to self-destruction. In scene after scene, she captures the extreme exaltation and naked misery of a modern woman who falls in love only "once every 15 years."

POST-COITUM, ANIMAL TRISTE

An Ognon Pictures-Pinou Film co-production

A film by Brigitte Rouan

Director Brigitte Rouan

Writers Brigitte Rouan, Santiago Amigorena,

Jean-Louis Richard, Guy Zilberstein,

Philippe Le Guay

Producer Humbert Balsan

Cinematographers Pierre Dupouey,

Arnaud Leguy, Bruno Mistretta

Editor Laurent Rouan

Art director Roland Deville

Costumes Florence Emir, Marika Ingrato

Color/stereo

Cast:

Diane Clovier Brigitte Rouan

Philippe Clovier Patrick Chesnais

Emilio Boris Terral

Francois Nils Tavernier

Mme. Lepluche Francoise Arnoul

Running time -- 97 minutes

No MPAA rating...

Had it been created in the 1950s, competition entry "Al Masir" might have been a blockbuster. In the 1990s, it's a bit of a bust. With the look of a Cecil B. DeMille and Stanley Donen collaboration, this movie can't decide if it wants to be a serious historical piece or a musical production. Directed by Egyptian Youseff Chanine, this film about a 12th-century philosopher has little to offer audiences west of the Middle East.

The film is rife with civil strife in medieval Spain where the Arab philosopher Averroes once lived. Averroes serves as the chief judge of the court of the Caliph Al-Mansur until the fundamentalist Muslims come into favor. Averroes' books are then banned and burned, but not before many are smuggled out of the country for posterity. Like almost all ambitious historical movies, this story contains sibling rivalry, political intrigue, murder, romance and war.

"Al Masir" (Destiny) does have at least one point to make with modern audiences. To some extent, it is a satire of the growing number of intolerant fundamentalist sects both east and west of the Nile.

Chanine's last movie, "L'emigre", was banned on the suspect ground that it was illegal in his homeland to portray a prophet on the screen. Perhaps DeMille himself would have been attracted to this script if his work had suffered a similar fate 40 years ago.

Not much can be said for the singing or acting, though the film is fun to watch with its musical numbers, grand sets and 1950ish camera work. Production designer Hamed Hemdane and costumer Nahed Nasrallah deserve mention for doing a fine job in their re-creation of 12th-century Cordoba. Choreographer Walid Aouni gets a sympathetic nod for his semi-successful staging of a musical in a movie purporting to be a period piece.

AL MASIR

In competition

Ognon Pictures and

Misr International Films

Director Youseff Chahine

Executive producers Humbert Balsan,

Gabiel Khoury

Production manager Hicham Soliman

Assistant directors Nadia Kamel, Iman Haddad

Screenwriters Youseff Chahine,

Khaled Youseff

Director of photography Mohsen Nasr

Production designer Hamed Hemdane

Editor Rachida Abdel Salam

Cast:

Averroes Nour El Cherif

The gypsy woman Laila Eloui

The Caliph Mahmoud Hemeida

Averroes' wife Safia El Emary

The Bard Mohamed Mounir

The Crown Prince Khaled El Nabaoui

The Caliph's brother Seif Abdel Rahman

Borhan Abdallah Mahmoud

Cheikh Riad Ahmed Fouad Selim

Emir of the sect Magdi Idris

Badr Ahmed Moukhtar

Manuella's mother Cherifa Maher

El Razi Rayek Azzab

Gaafar Hassan El Adl

Abdhalla Hani Salama

Running time -- 135 minutes

No MPAA rating...