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I Am The Keeper, Dreamland and Father’s Garden win at Swiss Film Awards; First Saas-Fee Filmfest honours Soldate Jeannette and Love Steaks.

Sabine Boss’ I Am The Keeper (Der Goalie bin ig) was the big winner at this year Swiss Film Awards in Zurich, picking up four prizes for Best Feature Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Marcus Signer) and Best Film Score after being nominated in seven categories.

The production by C-Film Ag and Carac Film, based on the eponymous novel by Pedro Lenz about an ex-junkie’s past catching up with him as he tries to find a way back into normal life, was released by Ascot Elite Entertainment Group in cinemas in the German-speaking part of Switzerland on Feb 6 and has already posted over 68,000 admissions.

The members of the Swiss Film Academy voted to give the Quartz trophy for Best Actress to Ursina Lardi for her performance as a prostitute in Zurich in [link...

Pauline at the Beach: Fitoussi’s Breezy Caper Good for a Laugh

Director Marc Fitoussi seems inclined toward breezy-haired, bauble headed gamines that get jostled around like seaweed in unpredictable waters. While his 2010 film Copacabana was a notable comedy starring Isabelle Huppert as the comic foil (rather than the ‘straight man’ for once), his latest reunites him with Sandrine Kiberlain, who starred in his 2007 debut, La Vie D’Artist. It’s quite easy to see why he’s attracted such talents as he seems to have a knack for an offbeat drollery with actresses that seem unconventional leads in a comedic vehicle. Inconsequential? Perhaps. But there’s an undeniable delight in watching his funny ladies as they cross in and out of slight frippery. While his features are hard to get a hold of in the Us, possibly because of their very slightness, his latest, like his others, is certainly...

Catherine Deneuve: Style, beauty, and talent on TCM tonight A day to rejoice on Turner Classic Movies: Catherine Deneuve, one of the few true Living Film Legends, is TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 12, 2013. Catherine Deneuve is not only one of the most beautiful film actresses ever, she’s also one of the very best. In fact, the more mature her looks, the more fascinating she has become. Though, admittedly, Deneuve has always been great to look at, and she has been a mesmerizing screen presence since at least the early ’80s. ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’: One of the greatest movie musicals ever Right now, TCM is showing one of the greatest movie musicals ever made, Jacques Demy’s Palme d’Or winner The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which a very blonde, very young, very pretty, and very dubbed Catherine Deneuve (singing voice by Danielle Licari...

Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO -- When Jean-Luc Godard famously remarked that all movies should have a beginning, middle and end but not necessarily in that order, he probably did not realize that several generations later so many would take him at his word. Ever since Harold Pinter's play Betrayal, a number of plays, movies and TV films have created a dramatic splash by telling a story backward. The latest exercise, Francois Ozon's 5X2 (Five Times Two), presents five significant scenes in the life of a married couple told in reverse order from their divorce to initial infatuation. It can be said that this device does yield a glimmer of explanation about why the couple split up, but only a glimmer.

Despite the lack of stars, Ozon's name probably ensures theatrical exposure in North America, but the film is too minor to attract the crowds that saw his films 8 Women or Swimming Pool.

The strongest and most curious episode of the film written by Ozon and Emmanuele Berenheim is the first. A judge reads the divorce papers to a downcast Parisian couple, Gilles (Stephane Freiss) and Marion (Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi). After they sign the papers, they retreat to a bare-bones hotel room for one last tryst in bed. Why either would want to do this -- it apparently is Gilles' idea -- is never explained. Afterward, he asks if she would like to take another stab at the relationship. She turns and walks out the door for good.

Next we see the couple entertain Gilles Gay' brother (Antoine Chappey) and his new and much younger boyfriend (Marc Ruchmann). After dinner, Gilles is compelled to recall the time he cheated on Marion in front of her at an orgy.

Then, at the premature birth of their son, Gilles inexplicably cannot bring himself to visit his wife in the hospital. We also meet Marion's bickering parents (veteran actors Francoise Fabian and Michael Lonsdale).

In the first three scenes, Gilles comes off as such a jerk we wonder why Marion sticks by him so long. In the penultimate scene, at what should be their happiest moment, the wedding, we learn that Marion betrayed him that very night with a stranger.

The final episode has the couple getting to know each other at an Italian resort where she has come alone and he arrives with his then-girlfriend (Geraldine Pailhas) of four years.

So a betrayal on the part of each was the germinating seed for the marriage. But this doesn't, of course, explain the marriage's failure. Ozon says he isn't after an explanation, which is fair enough, but none of the scenes provides much food for thought. Played backward or forward, these episodes, while not dull, arrive without preamble or motive and offer little insight into the difficulties of all love relationships.

Tech credits are fine, but it might have been fun if Ozon had played each sequence in a different cinematic style.

5X2

Fidelity Productions

Credits:

Director: Francois Ozon

Writers: Francois Ozon, Emmanuele Bernheim

Producers: Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier

Director of photography: Yorick Le Saux

Production designer: Katia Wyszkop

Costumes: Pascaline Chavanne

Music: Philippe Rombi

Editor: Monica Coleman

Cast:

Marion: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi

Gilles: Stephane Freiss

Valerie: Geraldine Pailhas

Monique: Francoise Fabian

Bernard: Michael Lonsdale

Christophe: Antoine Chappey

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 90 minutes...

CANNES -- The first thing beautiful wife and mother Nelly (Sophie Marceau) says when she discovers her husband of 12 years dead in their bed is "Oh, no, not now". It suggests a minefield of possibilities and it's a great pity that so much of what follows is badly targeted or misfires completely.

Despite Marceau's star power it's difficult to imagine audiences responding in great numbers to a film that cannot decide if it's a comedy or a drama, and at times is simply bewildering.

Director Laure Duthilleul, who had a hand in the screenplay, appears to be aiming for a sophisticated black comedy about a bright urban woman in the midst of a personal crisis but having to deal with a collection of clamoring busybodies in a very small village.

The humor is in very short supply, however, as what's going on is never entirely clear. Just before she realizes he's dead, Nelly entreats her husband seductively and later addresses his body with angry regret. And yet apparently she has taken his brother as her lover even though he is more smitten than she is. Such contradictions might well be droll, but not here.

Marceau appears entirely capable of playing a smart woman who is emotionally traumatized and whose mood swings take her from goofy confessions to angry denunciations. She does her best to infuse the character with sly humor but is let down by scenes that have little cohesion.

Unable to function in the circumstances, Nelly insists on her husband's body being treated so that it may remain on their bed for 48 hours. She speaks to the corpse with alternate tenderness and anger while activity begins to swirl around her.

While her two children deal with their own loss by mostly fleeing to the woods to play manic games with a friend, the villagers congregate with their expectations of what should take place. Nelly's lover Jose (Antoine Chappey) is a hapless fellow who decides he must build his brother's coffin. He constructs it in the marital bedroom, however, and there is a clumsy sequence in which it becomes clear that the now occupied coffin cannot be moved downstairs and so it must be hauled out of the window.

Meanwhile, in despair, Nelly goes to the woods herself and is only narrowly saved from drowning. The scenes of her anguish are well done and would fit in a totally serious film. Juxtaposing them with comic moments could also work but there's a sorry lack of genuine eccentricity and wit to link them.

The film looks good and is handsomely shot. Franck II Louise's music is engagingly cockeyed and jaunty. There is also some insightful dialogue along the way. "Maybe I was born to be a widow", Nelly tells her mother. And there are some touching scenes, such as when the daughter, played winningly by Pome Auzier, videotapes a message to her dad, puts the camera inside the coffin, and waves "Bon voyage!"

Sadly, such moments are few and far between and a disappointing film contrives an ending that is less wry and enigmatic than simply uninteresting.

A CE SOIR (NELLY)

A Marie Amelie Productions and StudioCanal co-production

Credits:

Director: Laure Duthilleul

Screenplay: Laure Duthilleul, Jean-Pol Fargeau

Pierre Erwan Guillaume

Cinematography: Christophe Offenstein

Editing: Catherine Quesemand

Music: Franck II Louise

Production design: Alain Tchillinguirian

Costumes: Sylvie Gautrelet

Cast:

Nelly: Sophie Marceau

Jose: Antoine Chappey

Serge: Fabien Zenoni

Rene: Gerald Laroche

Jeanne: Pome Auzier

Pedro: Jonas Capellier

Etienne: Louis Lubat

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 94 mins...

CANNES -- The first thing beautiful wife and mother Nelly (Sophie Marceau) says when she discovers her husband of 12 years dead in their bed is "Oh, no, not now". It suggests a minefield of possibilities and it's a great pity that so much of what follows is badly targeted or misfires completely.

Despite Marceau's star power it's difficult to imagine audiences responding in great numbers to a film that cannot decide if it's a comedy or a drama, and at times is simply bewildering.

Director Laure Duthilleul, who had a hand in the screenplay, appears to be aiming for a sophisticated black comedy about a bright urban woman in the midst of a personal crisis but having to deal with a collection of clamoring busybodies in a very small village.

The humor is in very short supply, however, as what's going on is never entirely clear. Just before she realizes he's dead, Nelly entreats her husband seductively and later addresses his body with angry regret. And yet apparently she has taken his brother as her lover even though he is more smitten than she is. Such contradictions might well be droll, but not here.

Marceau appears entirely capable of playing a smart woman who is emotionally traumatized and whose mood swings take her from goofy confessions to angry denunciations. She does her best to infuse the character with sly humor but is let down by scenes that have little cohesion.

Unable to function in the circumstances, Nelly insists on her husband's body being treated so that it may remain on their bed for 48 hours. She speaks to the corpse with alternate tenderness and anger while activity begins to swirl around her.

While her two children deal with their own loss by mostly fleeing to the woods to play manic games with a friend, the villagers congregate with their expectations of what should take place. Nelly's lover Jose (Antoine Chappey) is a hapless fellow who decides he must build his brother's coffin. He constructs it in the marital bedroom, however, and there is a clumsy sequence in which it becomes clear that the now occupied coffin cannot be moved downstairs and so it must be hauled out of the window.

Meanwhile, in despair, Nelly goes to the woods herself and is only narrowly saved from drowning. The scenes of her anguish are well done and would fit in a totally serious film. Juxtaposing them with comic moments could also work but there's a sorry lack of genuine eccentricity and wit to link them.

The film looks good and is handsomely shot. Franck II Louise's music is engagingly cockeyed and jaunty. There is also some insightful dialogue along the way. "Maybe I was born to be a widow", Nelly tells her mother. And there are some touching scenes, such as when the daughter, played winningly by Pome Auzier, videotapes a message to her dad, puts the camera inside the coffin, and waves "Bon voyage!"

Sadly, such moments are few and far between and a disappointing film contrives an ending that is less wry and enigmatic than simply uninteresting.

A CE SOIR (NELLY)

A Marie Amelie Productions and StudioCanal co-production

Credits:

Director: Laure Duthilleul

Screenplay: Laure Duthilleul, Jean-Pol Fargeau

Pierre Erwan Guillaume

Cinematography: Christophe Offenstein

Editing: Catherine Quesemand

Music: Franck II Louise

Production design: Alain Tchillinguirian

Costumes: Sylvie Gautrelet

Cast:

Nelly: Sophie Marceau

Jose: Antoine Chappey

Serge: Fabien Zenoni

Rene: Gerald Laroche

Jeanne: Pome Auzier

Pedro: Jonas Capellier

Etienne: Louis Lubat

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 94 mins...

The only active director whose career intersects the silent film era, 90-year-old Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira continues to astonish for the relevancy and daring his art represents. This amazing filmmaker, who has made a film a year for the last decade, fashions one of his most sublime achievements with "The Letter" -- a beautiful, sorrowful contemporary translation of Mme de la Fayette's 17th century novel, "Madame de Cleves" -- which was awarded a special jury prize at Cannes.

Deftly transposing the material to the present, Oliveira infuses the work with a visual poetry and musical elegance that, taken with its wit and style, makes this one of the director's most accessible films. In addition to the formal innovations, in particular the use of off-screen narration, Oliveira turns the work into a sharp emotional inquiry, a study into the nature of truth and attraction, longing and heartbreak. Oliveira finds new ways to invent himself, opening the film in a way that appears the work of a much different director. A shot of a backstage dressing room leads to a stage, where a handsome, charismatic performer named Pedro Abrunhosa (played, inventively enough, by the Portuguese star of the same name) is performing a concert.

Deploying the first of his wry intertitles, Oliveira shifts the action to the interiors of an fashionably upscale diamond store where Mme de Chartres (Francoise Fabian) is buying an expensive necklace for her daughter, a "noblewoman" (Chiara Mastroianni). The women come under the watchful gaze of a wealthy man, Monsieur de Cleves (Antoine Chappey) -- clearly infatuated with the gilded, beautiful young woman. In his masterpieces such as "Francisca" or "Valley of Abraham", Oliveira utilized with subtlety and grace a narrator whose voice was a brilliant formal idea, unleashing digressions, character nuance and the power of observation to both comment on and provide analysis of the frequently complicated narrative.

Shifting around with time and space, Oliveira uses text superimposed over a blank screen to compress and underline the key narrative developments, the marriage of the aristocrat Cleves to the beautiful young woman. Just as important, Oliveira knits together the two narrative threads contrasting the fates of Mme. Cleves, who doesn't love her husband, and the man she is desperately attracted to, the magnetic Pedro. Following the death of her mother (who realized her daughter's furtive attraction to Pedro and warned her against consummating it), Mme Cleves now confides to her childhood friend, a nun (Oliveira regular Leonor Silveira). As the film moves toward the seemingly inevitable, the acknowledgment of Pedro and Mme. Cleves' mutual attraction, Oliveira beautifully upsets the natural order.

What transforms "The Letter" into a vivid, essential viewing experience is not just the beautifully constructed emotional interplay, the inventive narration, the depth of feeling for his characters, but the way every time, for instance, Oliveira resumes the action following the narration, he finds an image (a brooding, devastating shot inside the cemetery, Mme. Cleves stationed behind an iron fence) that yields a particularly resonant character or emotional detail, a fresh and exciting perspective. Oliveira constantly undermines narrative expectations without compromising the depth of emotion, the hard feelings, the unbearable pain of unrequited love

"The Letter" showcases the vitality of a particular brand of European art movie, complex, rueful and finally, one that is deeply moving. The scenes between Mastroianni and Lenoir are both perfectly underplayed and powerfully etched, demonstrating how great acting and auteurism aren't incompatible. Filmmaking this good is rare, and proper attention must be paid.

THE LETTER

A French/Spanish/Portuguese coproduction

Gemini Films, Wanda Films and Madragoa Filmes

Credits: Producer: Paulo Branco; Director/writer: Manoel de Oliveira; Based on the novel by: Mme. de la Fayette; Cinematographer: Emmanuel Machuel; Editor: Valerie Loiseleux; Sound: Jean Paul Mugel; Production design: Ana Vaz Da Silva; Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury; Cast: Mme. de Cleves: Chiara Mastroianni; Pedro: Pedro Abrunhosa; Mme. de Cleves: Antoine Chappey; the nun: Leonor Silveira; Mme. de Chartres: Francoise Fabian...