On connaît la chanson

"On connait la chanson" is a great French movie. Not often the culture and lifestyle of a country is shown so happily, modern and still entertainingly in a film. The plot is not "straight", it's rather a patchwork of single stories, that are connected with each other. The French chanson, the title says it, plays a central role. It is this kind of music, though sometimes pretty close to kitsch, that is so typical for France. Instead of expressing their feelings only in words, the protagonists sing lines from well-known chansons, all the way from Maurice Chevalier to Serge Gainsbourgh.

Fortunately, there is no dubbed version of this film, the subtitles do very well. So if you want to know something about France and especially Paris today, go and watch it. Also people who normally don't like foreign films will have a lot of fun with it.

In the unapproximate center of "On connaît la chanson," find a marvelous joke that missed by everyone at the sold out SFIFF screening I attended. If you want to try to catch it yourself, then don't read on! I'm writing to those of you who didn't or won't catch it. Four or five characters are seated chatting or arguing, I forget, round a table in a busy restaurant. As you know from other comments here, the script incorporates line fragments from well-known French songs (kind of like those "hidden picture" puzzles in the dentist office magazine). As each occurs, someone bursts into song. One of our group, after an unremarkable, perfectly conversational pause, says "je ne regret rien," then pauses, as does everyone else round the table. They look at one another, everyone at everyone, the very clatter of the restaurant seems to pause, waiting, and for the only time in this film, nobody takes the cue. Nobody breaks into the Piaf standard.

This film, a tribute to Dennis Potter (pennies from heaven, the singing detective), is the best french comedy I've ever seen. Basically it's a typical well-made french film about relations, with great acting, set in Paris. But it's more than that: it's also a musical. Here are some reasons why I think it's a great movie. First, the chansons, play-backed by the actors, are brilliant. Imagine a Wehrmachtofficer lipsinging to an Edith-Piaf chanson (in the opening act). The best thing about the chansons, is the fact that they actually support the story, as they serve as moments of reflection and introspection for the players. Maybe it's the contrast between the extreme sentimentality and the 'serious' acting that makes this film so great. Go see it.

This film is light, but not empty. Following the interconnected lives of several Parisian bourgeois, the film uses snippets of popular music to demonstrate the emotional state of the characters in the style of a conventional musical. However, the music does both more than this and less. The characters do not sing their parts so much as lip-sync (badly) to tunes that one hears on the radio or in a movie. The songs are related to the characters' "inner lives" as a Nike swoosh or a Dior label would be - and that's the point. Each character has a musical style of sorts and maybe even a theme song, but the song "belongs" to the character like motion "belongs" to a jelly-fish. The characters, like the jelly-fish that are a motif of the finale scene, are less than unique, and much less than in control. However, they are at the same time quite human and sympathetic.

Resnais, whom I count as being one of cinema's great geniuses, has a similar approach in On connaît la chanson as he does in Mon oncle d'Amérique, with pop songs in lieu of mice and jelly-fish in lieu of Henri Laborit. (See the info on the latter movie if this doesn't make sense...) What both films do is make one think about important questions of the complex relationship between brains, minds, and souls, and they do so without clobbering the viewer over the head with preachiness and over-simplifications. Contrast this with the sermonizing of the abominable Lars von Trier (of Dancer in the Dark fame) as well as with the mindless drek that that is generally shown in U.S. theaters.

The sing-along idea is clever and well-implemented, but the story goes around in circles and above all the film is too static to support the musical premise. It's sad to see such lackluster direction from the creator of _Hiroshima mon amour_. If you like Jaoui and Bacri, go see _Le gout des autres_!