Lovers - Dogme France #1

I just watched this film on tape from a recent Channel 4 broadcast in the UK. I guess it's the ideal French film, as it has all the right ingredients -- relationships, cigarettes, dingy apartments, garish apartments -- and it's mainly in English!

However, I felt like speeding it up all the way through. I could go make a cup of tea and nothing would have happened while I was gone.

It was redeemed by bright, clear photography of Paris, and some lovely close-ups of the delicious Elodie Bouchez. I only give it 5, I'm afraid. Pleasant enough, but the Gaga character really irritated me and it was soooo sloooow.

This is a dogme film using location shots, no props, natural lighting as far as possible etc. The story concerns a Yugoslav Serb artist, Dragan adrift in France. He goes into a bookshop to try and buy an art book and meets a girl, Jeanne, who works there somewhat intermittently, and they fall in love. Although they have to speak in English because she can't speak Serbian and he can't speak French remarkably they never have to struggle for words (I do tell a lie he does have a problem - once.) One night they are stopped by the police after some drunken bad behaviour on Dragan's part and Jeanne discovers to her horror that his papers are not in order and he will be allowed three days before being deported by the authorities. His friends had warned him to regularise his stay with the authorities but he had ignored them and now they are both up the proverbial creek. Elodie Bouchet as Jeanne puts in a good performance and the cinematography creates a nice atmosphere from its shots of Paris streets and claustrophobic apartments but the pacing of the film is glacial. There is little or no dramatic tension until Dragan gets his marching orders from the cops, there is no witty dialogue and no real political point to make as in L'Afrance another French film which deals with more or less the same subject but in a rather sharper way.

The new dogma film seems to be different. Few people just stood up and went, because they thought the love- story of a Czech artist and a French bookstore- accountant would not be enough to fill two hours. But in fact it is. The movie starts of as a fairy- tale and ends with (because of) bureaucratic boundaries. The rest is eternity. Dragan has to leave the country. A modern Romeo and Juliet interpretation. Love is strong and cannot be broken by any earthly means. This film is very honest. And the female protagonist is brilliant. Greetings to Hollywood! That's how an actress should be!

The fifth entry in the Dogme 95 movement - and the first not to come from Denmark - is about a relationship between a French woman and a refugee from the former Yugoslavia. Jean-Marc Barr's "Lovers" isn't the most impressive movie, although I guess that it gives a good look at the status of immigrants in France. If nothing else, the movie has good acting, directing and cinematography. Élodie Bouchez and Sergej Trifunovic do a good job with their roles.

Since Gaga is short for Dragan, what do the Serbs and/or Croats think of Lady Gaga's name? On that subject, Gaaga sounds like the Russian name for The Hague, so how did the movie translate Dragan's nickname in Russian?

This dogma film leaves you with a divided mind. On the first hand, it is a remarkable, tragic love story with brilliant actors, on the other hand the whole film is made that non-spectacular, realistic there's no space left to dream about. This is a story out of the normal, misery life, and the alarming thing about it is that this could really have happened to one of your friends.