Reviews

French movie lovers have known Resnais in a while now for his exquisite movies in the 50's-60's : Hiroshima mon amour, Muriel and his collaboration with German director Chris Marker; but also his more recent films like Mon Oncle d'Amérique, Pas sur la bouche and of course ON connaît la chanson. Another masterpiece according to me. Incredible acting and impressive mastering of both sound and image. The idea of having the actors sing well-known french songs out of the blue - but always corresponding to the situation - is fantastic and contributes to making On connaît la chanson a most entertaining movie. Besides that, Resnais develops a subtle meditation on the development of depression : all the characters have a nervous breakdown. The script, written by the talented Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnes Jaoui, also acting in the movie, builds in that way. In life like in nervous breakdowns, nothing is what it seems. As all the characters try to hide their uneasiness, Resnais takes pleasure in always showing us things and twisting them so as to make them turn out differently : you think you're going to see a historic movie about the German occupation of Paris, and there you have the Germand General singing "j'ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris" !! When Camille and Nicolas meet, you think they know each other well, and it turns out they can't put a name on each other's face. Marc (Lambert Wilson) has cold, Camille thinks he's been dumped. And so on... That plus the witty situations make On connait la chanson a masterpiece because it is both deep and entertaining. Only problem, if you are not familiar with the French musical culture you might miss out on much of the comical effects of the movie. Still, great movie, great fun, always a delight to watch.

I saw DU JOUR AU LENDEMAIN about 3 weeks ago in the Angers European Film Festival, it was the first time Le Guay was presenting it to an audience so this was kind of a test for him. According to the great amount of laughter in the room, it seems most of the audience positively responded to this comedy about a French loser who is fed up with his life and his job. I personally thought it was a rather weak comedy. Poolevoorde isn't outstanding. Nevertheless he manages to give his character a good deal of credibility that makes him both moving and sensitive. The real problem that makes this film a little slow and boring isn't the acting nor is it the filming but a deeper problem : the STORY itself. It is inexistent. The plot is interesting - a man awakes one morning and finds out th everything that seemed dull and hateful in his life is now perfect and that makes him go nuts - but Le Guay doesn't make anything out of it and expects the initial situation to be good enough to last 1h30 without running out of steam. The characters aren't deep enough for us to care, the repercussions of such a disruption aren't clear and that gives us the impression, once out of the cinema, to have spent two hours without having seen anything worthwhile. It's a shame given that the movie ends with a rather cheesy and predictable happy end. A good point though for the short musical sequence that comes in as a break with the overall monotony of the movie.

I must say I'm quite impressed to see that many people actually liked the movie. Come on !! Probably on of the worst bollywood ever. Blurry image, lousy dialogs, old fashioned costumes and abusive rolls of thunder is what Baazigar is really about. The acting is really bad especially all the parts with Johnny Lever who's over acting in all his scenes (just put that on a difference of sense of humour if it makes anyone feel better). As to Shah Rukh Khan how did that movie ever make him a star. He has a terrible hair cut and he's over doing it. After a long-led meditation I'm giving it a 2/10 instead of 1 since watching the movie did really give me the opportunity to have a good laugh now and then. But honestly there's a very thin line between 1 and 2. Fortunately, Bollywood being the world's biggest film industry most people will never even come across Baazigar and enjoy other more worthy movies. As to the others they'll just have to overcome their giggles and try to forget they even saw this !! By the way if anyone's looking for the DVD I don't think I'm very attached to mine !!!