Here is our monthly review of news about French films in the international press. In November, Alice and the Mayor was reviewed in Portugal, while Fanny Ardant traveled to Italy, the mystery film Jérémy Clapin received notice in Belgium, as did the sensual Curiosa in Mexico, and Costa Gavras returned to Greece to meet with audiences at the world premiere of Adults in the Room.
Alice and the Mayor, which was programmed at the 20th edition of the Festa do Cinema Francês in Portugal, is considered by the website c7nema.net as "one of the greatest films of the year, with probably one of the most interesting political and personal viewpoints of the decade." Audiences can find out for themselves in Portuguese theaters from December 19!
Fanny Ardant defended nostalgia and paid tribute to the past when interviewed by the Italian media, who gave her a very warm welcome at the Rome International Film Festival where La Belle Epoque was presented. Quoted in the famed daily newspaper La Stampa, Ardent said: "I would like to relive many moments in my life, not only the happy ones."
"But who is Jérémy Clapin?": this is the question posed in the Belgian weekly cultural magazine Focus Vif. Screened in competition at the recent Ghent International Film Festival, I Lost My Body has attracted acclaim as an animated film aimed at adults that tackles subjects of everyday life. Clapin is described as a filmmaker "whose tone and style are informed by the underlying obsessions of an auteur: the body, difference, and the loneliness of marginalized characters."
Seen as a film that "transgresses established values and conditioned behaviors, shocks the middle-classes, and explores high society and forbidden pleasures, while exposing eroticism through the use of photography," Mexican audiences showed their appreciation of Lou Jeunet's film Curiosa, which was thus described by the Mexican cultural magazine Primera Página.
https://primerapaginarevista.com/2019/10/16/curiosa-epater-les-bourgeois-o-la-critica-a-la-moral/
The Russian daily Vsluh (which translates as "out loud") asks its readers: "Do you dare to allow yourself to be tempted by the Pleasure Room?" (the film's title in Russia). The film's depiction of sin, temptation, and horror won over Russian audiences, who offered a warm reception to the latest film by Christian Volckman, The Room.
http://www.vsluh.ru/news/culture/345699
Adults in the Room, Costa Gavras' new film, made its world premiere in Greece in October prior to its release in France. Speaking to the Greek daily To Víma ,the filmmaker emphasized "the importance of cinema as a way of educating audiences, young people in particular who are better able to defend themselves when we remind them of events that occurred in the recent past."
Media Gallery
