Silence… on tourne
Last year a movie was shot here in Pompignan, making use of a lot of our local talent (kids, tractors, sheep…).
And, last week, just as we’d all pretty much forgotten about it and returned to our glamorous lives, those fancy Parisian artistes came down to treat us to the world premiere.
The entire town and then some gathered on the square behind the church where a large screen was slung between two plane trees. So numerous were we that the mayor had to stumble to the front of the crowd to apologize for apologizing and to ask people to run home for chairs – amidst heckling from the townsfolk, recommending he cut down on his Pastis consumption and do something about those pot holes.
Now we’re bored. We’ve been squirming on plastic chairs for over an hour and we’re starting to hear the same gossip for the third time.
Then, finally, the Parisians gather in front of the screen, promising us drinks after the show. That helps. Then there’s thanks and applause and hugs and thanks for the applause and then people start grumbling start the damn movie. But instead we’re treated to a verbal pamphlet on why all of France’s show business people are going on strike (and informed that, really, it’s too complicated for us to understand, we’re just going to have to trust them on this one).
I’m reminded of an article I’d read on Depardieu collecting two hundred thousand dollars a month in unemployment insurance between movies, and I heckle quietly into my boyfriend’s shoulder. I have no intention of pissing off socialists.
Twenty minutes later the film starts. Huzzah! Three minutes later the projector breaks down, awwwwww… and our heads fall back to stare up at the stars.
Street lights out, silence… and we’re on for good.
The film is, how you say, very French.
Nothing happens, and most everyone is depressed throughout (even the sheep). There are minute-long close-ups of bugs (clearly battling with existential angst) and hands (battling with liver spots), and a poignant scene where our hero – a lonely love-struck shepherd with a penchant for dead birds – indulges himself on the river bank (which made one kid laugh so hard he almost fell backwards into the fountain). We are a sophisticated people here in Pompignan.
The elderly lady to my left giggled and elbowed me every three seconds, saying oh, look, there’s Guillaume, there’s my mother’s house, there’s…
And that was the best part of the evening. Pompignan looked stunning on film, reminding me of my dumb luck. It moved me to no end seeing the locals on screen, the drunks playing drunks and that man on a bicycle who trots his white mare down the main street every day immortalized on film. And when the little red-haired kid got his close-up in the schoolroom scene, I got to applaud and elbow my neighbour to say, that one there, the handsome one, no, that one: that’s my son.
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- For ‘indulges himself’, read: ‘after exposing himself to the village’s pouty madonna/whore schoolteacher, he enjoys a spirited wank, with his back, mercifully, to the camera’.
— Dean Allen Jul 12, 6:53am # - And what’s the film called … ?
— Gabriel Jul 12, 3:27pm # - It’s called La fin du règne animal.
(The end of the animal kingdom)
Coming soon to Franco-German channel Arte.
— gail Jul 13, 5:38am # - (Not much) more info.
— Dean Allen Jul 13, 6:21am # - There have been a number of Australian films set in the uni that I attended and it has always driven me to the point of distraction watching them, as in the “That’s not the arts faculty, that’s the physics building” type of thing. Perhaps I have a problem with suspending disbelief.
Love the idea of existential bugs.
— meredith Jul 14, 3:51am # - When I was eleven or so a film company invaded the tiny Nova Scotian village I lived in. We sat around all day and watched the crew repeatedly film one scene, which consisted of a man and a woman walking up and down a set of steps strung along the side of a seafood restaurant. Up and down they went. We couldn’t even hear the director yelling “Cut!” or “Action!” (a major disappointmen): just the same dumb scene over and over, the actors pretending expertly that they weren’t being goggled at by a bunch of small-town Maritime hicks.
A year later we saw the film, which I think was called If You Could See What I Hear. The scene appeared to have been cut, but in one shot I recognized a formation of hills and buildings from a town a half hour down the coast.
— palinode Jul 15, 3:19am # - As Dean knows, by living in Vancouver one legally agrees to be an unpaid extra in the distance in hundreds of film and television shows. Most of my ‘work’ has been in TV movie-of-tht-week or the latest straight-to-video vehicle for someone who was big on television in the 1980s. I’m the guy scratching his head at the end of the street, trying to figure out why his neighbourhood is full of police cars with ‘LAPD’ written on the side and strangely shaped newspaper boxes with old copies of the LA Times inside. Every once in a while, though, someone makes a film in which Vancouver actually looks like Vancouver, and I let out a cheer of municipal pride when Arnold Schwarzenegger blew up our library.
— John Hudson Jul 15, 12:33pm # - Totally. I’m so used to seeing the familiar dressed up with a little spackle and bunting to resemble somewhere else that now it seems to be a condition: while watching the Pompignan movie, every time the village square or some chunk of local landscape came on the screen, I’d catch myself squinting, wondering, ‘now, where’s this supposed to be?’
— Dean Allen Jul 15, 2:25pm # - What is it about French (and Danish) film-makers and depressing movies?
I can think of very few French movies that haven’t left me feeling like I wanted to die (and take anyone nearby out with me).
La Passion de Beatrice is a fine example of this…
Someone please suggest some ‘feel-good’ French movies for me, so I don’t think the entire nation’s filmmakers have entered into some sort of massive murder-suicide pact.
— Darren Jul 15, 4:52pm # - Aw, that’s not fair.
While ‘feel good’ movies aren’t really a French specialty, a lot of brilliant films, and some great dark comedies, have come from these parts.
Let’s see, a few good recent comedies (believe it or not): Gazon maudit, Pédale douce, Un crime au paradis, Grosse fatigue… oh, and there’s this (granted Belgian) silly animated series called Panique au village that, for some reason, makes me laugh like an idiot each time.
Downright brilliant (just for the sake of it): Renoir, Truffaut, some Demy, Godard, Rohmer and Michel Blanc, Resnais, Carné, Clouzot, Les inconnus, Tati, a whack of young short filmmakers…
As for recent feel goods: Être et avoir, M. Batignole, (dare I say) that cutie Amélie…
— gail Jul 15, 6:22pm # - le diner des cons.
8 Femmes was suitably amusing, tho not a comedy per se. and someone does blow his brains out at the end.
read somewhere that, grosso modo, european films are about losers. american (hollywood) films are about winners.
the best french flick i’ve seen in years was Les Voleurs, with c. deneuve and daniel auteuil. not a comedy, not even remotely funny in any way, really, but very good.
i’ll defend amélie as well. there’s more imagination in one frame of that flick than in any recent hollywood release. the hulk? hulk suck.
— dlt Jul 16, 9:55am # - I’d have to make a small exception to say that american (hollywood) films are more likely about losers who win, than actual winners (continuing to win). At least the ones everyone seems to like are: True Romance, Punch Drunk Love, Bridget Jones, State and Main (kind of). Of course, I suppose these aren’t typical Hollywood movies. My limited French film experiences have not left me thinking that Mlle. Deneuve et M. Reno play a lot of losers. Well, Indochine was a bit of a downer.
— amber Jul 17, 2:25am # - well, she does off herself about three-quarters of the way through.
— dlt Jul 17, 9:53am # - Romauld et Juliette and Le Placard, too.
Our entire country (New Zealand) has become a film set for Lord of the Rings, but no-one seems to mind.
Excellent blog, btw. I’m in awe. And I’m enchanted by the idea of angsty bugs.
— iona Jul 23, 11:00pm #
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