ALAIN RESNAIS RETROSPECTIVE (4 – 7 OCTOBER)
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (HIROSHIMA MY LOVE)
sHOWTIMES:
The Picturehouse - Saturday, 4 October, 9.30pm
synopsis:
A French actress is shooting a pacifist film in Japan. She has a brief affair with a Japanese architect. They talk in a hotel room, in a bar, in the night. She talks about herself - when she was a young girl in Nevers who fell in love with a German soldier during the Occupation in France. She talks about herself: pained, radiant, terrified, soothed. "They often say one love chases away another. Here however, in exceptional circumstances, love feeds on new love. Thus a young woman, after 14 years, rediscovers the feeling of her first love and identifies the Japanese with the man she once loved." - Alain Resnais, Le Monde, May 10-11, 1959
L’ANNEE DERNIERE A MARIENBAD (LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD)
1963 - Adonis Kyrou declared the film a total triumph in his influential Le Surréalisme au Cinéma, recognizing the ambiguous environment and obscure motives within the film as representing many of the concerns of surrealism in narrative cinema.
sHOWTIMES:
The Picturehouse - Sunday, 5 October, 4.30pm
synopsis:
Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the exact temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him, but it seems she hardly remembers the affair they may have had (or not?) last year at Marienbad.
MURIEL
1963 – Delphine Seyrig won a Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.
sHOWTIMES:
The Picturehouse – Sunday, 5 October, 9.30pm
synopsis:
In the seacoast town of Boulogne, Hélène sells antique furniture, living with her step-son, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit - Alphonse - with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The narrative, like memory and intention, is jumpy; the past obscured by guilt, misperceptions, and missed possibilities. Appearances deceive, things change. As Hélène and Alphonse try to sort out a renewal, everyone seems off-kilter just enough to hint that all cannot end well. Can anyone know another?
STAVISKY
1974 – Best Supporting Actor Award at the New York Film Critics Circle Award won by Charles Boyer
sHOWTIMES:
The Picturehouse – Monday, 6 October, 7.00pm
synopsis:
Stavisky is a drama based on a true story surrounding a 1934 political scandal known as the Stavisky Affair. Stavisky is a Franco-Russian con man (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who has made his money selling false bonds to his chain of pawn shops. His financial security is based on jewels given to him by an Empress. The discovery that they are glass ruins him and his con activities are exposed. He is discovered by authorities in Chamonix.
MON ONCLE D’AMERIQUE (MY AMERICAN UNCLE)
sHOWTIMES:
The Picturehouse – Saturday, 4 October, 4.30pm
synopsis:
This informative film is built around the ideas of French physician, writer and philosopher Henri Laborit, who plays himself in the film. It uses the stories of three people to illustrate Laborit's theories on evolutionary psychology regarding the relationship of self and society. He uses the stories of the lives of three people to discuss behaviorist theories of survival, combat, rewards and punishment, and anxiety. Rene (Gerard Depardieu) is a technical manager at a textile factory and must face the anxiety caused by corporate downsizing. Janine (Nicole Garcia) is a self-educated actress/stylist who learns that the wife of her lover is dying and must decide to let them reunite. Jean (Roger-Pierre) is a controversial career-climbing writer/politician at a crossroads in life.
ON CONNAIT LA CHANSON (SAME OLD SONG)
1998 - César Award for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Writing, Best Editing and Best Sound
1998 - French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Award for Best Film
sHOWTIMES:
The Picturehouse – Tuesday, 7 October, 7.00pm
synopsis:
Odile (Azéma), a business executive, is married to weak, furtive Claude (Arditi). In the past Odile was close to successful businessman Nicolas (Bacri), now married with kids and returning to Paris after an eight-year absence. She is looking for a new, bigger apartment from real estate agent Marc (Wilson). Her younger sister Camille (Jaoui), has just completed her doctoral thesis in history and is a Paris tour guide. Simon (Dussolier) is a regular on Camille's tours because he's attracted to her, although he claims to be researching his historical radio dramas. Camille has fallen for Marc, and they begin an affair. Nicolas is also looking for an apartment; since he hopes to eventually have his family joins him in Paris.
A TRIBUTE TO ALAIN RESNAIS
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This year, for the 24th edition of the Singapore French Film Festival, the Alliance Française de Singapour pays tribute to this extraordinary filmmaker. |
The beginning of the Life of Alain Resnais Born on 3rd June 1922 in Vannes, Brittany, in a well-to-do family, Alain Resnais frequented the cinema from a very young age. At twelve, the young cinema-lover was offered for Christmas by his father his first Kodak camera, with which he shot a few films in 8mm an adaptation of Fantômas. He had a passion for photography, comics (Mandrake, Dick Tracy) and the popular booklets of Harry Dickson. He also read Proust, André Breton and dreamt of becoming a bookseller. The performing arts equally fascinated him. In 1940, he registered in the Cours Simon and in 1943 integrated the first promotion of the I.D.H.E.C (Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques), the celebrated school of cinema. After appearing as an extra in Les Visiteurs du soir, he became specialised in editing. His name appeared for the first time in the credits of Paris 1900 de Nicole Vedrès.
After a few short films consecrated to painters such as Felix Labisse and Max Ernst, he directed his first documentary short-film with Van Gogh (1948) produced by Pierre Braunberger. Following which came Gauguin Paul (1950) and above all Guernica (1950), his first work which carried a political statement. Though reputed to be a director of short-films, he signed off various short documentaries with a very personal style, such as Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, 1955) about the Nazi concentration camps and Toute la mémoire du monde (All the Memory of the World, 1956), a surprising journey through the National Library. In 1959, Alain Resnais directed his first long work of fiction, written by Marguerite Duras: Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima My Love, 1959). This film imposed itself as a double-barreled work of French cinema, both by the audacity of its subject (the trauma of the World War II evoked through a love story) and the modernity of its narration. Two years later, Alain Resnais worked with another writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet, with L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961), which gained him the Lion d’Or at the Venice Film Festival. Alain Resnais, committed to the left, like his friends from the New Wave, also directed films of moral or political order. Muriel (1963) which speaks of what follows the war in Algeria, Stavisky (1974), which evokes the financial scandal of the third Republic. From the 80s, the cineast made a call to a trio of actors to whom he offered, through the years, subtle and varying roles : André Dussolier, Pierre Arditi, and of course his muse Sabine Azéma, who each have received a César thanks to one or other of these roles. Finally, he developed the lighter-side of cinema, exploring the theatre with the dyptych Smoking/No Smoking. (César for Best Film in 1993), where the actors Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi each play five roles; the musical with On connaît la chanson (Same Old Song) in 1998 and the operette in 2003, with Pas sur la bouche (Not on the Lips). By Sandra Saminadane. For Screenings At
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