Seventh Row

A place to think deeply about movies

World Cinema

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Charlène Favier’s Slalom is a complex exploration of abuse

Charlène Favier’s Cannes-selected debut, Slalom, is a tense pas-de-deux between a 15-year-old professional skiing star (Noée Abita) and her coach (Jérémie Renier). The film screened at Cinemania.

A still from Slalom, in which a girl holding ski equipment looks disturbed, her face shrouded in darkness. The text on the image says: Review.
Noée Abita stars in Charlène Favier’s Slalom.

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Charlène Favier’s Cannes-labelled directorial debut, Slalom, is a tense pas-de-deux between a 15-year-old professional skiing star, Lyz (Noée Abita), and her coach, Fred (Jérémie Renier). Like Una, the film is a complex exploration of the dynamics of an abusive relationship between a man in power and a child in his charge. Though it deals with sexual abuse, the film is most interested in Lyz’s perspective, avoiding judgement or sensationalism, while making Fred human if reprehensible. 

Effectively abandoned by her mother, who has accepted a job in another city, Lyz begins training at a school designed for professional skiers under Fred’s guidance. Living alone in her apartment, and without any real support network at her new school, Lyz initially struggles with Fred’s gruff manner. But when she starts succeeding on the slopes, he warms up to her, giving her special attention, training, and encouragement.

Lyz is at the age when sex is on the mind, and her fascination with Fred toggles between sexual interest and a search for a father figure. Early in the film, she spots him naked in the communal showers, and stares at him a moment too long. When trying to act her age and attend a party thrown by fellow teenage skiers at the school, she decides to impulsively kiss a boy — one she knows had been previously sexually friendly with her one friend, Justine (Marie Denarnaud). When the boy rebuffs her advances for more, she isolates herself further from fellow students and seeks more approval from her coach.

At first, it seems like Fred’s intentions are entirely honourable. He lives with his girlfriend, Lilou (Marie Denarnaud), who also teaches at the school, and he’s never alone with any of the team for long. Lyz may stare longingly at him, but he’s careful to avoid extended eye contact. Even in an early scene, when he has her strip and weigh herself in his office, he averts his eyes, staring at the computer as he inputs numbers. It seems that Lyz’s confusion about what she wants from him may be one-sided.

Of course, it isn’t. Every step of the way, Fred has been priming her, even if he’s not aware he’s doing it himself. Withholding praise and then giving praise is a power move, as is giving Lyz extra attention and withholding it. One night, they go out for dinner to a fancy restaurant, alone, on what feels eerily like a date, to discuss their training plan. On the way home, he takes her driving on a track in the snow where she can drive fast and recklessly, and encourages her to do so. It’s dark, they’re alone, and suddenly he’s desperately asking her for sexual favours. She’s curious and confused, and he’s her coach, so she complies, but Favier keeps her camera focused on Abita’s face and her uncomfortable reaction.

By the next day, Fred goes cold, and we and Lyz wonder if it was a one-time slip, but of course, playing hot and cold is part of his strategy. And Lyz doesn’t quite know how to differentiate his praise for her as a skier and his sexual interest in her, or his care for her as an athlete or his affection for her as a lover, a word that doesn’t accurately describe the abusive dynamics in their relationship. But part of why she lets it continue is because she’s not sure whether this is just how lovers behave and if this is what she wants. 

Favier’s direction never loses sight of Lyz’s emotional turmoil, nor does it ever become lurid. All of the scenes of sexual abuse stay focused on Lyz’s perspective and reaction, and Favier never lingers on Lyz’s body to mimic Fred’s gaze. At the same time, Favier understands that abuse is confusing because sometimes the abused gets some pleasure from it — sexual or otherwise. Favier expertly navigates these difficult waters without ever blaming Lyz, while acknowledging her ambivalence. Lyz is mostly confused about what Fred wants from her, sometimes flattered by his attentions and sometimes hurt by when he goes cold. The first time they have intercourse is followed by a lengthy scene of Lyz cleaning herself up in the bathroom afterward, dealing with her inner turmoil, and looking in the mirror as she steels herself to put on a strong face, to try to take control of the situation when she rejoins Fred. 

Favier also gets terrific performances from both leads in difficult roles. Noée Abita, who first came on the scene in Ava, and was subjected to an under-written part in Genèse, is truly excellent in Slalom, now that she’s given material worthy of her talents. Favier regularly lingers on Abita’s face in scenes of sexual abuse, and her reaction to the aftermath. Lyz’s hurt and her need to keep up a strong façade are brilliantly executed by Abita and directed with sensitivity by Favier. Renier is equally good as Fred, a smarmy manipulator who hates himself for what he’s done — which causes him to play cold — but not enough to keep himself from doing it again. Renier makes Fred’s self-loathing human, even if we know that he’s done this before, and he’ll do this again. 

Charlène Favier’s Slalom is still seeking distribution in Canada, US, and UK.

You could be missing out on great films like Slalom at virtual cinemas and film festivals near you. 

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Discover more great French-language films

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Charlatan draws parallels between a faith healer and communism

Agnieszka Holland’s Charlatan tells the story of Czech herbalist and healer Jan Mikolášek to draw parallels with post-war communism. Charlatan is the Czech Republic’s submission for the 2021 Best International Feature Oscar.

Listen to our podcast discussion of the film, as well as Agnieszka Holland’s Europa Europa and Washington Square.

A still from Charlatan, in which a man holds up a small glass of urine to the light and stares at it, while another main watches him from behind. The text on the image says: Review.
Still from Charlatan directed by Agnieszka Holland. Jan is examining a bottle of urine.

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Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (The Secret Garden) has followed up her biopic of Gareth Jones and his discovery of the 1930s Ukrainian famine, Mr Jones, with Charlatan, a post-war biopic about Czech herbalist and healer Jan Mikolášek (1889-1973). While Mr Jones was about revealing an untold harrowing part of history and how one foolhardy man brought this story to light, Charlatan uses Mikolášek as a sort of metaphor for post-war communism in order to ask whether the new regime is really a form of liberation or just a variation on a fascist theme.

Holland introduces us to Jan (Ivan Trojan) as a successful, middle-aged man, who runs a healing centre out of his mansion. Every day, hordes of people queue up in front of his home with clear bottles of urine in hand, hoping for a chance to see the great healer and find hope. Jan’s methods are to hold up the clear bottles of urine to the light in order to divine diagnoses ranging from diabetes to kidney failure. We never see him follow up with patients so the accuracy of his proclamations aren’t really up for debate. Instead, we see him sell one of four brews to each of his patients as cure-alls, and watch people leave excited and satisfied.

In an interview with Bilge Ebiri earlier this year, Holland talked about her struggles with her health as a young girl, having spent much of it bed-ridden. It’s part of what made her masterful The Secret Garden such a personal film for her, and perhaps why it focuses on the contraptions of Edwardian medicine even more so than the novel. In The Secret Garden, Colin’s treatments are probably worse than his so-called condition, which proves largely psychosomatic — and yet there’s so much trust put into the medical establishment.

Charlatan is a continuation of Holland’s interest in how we interact with medicine, though this time through someone without any medical training. Of course, even in the 1940s, with antibiotics only just introduced, medicine was fairly primitive, and perhaps, to a degree, hard to differentiate from the kind of faith healing charlatanism that Jan practices. Yet even though the papers, and eventually the state, dismiss Jan as a charlatan, Holland isn’t quite so quick to do so. For her, part of our trust in healers is about the pomp and circumstance that comes with it. Jan’s aristocratic office with fancy wooden furniture, high ceilings, and chandeliers, is part of what people come for; even his lab coat is part of the magic show. He has patients who rave about his services, but is there any method to his ‘urine reading’? The film doesn’t delve into this directly, but as modern audiences, we’re skeptical from the start.

What becomes most interesting is Jan’s own ambivalence about his work: does he truly believe he’s helping people or is he just trying to get rich? Most of the time, it seems like both are true. In an early scene, we see him offer a woman cash to pay for a seaside vacation to treat her child’s vitamin D deficiency. But this act of kindness is contextualized amidst his gouging of other patients for his dubious remedies. Is he trying to buy good publicity, assuage his guilt, or does he truly care? Possibly, all of the above. When he’s eventually arrested and put on trial for the death of a high-placed official in the party whom he supposedly treated, which lead to the man’s death, he’s anxious to get back to work because of the people he could be helping.

Jan (Ivan Trojan) is interrogated in Agnieszka Holland's Charlatan
Jan (Ivan Trojan) is interrogated in Agnieszka Holland’s Charlatan

The upcoming trial is used as a device to have Jan look back on his pre-war life as he talks to his lawyer, allowing us to flash back to that time. We discover he learned his trade from a local woman with “the gift” who saw potential in him and took him on. He was eager to learn, and for the encouragement that his father never gave him, but he also is enterprising from the start, commenting to her that she could be rich if only she’d charge for her services. She’s ethically against that, but we soon learn Jan doesn’t share such qualms. He makes his fortune with the skills she taught him, and he survives the war by agreeing to treat Nazis. 

Jan isn’t just enterprising though, he’s also controlling. Through the burgeoning relationship with his assistant, František (Juraj Loj), that began before the war, Holland reveals Jan’s need to control his lover. He initiates the relationship, and then looks for ways to keep František from his wife. Jan is also prone to outbursts of violence. Whether as a young man or in present day, he will turn from relatively mild-mannered to cold-blooded in an instant — not just in physical outbursts of violence, but emotional ones, too. It makes us question whether Jan’s work is more about control, about being a god-like figure, than it is about helping people, no matter what he may say. Trojan plays Jan with a seriousness and mystique that makes you want to lean in and understand this man who can seem kind and cruel from one moment to the next. In flashbacks to his youth, Trojan’s son, Josef Trojan, plays Jan’s younger self with equal aplomb if more youthful innocence.

Through the trial that closes out the final act of the film, and the connections between the current administration and its Nazi forebears, Holland draws parallels between the state and Jan’s practice. The trial is a foregone conclusion, more show trial than real trial, intended to discredit Jan and end his life, as he’s informed by his lawyer. Here, we see the state controlling the justice system much in the way Jan controls his patients and his lover. And if such a trial can exist, in which a citizen is framed and ruthlessly sent to his death, is totalitarianism really gone? Jan’s mercenary tendencies continue even here. Much like the state, he may claim to want to help others, but ultimately, selfish concerns win out, and collateral damage matters little to him.

Charlatan is available to rent across the US at the AFI European Union Film Festival until December 20. Tickets are available here. 

You could be missing out on opportunities to watch great films like Charlatan on VOD, virtual cinemas, and festivals.

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Discover more great 2021 Best International Feature Oscar submissions

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Guillaume Canet shines in Au nom de la terre (In the Name of the Land)

Au nom de la terre (In the Name of the Land) tracks farmer Pierre Jareau as he struggles with increasingly crippling debt and his mental health declines. The film screens at Cinefranco on Nov 28.

Rufus (left) and Guillaume Canet (rights) star in Au nom de la terre (In the Name of the Land)
Rufus (left) and Guillaume Canet (rights) star in Au nom de la terre (In the Name of the Land)

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Farming is a stressful business in the Guillaume Canet-starrer Au nom de la terre. Based on a true story, Canet stars as Pierre Jareau, whose youthful idealism leads him to start a farming business with his wife, Claire (Veerle Baetens). Because his often nasty father, Jacques (Rufus), refuses to give him the family farm as an inheritance, Pierre and Claire purchase it from Jacques, which puts them in debt that they spend the rest of their lives trying to cope with. Most of the film takes place 20 years after the land purchase when financial troubles abound and every attempt to get ahead seems to put them in further debt. 

The modern financial and emotional struggles of the entrepreneurial farmer has been the subject of many recent films, from The Levelling, which begins with a suicide, to God’s Own Country, where the prospects seem bleak, to Percy, where small-time farmers are at the mercy of large GM organisations. While all three of these films start somewhere bleak and follow the protagonists as they find a way to make things work, despite hardship, Au nom de la terre takes the opposite tack, plummeting the Jareaus into deeper debt, greater stress, and more profound unhappiness. 

The farm is Pierre’s dream and also his sole burden to carry, but it puts a strain on the entire family: his wife’s accounting job pays all of their bills, and his son, Thomas (Anthony Bajon), is hoping to find a way to get out of the family business without hurting his father. At first, Pierre thinks up ambitious schemes that cause bigger and bigger debt with the hopes of larger returns in the future. But it seems like everything that could go wrong does go wrong until Pierre sinks into a deep depression, fracturing his marriage and his family. 

Au nom de la terre is both a bracing reminder of the mental health crisis that pervades the French farming community — the end titles inform us of the high suicide rate — and a rare sensitive look at a man coping with depression with no desire to change things and the heartbreaking effects it has on him and his family. It’s a showcase role for the always compelling Canet, who charts Pierre’s slow descent into crippling paralysie.

You could be missing out on great films like Au nom de la terre at virtual cinemas and film festivals near you. 

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Discover more great French films

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Anne Fontaine’s psychological drama Night Shift (Police)

Night Shift looks at the inner lives of three police officers who take the night shift together. The film screens at Cinemania across Canada on Nov 22. Tickets are available here.

Omar Sy and Virginie Efira, star in Anne Fontaine's Night Shift, screening at Cinemania. They are dressed in their characters' police uniforms and talking outside the police station.
Omar Sy and Virginie Efira star in Anne Fontaine’s Night Shift, screening at Cinemania.

Even Anne Fontaine’s most uneven films tend to be worth watching because they offer an often unexplored female perspective. As preposterous as the premise of Adore was — two middle-aged women (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright) strike up affairs with each other’s teenaged sons — it was smart about women’s sexuality in a way that’s rarely explored on screen. On the other side of the spectrum, Fontaine’s excellent The Innocents was the story of pregnant nuns during World War II, the victims of mass rape — once again, looking at the secrets women must keep, and here, the abuses they face. 

Night Shift (or Police in French) starts out promisingly in the same vein, as it tells the story of the same day from the perspectives of three different police officers: exhausted new mother Virginie (Virginie Efira, always absolutely excellent), her lover Aristide (Omar Sy), and the middle-aged alcoholic Erik (Grégory Gadebois). Although each of them spend the day in part in each other’s company, the slight shift in the camera’s perspective as we see each of them leave home and then go through the day, smartly shows how different their experiences are. Virginie is constantly trying to ignore misogynistic microaggressions; Aristide comes off as a bro, but is actually quite sensitive and dealing with trauma; Erik is caught between his unhappy home life, an obsession with his reputation, and the desire to do good. 

In Night Shift, Fontaine is particularly sensitive to female experiences — both as a cop and as the people the cops are there to help. Virginie begins the day by visiting the doctor about an abortion, and is constantly worried about this, and having to deal with administrative duties to get this done. Virginie and Erik accompany an abused woman to get her things, to protect her from her husband, only for the woman to throw them out when they get rough with her violent husband. Erik and Aristide, meanwhile, are called to the house of a woman who has accidentally killed her child. As police officers, they all feel a little helpless to actually do good, and Fontaine makes us aware of how difficult it can be to address problems women face. 

These three perspectives converge on the night shift when the cops are all charged with escorting someone scheduled for deportation (Payman Maadi) to the airport. When Virginie realises they are essentially escorting the man to his death, she decides to try to save him, enlisting the other two in her quest. Here, the plot begins to strain believability, with these police officers going to ridiculous lengths to help the traumatized man. The further we get into it, the more ridiculous it gets. But Efira’s committed performance carries Night Shift. Virginie and Aristide have flashbacks to their courtship which led to Virginie’s current pregnancy (she’s unhappy with her husband), and thee way they converse through looks, while chaperoned by Erik, is always compelling. 

Night Shift is available to stream across Canada for 48 hours starting November 22. Tickets are available here.

You could be missing out on great films like Night Shift at virtual cinemas and film festivals near you. 

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Discover more French films….

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Antoinette dans les Cévennes is a showcase for Laure Calamy

Caroline Vignal’s Antoinette dans les Cévennes (My Donkey, My Lover, and I) is a mid-life coming-of-age comedy starring the great Laure Calamy.

Laure Calamy stars as Antoinette in Antoinette dans les Cévennes (English title My Donkey, My Lover and I). Here, she is pulling her donkey, Patrick, by a rope, in a desperate attempt to get him to move.
Still from Antoinette dans les Cévennes (My Donkey, My Lover, and I) starring Laure Calamy and screening at Cinemania

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We first meet Antoinette (Laure Calamy) in her classroom, where she has her elementary school students, counting, heads down on their desks, while she changes into a silver dress at the back of the class. It’s for a class concert where she starts belting out a tune with such fervor that she starts to eclipse her dressed-in-black students as the centre of attention. It’s also the first sign that Antoinette falls somewhere on the bananas scale from zero to Sibyl (who, of course, is 100% bananas), and that the film is going to be a gentle comedy slightly at the expense of Antoinette’s shenanigans.

Soon after the concert, Antoinette is making out with the married father of one of her students, and finding out that their romantic getaway is being cancelled. He’s going on vacation to the Cévennes with his wife and daughter. So she decides she’ll take the same vacation, a six-day hike with a donkey, without telling him, without training, and hoping that she’ll just happen to run into him. When she arrives at her hostel, she very quickly gets needled into revealing the story of her trip to all of the other hikers, so her reputation precedes her at every destination along the hike.

Following in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson, despite no hiking experience, and with an uncooperative donkey named Patrick, Antoinette begins the gorgeous trek through the Cévennes and a fool’s errand to find her unworthy boyfriend. Caroline Vignal’s Antoinette dans les Cévennes (My Donkey, My Lover, and I) unsurprisingly proves to be more about the journey than the destination, as Antoinette finds a sense of independence and accomplishment through her trek and bond with Patrick. It’s a showcase role for Calamy, who was so good as Sibyl’s sister in Sibyl and the best friend in In Bed with Victoria, though best known in France as the lead of Call My Agent. For most of the film, it’s just Calamy, the donkey, and the landscape, and it’s zany fun watching her find her footing, talk to Patrick, and eventually, climb out of the bad situation she was in. 

Antoinette dans les Cévennes is available to stream across Canada for 48 hours starting November 20. Tickets are available here.

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Are boys OK? Un vrai bonhomme and Mes jours de gloire at Cinemania

Un vrai bonhomme (Man Up!) and Mes jours de gloire are both coming-of-age stories about boys who are ill-equipped to cope with their mental health issues.

Stills from Un vrai bonhomme, a.k.a. Man Up! (left) and Mes jours de gloire, a.k.a. My Glory Days (right), both screening at Cinemania
Stills from Un vrai bonhomme (left) and Mes jours de gloire (right), both screening at Cinemania

Un vrai bonhomme and Mes jours de gloire, two titles at the Cinemania French Film Festival, would make for a good double feature about boys (or men) suffering from mental health problems that they’re afraid to address. Both are often smart about men’s emotional lives, though both also make the misstep of equating successful sexual conquest with a panacea for all problems.

Man Up! (Un vrai bonhomme)

Thomas Guy (left) and Benjamin Voisin (right) star in Man Up! (Un vary bonhomme) at Cinemania.
Thomas Guy (left) and Benjamin Voisin (right) star in Man Up! (Un vary bonhomme) at Cinemania.

Benjamin Voisin first impressed me this year as a closeted teen in Proud, and then as an object of desire in Summer of ‘85 — to the point that I hadn’t even realised it was the same actor. So it was for his performance that I checked out Un vrai bonhomme, in which he plays Léo, the older brother of the film’s protagonist, Tom (Thomas Guy). Léo dies early in the film, but continues to appear as Tom’s imaginary friend who, by turns, cheers his little brother on and offers a toxically masculine influence on the sensitive, grieving teen. Here, Voisin is once again infectiously charismatic, but with a dark edge.

But Benjamin Parent’s Un vrai bonhomme is very much Thomas Guy’s, who plays the central character, Tom, grieving the loss of his brother while starting at a new high school, without having properly dealt with his anxiety that can lead to violent outbursts. To cope, Tom imagines that his brother, Léo (Voisin), is always by his side, offering advice and support — even if it’s terrible advice based on masculine ideals Tom has trouble recognizing as problematic. Guy is utterly convincing and compelling as a sensitive boy who doesn’t know how to talk about his feelings or ask for help, but who occasionally opens up enough to find genuine friendship and romantic connection. Though the female characters who act as signposts to Tom’s development are disappointingly underdeveloped, Tom’s journey to find himself, and say goodbye to the ghost of his brother, are heartfelt and often funny.

Screens online across Canada on November 21-23. Tickets are available here. 

Mes jours de gloire (My Days of Glory)

Vincent Lacoste stars in Mes jours de gloire (My Glory Days) at Cinemania. Lacoste is leaning his head back out of a window while he smokes a cigarette.
Vincent Lacoste stars in Mes jours de gloire (My Glory Days) at Cinemania

At this point, any film starring Vincent Lacoste is worth seeing for his performance; he has a knack for playing neurotic goofballs and losers with enough sensitivity that you can’t help but love them. Whether it’s as the nanny-turned-lover in In Bed with Victoria, the uncle-turned-unexpected-father who must cope with the trauma of a terrorist attack in Amanda, or the doctor hopeful who keeps failing his medical school exams in The Freshmen, Lacoste is always fascinating and fun.

In Antoine de Bary’s Mes jours de gloire, he plays a twentysomething struggling actor, Adrien, who is in so much debt that he is about to lose his apartment, and all of his belongings. But he’s incapable of admitting to his faults or his increasing depression and struggles with intimacy. When he unexpectedly lands a part playing a young De Gaulle (funnily enough, you can watch another biopic of De Gaulle at Cinemania and Cinefranco this week) because he looks the part, things start to look up. His career could be restarting, and he meets a girl (Noée Abita, sadly underused) ten years too young for him but probably more emotionally mature than he is. But when both of these opportunities fall apart, so does he, and the film deftly heads into oft unexplored territory of suicide and male depression.  

Lacoste is equally adept at physical comedy as he is at showing his character’s deep vulnerability and sadness. Early in the film, his psychiatrist mother suggests that he struggles with romantic intimacy because he is incapable of physically touching his friends. The way Lacoste awkwardly starts trying to touch his friends’ shoulders in solidarity, is absolutely hilarious. At the same time, the way Adrien turns his own mental health struggles into a joke as an avoidance tactic, is heartbreaking. By the time he breaks down, Lacoste has utterly earned our sympathy for this not quite grown up man.

Screens online today across Canada until 6:15 a.m. ET. Tickets are available here.

You could be missing out on films like Mes jours de gloire and Un vrai bonhomme at virtual cinemas and film festivals near you. 

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Keep reading about other recommended French films at Canadian festivals this month…