21st Chicago European Union Film Festival (March 9-April 5, 2018), Report No. 1 (JEANETTE: THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC, GUTLAND, CATCH THE WIND, INDIVISIBLE, BAREFOOT)

The month of March brings Spring, as well as that annual season of renewal and refreshment for Chicago cinephiles: the Gene Siskel Film Center's signature European Union Film Festival. Now in its 21st season, the fest runs this year from March 9 to April 5, and boasts 61 films from all 28 EU nations. I had a look at some of the first week's prospects. (For the full schedule, please go to www.siskelfilmcenter.org). 

For more on the EU Fest, I'd invite you to tune into the inaugural episode of Cine-File's new podcast, Cine-Cast on Transistor Radio, where you'll hear my friends and peers Michael Smith, Kyle Cubr, and me compare notes on fest prospects that have us excited. I confine my comments mainly to Arnaud Desplechin's ISMAEL'S GHOSTS, which plays the second week, as well as... 

Bruno Dumont's JEANETTE: THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC (New French) is on Sunday, 3pm and Thursday, 6pm. 

As I watched Bruno Dumont's JEANETTE: THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC, I thought of a film teacher I had back in college. He said something that's always stuck with me: what I'm looking for in film, he said, is something I've never seen before. Well, have you ever seen a metal musical about, specifically, the childhood of Joan of Arc, before? Transcribing Charles Peguy's epic poem "The Mystery of the Charity of Jeanne d'Arc" into music, Dumont uses experimental composer Igorrr's thrash metal as a kind of modern opera. As the film opens, it's 1425 and little Joan (Lise Leplat Prudhomme) tends sheep in the dunes on the Meuse river in northeast France, which has endured over 50 years of war. She beseeches the heavens, imploring Christ. If only we could see the dawn of your reign—after 14 centuries of Christianity, we've had nothing. In response, the sky blazes just as implacably blue and silent as ever. We hear the wind in the trees, the bleat of a sheep. When gripped by an ecstatic trance, she headbangs. Cut to several years later, and she is a teenager, played by Jeanne Voison. We know she won't make it past 19. Dumont has managed to make a film that's at once too goofy and irreverent for some French nationalist to embrace, while at the same time, I believe it's a deeply serious treatment of its subject and themes. The film retains a bit of the slapstick of Dumont's previous outing, SLACK BAY. I got a kick out of Joan's clumsy uncle, a rapper who looks like a teenager himself. He falls down a dune; attempting to mount a horse, he goes right over the other side. He also breakdances, after a fashion—at least, he does a bit of the ol' pop & lock. Not to mention an odd limbo dance. The choreography, by Phillipe Decoufle, is charming, full of cartwheels and leaps. The movements are strange yet precise. Sometimes, they're like semaphores. Sometime they're beautiful and funny at once, like the bread dance Joan does with the two hungry little boys. The number I liked best, as choreography and music, is the one with Madame Gervaise, who's played by twins, for some reason. Their twined voices and movements are mesmerizing, and funny, especially when they start thrashing. JEANETTE is punk in lots of ways: in its energy, its passion and life force, its amateur enthusiasm. 

Govinda Van Maele's GUTLAND (New Luxembourgish) is on Sunday, 5:15pm and Tuesday, 7:45pm.

"Mysterious, metaphysical, and shrouded in shadows, Govinda Van Maele's feature debut GUTLAND lives up to the unlikely tag of 'surrealist rural noir.'"

To read the rest of my writeup, please head to CINE-FILE Chicago and scroll down to the section titled "EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Week One."

 

Gaël Morel's CATCH THE WIND (New French) is on Friday, 2pm and Wednesday, 8:15pm

"Gaël Morel's CATCH THE WIND is a lovely, goodhearted (some may say syrupy), character-focused drama, but I'd recommend it if for no other reason than it gives a starring role to Sandrine Bonnaire."

To read the rest of my writeup, please head to CINE-FILE Chicago and scroll down to the section titled "EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Week One."

Edoardo De Angelis's INDIVISIBLE (New Italian) is on Sunday, 5:15pm and Thursday, 8:15pm

"Coming of age never hurt quite so much as it does in Edoardo De Angelis's unique, intensely moving drama INDIVISIBLE." 

To read the rest of my writeup, please head to CINE-FILE Chicago and scroll down to the section titled "EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Week One."

Finally, I had a look at Jan Svěrák's BAREFOOT (New Czech), which is on Sunday, 3pm and Monday, 7:45pm. The story of a little Prague boy's life in the countryside during WWII, when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland and occupied Boehmia and Moravia, it's superficial but sweet, and handsomely mounted—memories viewed through an amber lens. It was of some interest to me since Karolyn and I are traveling to the Czech Republic this month. We've been trying to learn a few words, so I enjoyed hearing the characters pronounce "dobry den."