Beyond the Years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW0WA_rXW2w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKOWxXZpiE

Beyond the Years (Cheon nyeon hak) (2007) is a South Korean film. Celebrated director Im Kwon-taek's 100th film, it is based on the novel The Wanderer of Seonhakdong, and was presented at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.[2] Despite being an informal sequel to Im's phenomenally successful Sopyonje (1993), Beyond the Years was not popular with Korean audiences.[3] Beyond the Years is the story of Dong-ho, a pansori drummer who returns to his childhood village in search of his blind stepsister, Song-hwa.

Beyond the Years" is a love story between a female traditional Korean pansori singer and a male drummer who are not actually blood-related but have been brought up as sibling. The story uses Korean scenery for its background. The movie was also produced by Im, who became the country's "All-Korean director" after his "Sopyonje," which overwhelmed the critics.

After Him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxkC0M5RVc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xTBiGyHxnk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx29deBYL2E

It’s an intense tale of a mother’s grief after the accidental death of her 20-year- old soDuration: 81 minsGenre: DramaDirector: Gaël MorelLead actor: Catherine Deneuve.
DENEUVE plays Camille, the mother. After her son’s death Camille focuses on her son’s best friend Franck, (THOMAS DUMERCHEZ), who was actually driving the car when the accident occurred. There’s an intensity in her that veers towards obsession.AFTER HIM never quite delivers in terms of drama although there’s a tremendous reality to the sadness. Co-writer/director Gael Morel seems to be satisfied with creating an unsettled mood to the film, garnering terrific performances from his cast in the process.But the film doesn’t go very much beyond the rather superficial premise that Camille is determined that Franck fulfil the promise that has been denied to her son.It’s all very European in style, particularly the ending, but there’s a sense of something missing here and it isn’t grief.
review
Catherine Deneuve is not just an actress but a country. For those of a certain (or even uncertain) age, she embodies an idea of France - incredible elegance, a touch of haughtiness, a sophistication that could only come from Paris, clad in YSL and her own fragrance. Untouchable, unworldly, flawless.
In the 1960s, she was the belle du jour, the face that every director and leading actor wanted to have - in every sense. She played whores and killers, vampires and gold-diggers, actresses and princesses and, later, even an American factory worker (in Lars von Trier's oddball Dancer In The Dark). In the 1980s, she became the official visage for Marianne, the symbol of France. La Reine Catherine, the French ideal.
That can be hard to live up to. Maintaining a legendary face takes work and it's a battle you can't win. Age shall weary them and the years condemn. Deneuve is now 64 and her face has begun to disobey her commands. I don't know if she has had facelifts, nor care, but I think there's less expression in her face than there once was. And no, I don't think that's always true of older actors - some become more expressive as they age, because they are better actors.
Then again, in this case, it may be the performance. Deneuve has always been good at coldly minimal roles. She has said that directors often have to get her to ramp her performance up, rather than down, because she tends to underplay. In this movie, it's the other way around: she starts huge and then keeps reducing the emotions, until she's almost completely inscrutable. It's an intriguing performance because it's like an attempt to erase the character. Maybe that's part of the attraction for Deneuve. Who would blame her, after almost 50 years in the footlights, for playing a woman who wants to become invisible?
The film is about grief, a tricky subject. Everyone knows a little about it and most of us have seen it done badly on film. At one end you get floods of tears; at the other, cold fury, with barren bleakness in between. Few films manage the gravity of it without becoming histrionic; once they succumb to that, it's all over. Life's too short to watch other people's unconvincing grief. If you're going to go after it, you'd better nail it. Anything less is pretentious.
For the first couple of reels of Apres Lui, the story of a woman whose son has been killed in a car accident, I was unconvinced. The director Gael Morel ( Le Clan) just seems to do the obvious but without clarity. The opening shows two young men horsing around as they dress in women's clothes. Deneuve breezes in wearing jeans and helps them with their make-up

They could be gay, except they talk about girls. It turns out they are going to a buck's party. Next thing, the phone rings and Camille (Deneuve) is told her son is dead. Apparently the French police do this sort of thing over the phone. She begins to wail, then calls her daughter Laure (Elodie Bouchez), to tell her. The crying continues through the identification of the body at the hospital with her ex-husband Francois (Guy Marchand), and the bleak funeral. En route to the wake Camille stops by the tree where her son Mathieu (Adrien Jolivet) died. She finds his friend Franck (Thomas Dumerchez) sitting there with a bunch of flowers, crying. She takes him to the wake. Both Laure and her father attack him for coming but Camille will not let them throw him out. So begins the relationship that will become the most important in Camille's life.
Morel, who was an actor in Andre Techine's wonderful 1994 film Wild Reeds, makes few concessions to clarity or brevity in these scenes. The light is so dim in the opening scene that I didn't recognise Franck as the same boy - the one who dressed up with Mathieu. That made it momentarily difficult to work out why people were so hostile to him at the wake. Morel withholds the news that Franck drove the car. Everyone on screen knows it but the audience is kept in the dark - literally. This is an unusual technique but characteristic of a certain kind of French film, in which keeping the audience informed is akin to pandering.
The combination of the twilight gloom and the depiction of grief as simple weeping just about did me in but then the film changes. Camille stops crying and begins to pursue her friendship with Franck. She goes to the university, where both young men were studying, to find out about his grades. She pursues his parents, who are migrants from Portugal, to ensure he returns to class. She gives him a job in her bookshop to provide a stipend. The cameraman is allowed to use lights, too.
The effect is to save the film and set it off in the direction Morel was always intending, towards mystery. This gives Deneuve something to do, as Camille tries to reconnect with her son's energy through Franck. The longer the film goes, the more nuanced the performance becomes. Deneuve convinces us that Camille's grief is getting worse, not better, and her awareness of what she's doing is receding, rather than improving. The more unhinged she becomes, the quieter and more moving Deneuve's performance.
As I say, it's hard to know how much of her stony visage is acting and how much is the result of what we might call maintenance. I think it's mostly the former but either way, it works pretty well for this role.

The Feelings Factory

Elsa Zylberstein in The Feelings Factory: Directed by Jean-Marc Moutout.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=26938043
Synopsis
Eloïse, 36, is a property lawyer in Paris. Young, good-looking and successful, she is nonetheless single. To end her solitude, and because deep down she desires a love-life that she initiates and controls like her career, she signs up with a speed-dating club. After all, isn't that all about being fast and efficient, too? Seven men, seven women, seven minutes to work their charm. Then the bell rings.

Review

A thirtysomething singleton turns to speed dating as an answer to her emotional emptiness in "The Feelings Factory," a quizzical relationships dramedy elevated by a terrif central performance by Elsa Zylberstein. Not so much an examination of the speed-dating phenom -- whose touchstone pic remains last year's shamefully ignored "Shoppen" by Ralf Westhoff -- this is more a look at New Millennium me-culture, but played sympathetically without grandstanding its social subtext. It's a solid bet for upscale auds on the foreign arthouse circuit.
Main titles reminiscent of '60s pop-art pics establish a light mood as Eloise Hautier (Zylberstein), 36, is seen in confident work mode as a property lawyer at a venerable firm where she's a junior partner. However, outside work, she has little personal life beyond other professional types, so decides to try out a speed-dating agency run by the smooth Sonia (Nathaly Coualy).
Each session, held in a sanitized, retro-'60s cocktail bar, involves seven men and seven women, each getting seven minutes with each other before a bell rings. Script has some sharply written fun with these mini-encounters, with Eloise as nervous and overeager as the men she meets. But whereas "Shoppen" was almost entirely concerned with the actual speed-dating process, it's only the starting point of the main story in "Factory."
The most promising candidate seems to be Jean-Luc (Bruno Putzulu), a handsome, confident business-type who meets Eloise's vague demands of "the same intellectual standing." Lunch leads to dinner, which leads to great sex, and Eloise confides in a girlfriend that she's fallen in love.
Meanwhile, script slowly makes clear that Eloise herself is not all she seems. She's seeing a doctor (Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, wasted in a cameo role) about her dizzy spells and chronic amenorrhea, and is worried she may never be able to have kids.
Parallel to this, she bumps into the seemingly least promising candidate at her speed-dating sesh -- the shy, self-critical, balding Andre (Jacques Bonnaffe). Unknown to her, he follows her back to work after their chat in a bookshop.
As she learns more about her medical condition, and the relationship with Jean-Luc starts to go cold, she spends time with the depressive Andre, who also -- in a scene that traverses an entire emotional spectrum in a few minutes -- turns out to be much more complex than she imagined.
From a very different perspective than his first feature, downsizing drama "Work Hard Play Hard" (2003), writer-director Jean-Marc Moutout shows an acute eye (and ear) for the emotional pressures on ambitious 21st-centurers who want it all on plate, now. "We've never been freer, but never more analyzed and told what to do," says one. And in one of the pic's most tender scenes, Eloise is gently told by her sick grandmother that, for her generation, marriage was always been more about family and affection than just sex and me-me self-analysis.
Pic's theme is less fresh than the way Moutout treats it, keeping the viewer as unsettled as its central character in what will happen next and juggling several emotional balls at the same time. Unexpected coda contains a neat throwaway twist.
On-screen chemistry between all the players is easy and convincing, with Zylberstein deftly maneuvering her way through the film's quicksand moods and avoiding playing simply a ditz. Technical package is thoroughly pro.

FRATRICIDE

Through its careful accumulation of details and the rough truths of its handheld camera movements, FRATRICIDE creates a poetic dimension to balance and illuminate its dire narrative. Xewat Gectan, as Ibo, is heartbreaking in a way that American child actors never manager to be. Rather than confront racial intolerance on the glib level of an American treatment such as CRASH, it cuts straight into the heart, with crisp direction and a profoundly human eloquence.” – Steve Dollar, The New York Sun“In its particulars – the director’s feel for character and space, as well as the sterling, naturalistic performances – it’s an absorbing drama about cultural alienation that sheds light on an underclass unfamiliar to most audiences.”–
New York Magazine

A cycle of both vengeance and redemption is what Yilmaz Arslan’s film Fratricide offers anyone willing to sit down and watch. Recipient of the Locarno Film Festival’s Silver Leopard award, the film examines both the cultural isolation and tribal feuding experienced by immigrants attempting to make their way in Western Europe. Released by Koch Lorber Films, Fratricide is yet another examination of Europe’s new melting pot and the inner strife that may result accordingly.
The film follows the journey of two young Kurds attempting to survive and hopefully make their fortune in modern Germany. Azad (Erdal Celik) is Kurdish teenager who at the film’s beginning departs from his rural home in order to make his living in Germany; his journey paid for by his older brother who works as a pimp. Upon arrival in his new environment, Azad is taken in by a local youth hostel ran by local Kurdish community leaders. The hostel essentially acts as an oasis for new immigrants trying to adjust to the rather unwelcome social environment the city presents. While staying at the hostel and earning a living as a barber, Azad meets Ibo (Xevat Gectan), a young Kurdish boy whose parents were murdered in their home country.
A fast friendship soon develops between the pair as Azad looks after Ibo like a younger brother, in stark contrast to the combative relationship he has with his own older brother. Fate rears its cruel neck in however when one night the pair run into two Turkish brothers on a commuter train. After getting into a heated argument, Azad and Ibo escape but are not forgotten by the pair. Coincidentally, one of the brothers Ahmet (Oral Uyan) stumbles upon the pair again one day. A scuffle breaks out and before anyone has a chance to stop it, a murder is committed. From that point onward, the story spirals uncontrollably into a vortex of revenge and despair.
Both sides swear vengeance against the other and retribution naturally ensues, driven not only by loss but ancient tribal tensions as well. In the end, everyone loses and no one is left unscathed. While there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, it is bittersweet at best. Like Head-On, Fratricide exists within the new Europe, a contentious melting point of diverse cultures stemming from the recent waves of immigration from the Middle East and Africa. While America has often contended with its multicultural existence, it is nowhere near as difficult as in Western Europe where centuries-old homogenous cultures now find themselves being forced to adapt outside influence.
The tension and distaste that the native societies bring upon the immigrants creates the isolated environment that only fuels further strife. In their own way, Azad and Ibo are pursuing the American Dream in trying to reinvent themselves in a new land and strike out for their own fortune. However, they also contend with taking care of their families back home financially, which the film makes a rather acidic point about. Whether it is earned working as a butcher or prostitute, money is still money and for that reason alone the families at home nor the Europeans who exploit them have no qualms over how they earn it. Despite the inflicted cruelty, Fratricide still maintains a rather innocent, humanistic core in the relationship between Azad and Ibo. Their bond is forged in the harshest of times and the love they feel for one another is palpable and touching. It only shows that no matter how horrible things can get, love is still capable of beating the most poisonous hatred.

The Blackboard

Director: Samira Makhmalbaf

Script: Mohsen MakhmalbafSamira Makhmalbaf

Director of Photography: Ebrahim Ghafouri

Sound: Behrouz ShahamatMusic: Mohammad Reza DarvishiEdit: Mohsen Makhmalbaf

After the chemical bombing of Halabcheh in Iraq a number of Kurd refugee teachers seek for pupils who are willing to educate around the border as they carry their blackboards like Jesus’ crosses. One of them encounters a group of teenage smugglers and tries to convince them to educate as they carry their heavy backpacks full of smuggled stuff. The other teacher encounters a group of old and tired men, whom after years of migration are going to their own country to die there. But it seems that hunger and insecurity has not left and chance for the education of the generations.

The Blackboard (Script Outline)
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
(1999)

A dirt road in the heart of the mountains, day time:
Men with Kurdish costumes carrying blackboards on their backs appear from the turns and twists of the mountain road ahead. From the group, we hear a man who we’ll call “the first teacher” complaining to another teacher. He regrets becoming a teacher and having to spend the rest of his life wandering in vain, searching for students unwilling to study. A vague sound roars through the mountains. The teachers are worried. The sound is getting closer and closer. The teachers run and hide under the blackboards not to be seen by the helicopters passing over their heads. The sound of the helicopters moves away and the cry of the crows replaces it. One of the teachers, whom we’ll the second teacher, sticks his head out from the blackboard shelter and mimics the cry of the crows. The crows calm down and go away. The teacher stands up and camouflage their blackboards with mud. They continue their trail. After a while, the first and second teachers take another route and after they go a little farther, they too separate as the first teacher heads towards the villages while the second one aims at the heights hoping to find people among the shepherds who’d want to learn and would be willing to give the teacher a few loaves of bread to eat, in return of the lessons they receive.

Village road, an hour later:
The first teacher goes on to encounter an old man idling. The teacher asks him if he’d like to learn something. The old man answers by handing him a letter and asking him to read it to him. The letter is in Arabic and the Kurd teacher can’t read it, but the old man insists to know what the letter says. He tells the teacher that his son in a prisoner of war in Iraq and begs him to let him know of how his son is doing. The first teacher is finally forced to read the letter from his own imagination to give hope to the old man.


The villages, daytime:
The first teacher walks through the streets of the villages, singing and inviting the villagers, whom he hears but doesn’t see, to come take part in his class, but hears no response to his bid.

Mountain byway, (to Iran), daytime:
On his way, the second teacher sees teenage smugglers moving in a group. Asking around, he finds out that they go to Iraq everyday to bring smuggled goods back with them and thus live on the small profit they make this way. The second teacher asks them if they’d like to take part in his class, and they decline and prefer to be on the move. The second teacher suggests teaching them while walking with them. The teenagers refuse his offer and move on, but with the road being narrow, they have no alternative but to follow the teacher’s steps.

Mountain byway, (to Iraq), daytime:
Frustrated, the first teacher meets a group of old men who actually look more tired than he does. Each of them is carrying a package, and some are so old that they support themselves with the help of others. There is only one woman in this group, and she looks agitated and upset. The first teacher tries to persuade the group to let him teach them and asks in return to be fed by them, but the old men say they can’t feed themselves, much less someone else. In a corner, the teacher sees a sick old man, groaning of the pain his urinary bladder is causing him, preventing him from urinating. The first teacher offers to help him in any way he can, provided he is fed, and the old man says, “Tell me what I should do so I can urinate.” The other old men ask the teacher if he knows the way to the border, and offer to feed him if he takes them there. The first teacher accepts and joins the group. A minute later, the blackboard on the teacher’s back changes to a stretcher to carry the sick old man, with the first teacher one of the men supporting it. Meanwhile, the teacher is curious about the disturbed woman and asks around about her. He is told that the woman has been widowed and the child with her is from her late husband. He is suggested to marry her, if he really thinks himself so noble. They say that the blackboard he carries on his back is enough of a gift to offer to his bride.
Someone in the group helps the first teacher and the woman with their vows, and in its most primal from, pronounces them man and wife. The blackboard acts to separate the bridal chamber while the old man is helping her kid urinate.

The summit, same time:
The teenage smugglers learn on their bags and rest. The second teacher has found someone among them who is interested in learning how to write his own name, Ribvar.

A lake in a deep valley, same time:
The woman is busy washing her young child’s clothing. The old man groans of agony and prays to God to take his life and spare him the pain. The first teacher arranges his blackboard and the bigger rocks in the form of a chamber. The old man who urinted the couple tricks the kid into following him, leaving the couple with a chance to enjoy their privacy.
The first teacher and the woman are now alone in their chamber. The teacher looks at his wife for a while, he then takes a piece of chalk and in Kurdish, writes “I love you” on the blackboard. To teach this phrase to his wife, he spells the words for her.
The old men who initially started a game with walnuts to amuse the child are now absorbed in the game and forget all about the kid. The kid goes to the chamber and the mother uses the kid as an excuse to run out of the chamber. This shows that the woman doesn’t want her husband.
Some of the old men try to help the old man who was in pain by throwing him into the cold water of the river and splashing water on him. The old man trembles from the cold, but still cannot urinate. A fire is lit up and the old men stand around it to get warm. One old man suggests: “Even the devil would have urinated in that cold water. This man must be more evil than the devil himself.”

The stone summit, the byways, a little later:
The second teacher is training Ribvar on how to write his name. The teenager who is the leader of the group shows up and yells, “the soldiers are coming.” Everyone runs, and the teacher runs along. As the teenagers get far enough to feel safe again, the second teacher who has a blackboard on his back spells Ribvar’s name for him again. Ribvar, who is bending because of the load he carries, heads towards the blackboard on the second teacher’s back and learn to spell his name. Suddenly, a cry is heard as a teenager falls in the canyon. Minutes later, the second teacher’s blackboard is broken with the teenagers’ axes; to be used in a cast on the teenager’s broken leg. The teenagers, still scared, separate into groups to meet each other at a farther point in their path.

The fogged summit, same time:
The old men keep on going. They’re exhausted. The first teacher walks ahead of them with the blackboard on his back. The woman follows him, and the kid walks along while holding the mother’s sleeve. At a point in their path, the kid sees a rabbit running by, goes after it, and gets lost. The woman changes direction to follow her child and the teacher goes after her. The old men are now far away, and the first teacher, the woman, and the child are left by themselves. The teacher lays his blackboard on the ground and once again starts teaching the phrase “I love you”. The woman is sitting on the ground, feeding her child, and ignoring him. The lack of attention from the woman makes the teacher more and more angry; continuously grades her and gives her lower grades each time, as though intending to fail her. He ends up leaving her and walking away, but then he hears the voice of the woman who is running after him; he stops, and turns back. After getting close enough, the woman stretches her arms towards his neck only to take her child’s pants, which she had hanged on the blackboard to dry. She then hung back to the direction she came from.

The cattle route, same time:
The second teacher goes on to teach. Suddenly Ribvar and three others accompanying him throw themselves on the ground and come back crawling. After a moment, we find out that the teenagers are hiding in-between the passing cattle to escape the eyes of the guards on the border. The second teacher, with a blackboard on his back, looks like a shepherd in the herd. The teacher and the sheep pass the guards on the border. An hour later, it is time for the young girls to milk the herd. The thirsty teacher puts his hand in the way of the milk pouring into the bucket and drinks some milk from the sheep. The blackboard is leaning against the back of the second teacher and Ribvar is practicing to write his name. When he finally succeeds in writing the word “Ribvar” like the teacher had on the same blackboard, he cries of happiness “I did it, I did it, I actually wrote my name!” and is instantly killed with a bullet that roars into the air. The other teenagers run toward the mountains, but with the sound of each bullet, we see one of them fall and roll on the ground in the middle of the fleeing sheep.

A mountain close to the Iraqi Kurdistan border, same time:
The old men, scared by the sound of shooting, run and hide behind the nearest rocks. The woman who fears chemical bombing hides under the first teacher’s blackboard and pours gravel in the front of the blackboard to stop chemical bombs, while hugging her young child very hard. The old man, who tried everything but couldn’t urinate, sits in some corner and urinates in his pants. Scared, he too takes refuge under the blackboard. A moment later, they all crawl away and the woman drags her child under her while howling of fear of the chemical bombardment that would follow. The first teacher, who is holding the blackboard as a shield on top of the woman and her child’s head, tries to calm her down, hoping to reduce her fear.



The border, the last hours of day:
The group of old men with the first teacher, the woman, the child, and the old man, who couldn’t urinate, reach the border. The wind is blowing and there is fog around them. The first teacher shouts, “we’re there”. This is your home. At first, no one believes him, but they finally accept and fall down to the ground to pray God. To pay respect, they take their shoes off before crossing the borderline.
At the last moment, the man who had married the teacher and the woman comes to the teacher and convinces him to divorce her. He explains that the woman’s heart is with her dead husband, so the first teacher accepts and their divorce is pronounced. The blackboard that had been offered as a gift is put on the woman’s back while she walks away.
As the woman crosses the fogged border, one can see the words “I love you”, Which the woman never seemed to learn, on the blackboard on her back.

The Girl from Paris (2002)

SYNOPSIS

The deeply expressive, down-to-earth Mathilde Seigner stars in this beautiful, scenic film as Sandrine, a 30-year-old woman who has decided to give up her career as a computer engineer in Paris to be an agriculturist. She returns to school, which is half textbook work and half hands-on farming experience . Soon after, she buys a farm in the Rhône-Alps region of France, a rugged mountainous area where the springtime views and clear air are the payoff for the intense isolated winters. There's only one hitch in Sandrine's plan: the cold and curmudgeonly former owner, Adrien (Michel Serrault), will live on the property for an additional 18 months before leaving the farm to retire. As Sandrine learns to run her new farm, coming up with business innovations of which Adrien could never have dreamed, he looks on in silent admiration but keeps his door shut to her. Finally, the two learn to communicate, teaching each other some valuable lessons. This understated film, which makes the French Alps look like paradise, shows two very lonely sides of life: Sandrine's as a young single woman who has not yet found a companion, and Adrien's as a man in his last years of life whose wife has already passed on.

The interview ofthe actress Mathilde Seigner , appeared in Telegraph (U.K)

Baby, you can drive my tractor

By Sheila Johnston
Published: 21 Jul 2002


This is the tale of two actress sisters. One, blonde, beautiful, a former model, is married to one of the world's leading directors and plays starring roles in his films. The other, brunette, is a little plainer and heavier set, but has the same sleepy almond eyes and striking, strong-boned features. Over the last few months, Emmanuelle Seigner, the blonde, has floated exquisitely up the steps of the Palais in Cannes on the arm of her husband, Roman Polanski. Meanwhile the brunette, Mathilde, has appeared as a sluttish, child-battering single mother in last month's Betty Fisher and as a trainee farmer in The Girl from Paris slaughtering a pig while whisking its blood in a bucket.

This modest film was last year's surprise sleeper hit in France, making Seigner, at 34, one of the country's most sought-after actresses. She plays a city slicker who moves to a beautiful but lonely part of the High Alps where she is hindered then reluctantly aided by the crotchety old peasant (Michel Serrault) who sells her his farm, then sticks around to watch her make a hash of it. At first she successfully uses her computing skills to market the place on the Internet as a holiday gite. But she finds survival tougher when the winter snows arrive.





We meet in a hotel in Saint Germain, the smart Rive Gauche district where Seigner grew up and still lives. The hotel brasserie is dim, elegant in a slightly threadbare way and almost empty except for a waiter flapping anxiously over a trolley of over-priced morsels. Then late and without apology, a languid figure heaves into view wearing what looks like a random assembly of chain-store tat: loose black T-shirt and culottes, clumpy brown sandals, various bits of costume jewellery, sunglasses thrust back on the top of her head. Seigner says proudly that she has a "personal stylist" but adds "I don't like complicated things in fashion. I just take the first thing that comes to hand each morning. It's a drag dressing up. Women who do that have time to waste."

She plops down lazily on a sofa, legs apart, elbows akimbo, and, in between spoonfuls of terrine washed down with Diet Coke, talks in staccato bursts punctuated with all the sighs, snorts, shrugs and moues that the French use to express that very Gallic attitude known as je m'en foutisme: the state of not caring less. Her voice is unexpectedly deep and her laugh (which is rare) throaty. While courteous, she makes no effort to project a glimmer of star quality.

"The script wasn't brilliant, but it held together," she states baldly of The Girl From Paris. "And I liked the idea of a girl who follows her dream through right to the end. The pig-killing scene wasn't my favourite. I was in a hurry to get it over. It disgusted me. But I did it."

She was unsurprised by the film's success: "I knew. I can sense what the public likes." This is said with some justification: Seigner's other recent roles, as a cynical beautician who boasts of "sex-ray vision" in Venus Institute, and as the tart-tongued wife of a man stalked by a creepy childhood friend in Harry He's Here to Help, were also both in small films by unknown directors which became big commercial hits.

The director, Christian Carion, says he cast Seigner for her "charm and sensuality", her ability to hold her own opposite Serrault, a veteran scene-stealer, and because she was one of the few actresses who would not look ridiculous behind the wheel of a tractor. "I didn't want a girl who was drop-dead gorgeous, but someone with character," he adds.

Seigner shrugs off the tasks she is called upon to perform (they also include driving a combine harvester, wielding a chainsaw and delivering two baby goats). "I did them more by instinct than through working at them. A role is a role. I don't intellectualise. I invest myself in it, but in the end je m'en fous, it's a game. I don't ask myself too many questions. I went into acting because I didn't feel like studying. I thought this was a job where I wouldn't have to work too hard. And I didn't know how to do anything much else."

At 23, she started out a little late for the nymphet roles and was, in any case, too chunky. Hardly sylph-like today, she used to be over a stone and a half heavier, until asked to lose weight for a role in 1999. "It wasn't much fun. It took will-power. But directors see me differently now." Does she consider herself beautiful? "Sometimes yes, sometimes, no, like everyone else. Actually I don't really care; it's not an obsession. Superficial things don't interest me.

'Some actresses, like Monica Bellucci, really play on that, they need that glamorous image. But not me. What counts is the credibility of the characters, especially since I play a lot of working women. What I like is when people tell me that they believe in me as a farmer, as a beautician, as a police officer. There's something very earthy about me. I'm true and simple in my acting style."

She never worried about competing with her gorgeous big sister. "Emmanuelle hasn't followed the same road at all as me. She does American films, speaks very good English, is much better known internationally. I didn't want to follow her. She had her way and I have mine." Mathilde speaks no English. "I can't be bothered to learn it. I like France, you know. I've no desire to make films anywhere else."

They live close by and visit each other often, she says. But asked, for instance, if she has seen The Pianist, Polanski's Golden Palm winning film about a musician who survived the Polish ghetto, she replies vaguely, "I know that people find it very beautiful and very interesting. It's about the Jews, all that, non? It's about him, isn't it?"

What did the family think of her sister's choice of partner? "Nothing much surprises me, and my parents are very tolerant. And if she's in love, eh bien, they respect that; there's nothing to discuss."

Mathilde's own private life is on hold after she split up with her boyfriend of three years, the comedian Laurent Gerra, last autumn. Immediately after the split, she dropped coy hints that it was because of her desire for a baby. "It's mainly a question of time. You need time to be with someone. Me, I don't have the time," she says now briskly.

Seigner is, indeed, in a hurry. She has made over 20 films in 10 years, squeezing in three assignments while The Girl For Paris went on hold for five months between its summer and winter shoots. She is currently on tour in a production of Educating Rita.

As she gets up to be photographed, the brasserie's sole other client, a man who has been desperately trying to catch her eye for the last half-hour, pounces to introduce himself. Seigner looks up at him with her bedroom eyes and treats him to one of her fabulous smiles. At that moment, and when she switches on briefly for the camera, the charm and sensuality which Carion saw in her are finally on high beam

Review Summary

Can a thirtysomething gal from the city find happiness with a goat farm and its aging overseer? Sandrine (Mathilde Seigner) is a computer expert who has successfully pursued a career in business; however, her career path was chosen to please her family more than herself, and Sandrine has decided to move away from the fast pace of city life to rural France. Hoping to put her job skills to work in a new context, Sandrine begins studying agriculture, and arranges to buy a goat farm from Adrien (Michel Serrault), an elderly farmer who is nearing retirement. Adrien will spend another year and a half at the farm in order to insure a smooth transition to Sandrine's management, but his attitude toward her speaks less of gratitude than resentment; he isn't eager to show her the workings of the farm he helped to build, and his behavior is more than a bit hostile. Using her computer skills, Sandrine creates a website that generates a whole new market for the goat cheese and fruit preserves the farm generates, which helps her win Adrien's grudging respect, and when Adrien falls ill and it looks possible he may not live out his final stay on the farm, he begins to open up to her, sharing all he knows about the farm, and a new level of admiration and trust grows between them. Une Hirondelle a Fait Le Printemps was the first feature film from writer and director Christian Carion. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Movie Details
Title: The Girl From Paris
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Status: Released
Country: France, Belgium
Genre: Drama, Foreign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCwJykPDU1Y

Sorry,we didn't get a video subtitled in English.

The Grocer's Son

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLG-Ou0TcDA

It is summer, and thirty-year-old Antoine is forced to leave the city to return to his family in Provence. His father is sick, so he must assume the lifestyle he thought he had shed—driving the family grocery cart from hamlet to hamlet, delivering supplies to the few remaining inhabitants. Accompanied by Claire, a friend from Paris whom he has a secret crush on, Antoine gradually warms up to his experience in the country and his encounters with the villagers, who initially seem stubborn and gruff, but ultimately prove to be funny and endearing. Ultimately, this surprise French box-office hit is about the coming-of-age of a man re-discovering life and love in the countrysideIt is summer, and thirty-year-old Antoine is forced to leave the city to return to his family in Provence.

When his father (Daniel Duval) has a heart attack and is hospitalised, thirty-year-old Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé) has to go back to the village in Provence helping his mother (Jeanne Goupil) and assume the lifestyle he thought he had shed, driving the family grocery cart from hamlet to hamlet, delivering supplies to the few remaining, mostly elderly inhabitants. Accompanied by Claire (Clotilde Hesme), a friend from Paris on whom he has a secret crush, Antoine resents being forced back to his father's orbit, and his brittle relationship with both his father and brother Francois (Stephan Guerin-Tillie) cause much conflict, while Francois has his own broken marriage to cope with. But gradually he warms up to his encounters with the villagers, while clumsily mishandling his budding relationship with Claire.

http://www.bigpondmovies.com/

Alexandra

Alexandra

Director Alexander SokurovO

riginal story Alexander Sokurov

Producer Andrey SigleCo-producer Loran Danielou in association with «Rezo Productions» France with support of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography of the Russian Federation and Centre National de la Cinematographie France

An old woman named Alexandra comes to the military unit to see her grandson – the officer of Russian Army, who serves in Chechnya. A long talk with her grandson - a young officer – like a complicated way to each other, a chance meeting with an unknown native woman and a walk around the “wounded” city… - all these events of the latest two days moved her heart deeply. The film tells about the delicate gist of human relations.

Critical reception
The film received positive reviews from critics, although other critics found to be slow and difficult to sit through.[

Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 84 out of 100, based on 5 reviews.

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times named it the 3rd best film of 2008[4], Michael Philllips of the Chicago Tribune named it the 6th best film of 2008 and Bill White of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer named it the 8th best film of 2008
However, David Fear of Time Out: New York wrote: "Sokurov prefers the sort of deliberate pace that tests ADD-afflicted viewers. This isn’t an opinion: He’s an unapologetic practitioner of crafting “difficult” films, and a proud member of a slow-and-low legacy that extends from Antonioni to Akerman, from Tarkovsky to Tarr."



Movie review
From Time Out New York
One of the few roaring lions still producing genuine art-house cinema, Russian director Alexander Sokurov prefers the sort of deliberate pace that tests ADD-afflicted viewers. This isn’t an opinion: He’s an unapologetic practitioner of crafting “difficult” films, and a proud member of a slow-and-low legacy that extends from Antonioni to Akerman, from Tarkovsky to Tarr.
So to laud Sokurov’s latest film for being accessible is faint praise, as if the fact that you don’t need a Ph.D. in Russian history to watch it constitutes its worthiness. Alexandra’s story of an elderly woman (Vishnevskaya) who visits a remote military outpost may seem more straightforward than the director’s usual knotty, gnostic parables, but it’s neither simplistic nor a sellout. Even though Sokurov brings the characteristic symbolism—he might have titled this Mother Russia and Her Sons—the emotional aspects aren’t overshadowed by the intellectual ones. The balance makes all the difference.
As Alexandra tours the grounds where her grandson (Shevtsov) is stationed (the location is never specified, but it’s obviously Chechnya), the filmmaker paints a delicate portrait of soldiering: the banality of barrack life, the way machinery takes spatial precedence over human beings. The “enemy” is also given a face and a voice, but politics eventually plays second fiddle to the bond between the woman and her ward. That’s where the heart of Sokurov’s moving allegory beats loudest, paying off in a climactic sequence of hair-braiding that boils down nationalistic nurturing to a single tender, devastating gesture.
Author: David Fear 2008-03-25 16:28:34
Source:Time Out New York Issue 652: March 27–April 2, 2008
Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Соку́ров) (b. June 14, 1951, Podorwikha, Irkutsk Oblast) is a Russian filmmaker from St Petersburg who has been hailed as successor to renowned director Andrei Tarkovsky.
Sokurov was born in Siberia into a military officer's family. He graduated from the History Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he made friendship with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his Mirror.
Most of Sokurov's early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori Kozintsev's flat in St Petersburg.
Mother and Son (1996) was his first internationally acclaimed feature film. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003) which baffled the critics with its implicit homoeroticism (though Sokurov himself has criticized this particular interpretation. In the Wellspring DVD release, critic Armond White cited Sokurov's defense of the film against charges that it is "homoerotic". White explicated Sokurov's artistic and spiritual style, noting "To accept Sokurov's images without fear or limitation--to think love not smut--points lust in the direction of progress".[citation needed]. Sokurov has also filmed the first three installments of a planned tetralogy on prominent 20th-century rulers: Moloch (1999) about Hitler, Taurus (2000) about Lenin, and The Sun (2004) about Emperor Hirohito.
Sokurov is a Cannes Film Festival regular, four of his movies having debuted there one by one. Although he has been somewhat reluctant to cast accomplished actors in his features,[citation needed] the Russian Film Academy awarded several Nika Awards to him. His most commercially and critically successful effort to date has been a semi-documentary Russian Ark (2002), acclaimed primarily for its visually hypnotic images and single, unedited, shot.

Alexander SokurovOriginal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doe_pjh0XyY