The Typecasting of Dalle

To peak so young.

Béatrice Dalle will never be allowed to leave behind this surprisingly sympathetic portrait of antisocial personality disorder. The film somehow begs you to remain neutral and objective while showcasing the most repellent extremes of the condition.

An interesting contrast to the portrayal of an equally disturbed young woman in L’été meurtrier—which was released just two years prior.

The Discreet Charm of Malle

French cities are in tatters as students and workers unite against capitalism and consumerism. Meanwhile, a bourgeois family in Provence bickers over inheritance before its deceased matriarch has even been put in the ground. Milou en mai is rather like a Luis Buñuel film but with the surrealism dialled all the way down. Surprisingly fun.

Rod Paradot: A star is born

A six-year-old boy from a dysfunctional home is placed into care, develops serious emotional problems, and spends the next decade getting into trouble with the law while social welfare services fight to rehabilitate him.

La Tête Haute (Standing Tall) seems unremarkable when summarised like this, but it is actually a very compelling film—in large part due to the breakthrough performance of Rod Paradot who plays problem-child protagonist, Malony.

From his sneering disdain towards the Juvenile Court Judge portrayed by Catherine Deneuve, to the sheer physical embodiment of the mental demons that torture him, it is hard to believe that this is Paradot’s first film; that he was a trainee carpenter waiting to be discovered just months before production began.

One very jarring aspect of this film is its tendency to exasperate the viewer. Quite often Malony will seem to be making progress only to sabotage it with a senseless act. It becomes repetitive but is almost certainly intended to project the child protection team’s frustration onto the audience.

And here we find another trait that sets this apart from other recent French films concerned with the rehabilitation of troubled teenagers: It paints the Judge, the Social Worker, and their colleagues in a more constructive and positive light. They are as frustrated with the system as the child, but their battle is with the confines and constraints that impede their ability to help him. They actually seem to care.

Very much recommended.

Clémenti to Obscurité

La Brune et moi (“the brunette and me”) is a 50 minute film which explores French punk in 1979, showcasing several bands that were dominating the scene back then.

I’ve been meaning to watch it since discovering Edith Nylon and Taxi Girl over a decade ago, but I was too slow on the uptake to notice it was available on YouTube all this time, and for a while on Henri—Cinémathèque française’s free VOD platform.

Most of the music in this feature is actually pretty great, but it is unfortunately punctuated by a low-effort screenplay about a notorious (at the time) groupie called Anouschka who decides the time is ripe to be exploited by a businessman in return for a music career.

Bizarrely, the businessman in this puerile flick is played by none other than Pierre Clémenti. I heard his career had been derailed following conviction and imprisonment for drugs offences in the 1970s, but I had no idea the event was of such Granville-Paris Express proportions that the trajectory had taken him from Belle de jour to something as tawdry as this.

Nevertheless, La Brune et moi does offer an interesting look at how punk counterculture was playing out in Paris back then—something the media in the Anglosphere largely ignored—and for that alone, it’s worth a watch.

Actually… not for that alone. You need to see Pierre Clémenti in this. You really do.

Lacks Bells and Whistles, But Still Worth It

Following the breathtaking success of The 400 Blows in 1959, François Truffaut toyed with the idea of documenting the life and times of its central character—Antoine Doinel—in a series of films. Between 1962 and 1979 his vision was realised, and this box set comprises all five chapters of the story.

Of the five titles, the second (Antoine and Colette) was made for TV, not cinema, and although it is an essential part of the series, it seems to have caused something of a curation headache.