Sur Mes lèvres : Read My Lips

She is lonely and desperate. He is a crook out on parole.

She leads a mundane existence as a secretary and is desperately seeking a man. To an extent that even while requesting for a trainee to help her out in doing the menial work, she says she would prefer a man, his age, physical characteristics. And she is deaf, but manages with hearing aid.

In walks the first applicant to the job, claiming he knows everything. She is more than glad to take him. Though, his being straight out of jail worries her at first.

Then begins their story, she heaps help after help on him. She makes him pull through, helping him learn the chores. He doesn’t seem as interested in keeping the job as she is.

A paradoxically intriguing character, how she wants a companion, only when she is alone or only when she is in public, but never when she is with him. You keep wondering what she has up her sleeve. What is she thinking now?

They have interesting things coming their way. The story unfolds in an unusual fashion. By the end of it you might feel the gist of it is nothing all you hadn’t seen so many times before. Though while it’s unfolding you can’t predict what will happen next. The rate at which they rush into one thing then another keeps you busy wondering.

It makes me admire the French. How easily they can make a movie which is entertaining as well as very close to the lives of somebody real somewhere.

Ridicule

Delightful ! Delightful!

The story of an estate owner in the times of Louis the XVI, whose estate is impoverished and people plagued with disease all because of the water which stagnates on their lands. Seeing no way out but to seek assistance, he decides to plead his case with the king at Versailles.

And so takes place a delightfully entertaining adventure of this man out to help his people out of their misery. But to get the help he has to literally put his wits to test. Because in those times to move up the social and ladder and be in the king's sight would have been the easiest if you were a master of the wits.

Naturally then the movie is resplendent with “quips”, “paradoxes” and “repartees” classified as different play of words by one of the characters.

Humour and curiosity keep the tone of this period film so light and fascinating that you realise period films can be so much more than a sombre narration. Must watch, changes your expectation of a period film.

Nani Cinematheque and the New French Film Festival

No one does it like the way French do.

The New French Cinema is here in Bangalore. Thanks to people like Prakash Belawadi and Alliance Francaise and many more. A lovely and interesting mix of movies of our contemporaries is being screened. No Goddard, no Truffaut. Strange but contemporary cinema should have come to us more naturally than the classics. But, then as the Alliance director said, “The fraction of the world cinema which is available in a city like Bangalore is too insignificantly small”. Another observation of his which he shared with the audience was that in a city full of book stores, of the books which are easily available and celebrated in France all he sees is one or two. “One or two”: a very small number.

I pledge my ignorance to French literary achievements. But, a nation which has produced so many cinema wizards should definitely be ruling a proud chunk of the movie market anywhere in the world. And why should they be only the movies which have won the test of decades of critical approbation. Why not what’s being served fresh and hot be shared with us.

I thank Nani cinematheque and Bangalore Bias for this opportunity. May there be more to come! Will keep you posted on all that was & would be revealed.