French resistance is useless

FILM .... with Tim Milfull

Rebellion (M)
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Stars: Mathieu Kassovitz, Iabe Lapacas
Rating: 4/5 129-minutes, now screening

New Caledonia in 1988 was part of one of the last great colonial regions in a shrinking French empire that carelessly administered outposts so many thousands of kilometres from Paris. Some may recall another infamous circumstance of brutal French diplomacy in the mid-1990s, when President Jacques Chirac rode roughshod over protests from the regional leaders of South-Pacific countries including Australia and New Zealand, and went ahead with the final French nuclear tests.

In the late-1980s, as Chirac and his former president, Francois Mitterand squared off in a vicious political battle, a small group of Kanak islanders decided to ramp up their mostly unsuccessful efforts to gain the right to self-determination.
This is where Mathieu Kassovitz’s film Rebellion opens, in the smoke and ashes of a failed hostage negotiation, and as well as writing and directing the film, Kassovitz also takes on the role of the lead character, French gendarme and counter-terrorism expert, Captain Philippe Legorjus, who was sent in to negotiate with the rebels.
Along with the rest of the world, Legorjus was initially caught up in the false story propagated by the colonial authorities, and led his soldiers into a confrontation with the Kanaks under the impression that he would be dealing with cannibals who had beheaded several police.
The graphic and tragic reality of Rebellion is the sheer ordinariness of the characters, from the frustrated Legorjus caught trying to make decisions influenced by conniving politicians more interested in maintaining their careers than in facilitating a just solution, to the leader of the rebels, former seminarian, Alphonse Dianou (Iabe Lapacas), who knows that he may have led his followers to their deaths. This powerful and upsetting real-life drama ruthlessly excoriates the behaviour of several unscrupulous politicians, and highlights the futility sometimes faced by those seeking truth in the face of duplicity.

Life, by chocolate

Romantics Anonymous (M)
Director: Jean-Pierre Ameris
Stars: Benoît Poelvoorde, Isabelle Carré
Rating: 4/5 80-minutes, now screening

For such a brief film, Jean-Pierre Améris’s Romantics Anonymous packs an impressive punch, and certainly leaves no strings untied. As the film opens, we learn that the little chocolate factory run by the old-fashioned and emotionally stunted Jean-René (Benoît Poelvoorde) is churning out its sweet delights at the same time as its last gasps.

There is simply too much sophisticated competition out there for his business, which has not kept up with the times: its product is still excellent but having remained unchanged for decades, is now considered boring. When Jean-René advertises for a new sales-rep, the nervous Angélique (Isabelle Carré) –who has her own emotional hang-ups—arrives thinking she has applied for a chef’s position.
In an effort to avoid confrontation, Jean-René and Angélique ignore the misunderstanding, and suddenly the factory has a new sales-rep who knows nothing about the job. Both of these troubled souls spend so much time trying to avoid exactly the kind of interaction with other people that their work demands.
And each week, the factory owner and his sales rep attend their own forms of psychotherapy in the hopes of overcoming their fears. Unfortunately, it turns out that their treatment ultimately dictates that the two should begin dating, which might also have the side-effect of saving the business.
Benoît Poelvoorde has made a career of playing uptight roles, and Jean-René is no exception, alternately frustrating and endearing his employees. And Isabelle Carré’s Angélique makes us want to reach in and hug her, even as we acknowledge she would probably shrink into insignificance. But together these two characters form such a charming alliance against their fears that it will be hard for audiences to walk away from Romantics Anonymous without a smile on their faces.

THE BINGE

Getting the tabloid treatment

I sat down to watch the DVD of Errol Morris’s Tabloid half expecting the outrageously loopy Joyce McKinney to turn up at my door ready to rebut the documentary’s version of her life. When the film screened throughout the US, she regularly harangued audiences with corrections.

Alternately famous as a beauty queen, alleged kidnapper and rapist of Mormons, and cloner of dead dogs, McKinney is a complex and wildly contradictory character, and her experiences as a public figure only serve to condemn the tabloid press that sought to exploit her eccentricity.
The subject of Australian filmmaker Megan Doneman’s documentary Yes Madam, Sir is more grounded but no less controversial. Kirin Bedi was the first woman to join the Indian Police Service. Rising quickly through the ranks after singlehandedly suppressing a riot, Bedi set aside concerns of gender in her pursuit of justice and a police force free of corruption. But at every turn, this diminutive and fearless woman faced obstruction and bigotry.
If This is Not a Film, perhaps Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s latest work is a documentary. The title of this short, poignant, and powerful work refers to the censure imposed upon Panahi by the Iranian government, which dictated that he engage in no filmmaking activities.
Smuggled out of Iran on a memory stick inside a cake, This is Not a Film documents Panahi’s intense frustration at his house arrest, and not being able to do the work he loves. Honest and unflinching, this doco-not-film highlights the cruelty and madness of a ruthless regime. Panahi has since been jailed for his work within his home country.