ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Guillaume Canet

Friday at AFIFest 2018

Welcome to Hollywood and the AFIFest Presented by Audi. This is an amzing festival that brings together some of the world best filmmakers and new talent bringing fresh voices to the cinema. To be sure, there are more movies than anyone can get to, which makes me appreciate the programmers? job of finding the best of the best.

I started the festival with what is actually the first episode of a limited TV series. The opening episode of I Am the Night introduced us to two main stories that will come together as the series moves forward. In one, Pat (India Eisley), a light-skinned African-American girl, discovers that she is actually the granddaughter of a rich white doctor in L.A. After a confrontation with the woman who raised her, she sets off to L.A. to find who she really is. Meanwhile in L.A., Jay Singletary (Chris Pine) is a washed-up photojournalist who will do anything to get a picture he can sell. I have no doubt that we?ll discover that what he?s really searching for is redemption. At the end of episode one, things just begin to turn dark and ominous. I?m looking forward to seeing the rest of this six-hour series based in a true story. One of the reasons is that it is executive produced and the first episodes are directed by Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman). It will play on TNT in January.

In the evening I took in a French film, Non-Fiction (Double Vies), a comedy of relationships from director Olivier Assayas. It is the story of a husband and wife (Guillaume Canet and Juliette Binoche). He runs a publishing house; she is a TV actress on a successful police procedural show. We learn that all the characters are cheating on their partners, all suspect their partners are cheating on them, but does it matter. This is a very talky film, mostly taking place at dinner parties. The main discussion is the shift from old media to new and how that affects our idea of truth. More importantly, it questions how, in a post-truth world, we might think our subjective desire of reality may be more important than reality itself. There is a great deal of cynicism as the film plays out. I can?t find a North American release date for this, but I?m sure we?ll get a chance to see it in theaters.

C?zanne et Moi – 19th Century Artistic Bromance

?I can?t remember why I love you so much.?

Two boys meet in a small town in France, they have different backgrounds, but become great friends. They dream of life in Paris. When they grow up they head off to seek fame and fortune. They become the post-impressionist painter Paul C?zanne and novelist/journalist ?mile Zola. C?zanne et Moi is a fictionalized account of the lifelong?and often troubled?friendship of these two paragons of the arts in 19th Century France.

It should be noted that from an American perspective, C?zanne is far better known. Many Americans only know Zola because of his part in the Dreyfus Affair. Yet in their time, Zola was an important novelist whose fame far outshone that of his boyhood friend.

 

This film, though is not about their literary or artistic accomplishments, but about the friendship that goes back to their childhoods in Aix-en-Provence. Zola (Guillaume Canet) was an Italian immigrant whose father had died. He grows up without wealth or advantage. C?zanne (Guillaume Gallienau) is from a well-to-do family. Both disdain the bourgeois ethic of the day. As adults they set off to Paris. Their lives continue in parallel even though they are in different fields. Zola finds success and quickly takes on the middle class trappings. C?zanne, although his family has wealth, chooses to live the life of a struggling artist. He never really finds acceptance in the art world. Even the outcast Impressionists don?t accept him.

The two men at times cross paths and renew their friendship, but often C?zanne behaves boorishly, or Zola says something that upsets his friend. There is a certain bromance angle to the film. The two men have a genuine affection for each other, but they often seem to be at odds. The real break comes when Zola publishes a novel with a character that C?zanne believes is based on him. He finds it insulting. Later in the film, when there is a chance at reconciliation, C?zanne hears Zola telling others that his friend is a genius, but ?a stillborn genius?.

 

A thread of irony runs throughout the story. By the end of their lives, Zola had gained the world that C?zanne?s family had always had, while C?zanne lives as though he were impoverished. Zola was by far more successful in their lifetime, but today C?zanne is far better known. But the highest irony is that these two men wanted the friendship they had when they were younger, but could never seem to reconnect with it.

The film demonstrates how fragile friendship can be. It also shows the value of friendship and what is lost when those bonds are not maintained. These two men could have added a great deal to each other?s lives, but their failure to stay connected meant that each was diminished.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures