London Film Fest 2010 Day 4 - LITTLE WHITE LIES / LES PETITS MOUCHOIRS

LITTLE WHITE LIES is a superb film from French writer/actor/director Guillaume Canet (TELL NO ONE.) It is laugh-out-loud funny; wryly observed and reduced me to tears. What more could one want?

In a bravura opening sequence, Ludo (the beautiful, hilarious Jean DuJardin) is horrifically injured in a motorcycle crash. We watch his close friends gather at the hospital, distraught, but convincing themselves that they should still take their summer holiday in Bordeaux. After all, Ludo is in intensive care, and they can do nothing for him. It's a marvelous scene and reminded me of Austen's opening in Sense and Sensibility where Mr and Mrs Dashwood reason their relatives out of a bequest, all the time reassuring themselves that they are doing what duty requires of them. The friends then proceed to Max and Veronique beautiful summer home, where their neuroses, romantic entanglements and narcissism will be exposed. Francois Cluzet is absolutely superb playing the stressed-out, up-tight successful businessmen, ruining his and everyone else’s holiday with his strict schedules and castigation of his staff. But Max has another reason to be stressed out – his long-time, very married, friend Vincent (Benoît Magimel) has told him he’s in love with him! Poor Vincent’s wife, Isavelle (Pascale Arbillot) has no idea, other than that her husband would rather binge on chocolate than sleep with her. And then there’s Marie (Marion Cotillard), a beautiful woman who may or may not be in love with the injured Ludo, but is also being stalked by a soft-hearted musician, who turns up unexpectedly at the house with a guitar and an atmosphere of awkwardness. And finally we have two single men - Éric (Gilles Lellouche) and Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) – the former denying he is in love, the latter desperately, delusionally, boringly so. All of this emotional indulgence is played out in sharp contrast to Jean-Louis (Joël Dupuch) – the proprietor of a local beach-side restaurant who has to listen to all these characters whining, all the time fulfilling their expectation of him to play the role of jovial provincial host.

LITTLE WHITE LIES is a long film that doesn’t feel long, because we’re immersed into the emotional lives of a large cast of characters, all of whom are slightly eccentric and yet very much rooted in real life. Maybe it’s the kind of people I hang out with, or the fact that I’m much the same age as many of these characters, but it felt as if Guillaume Canet had perfectly captured the way in which an old bunch of friends interact. I found myself laughing with them, rather than at them, willing them to succeed in their romantic games, and moved to tears by their tragedies. I left the cinema feeling like I’d had an emotional work-out but also sad to be leaving their company. And that, I think, is pretty much the best praise one can give a film – when it immerses you in a world that feels authentic and makes you glad to spend time there.

LITTLE WHITE LIES played Toronto 2010 and goes on release in France and Belgium on October 20th.

MESRINE: PART ONE - DEATH INSTINCT - a new gangster classic

Jean-François Richet's French gangster biopic is the movie that PUBLIC ENEMIES should've been: part character study, part thriller, part prison break-out movie. It's well-directed, emotionally and intellectually satisfying and superbly acted. It evokes a sense of time and place and involves the audience without glamourising the subject matter.

Richet splits his biopic into two parts, in the manner of Steven Soderbergh's recent biopic of Che Guevara. The movies are self-contained but as soon as I watched one I was desperate to see the other, and they work best as a whole.

Part One opens as a tense thriller - a plump, middle-aged Jacques Mesrine (an award-winning performance from Vincent Cassel) and an enigmatic woman (Chloe Sevigny) are ambushed by the police in late 1970s Paris. The movie then switches to a more youthful Mesrine, witnessing horrific interrogations as a soldier in the Franco-Algerian war - the start of his brutalisation perhaps? After the war, he rejects a bourgeois life and joins his childhood friend working for local mob boss (Gerard Depardieu). Mesrine is smarter than the average thug, more charming, and more honourable. Cassel has us believing that he does want to make good for the sake of his kid, but ultimately, he can't keep straight, and abandons his family for a life on the run in Canada with a similarly inventive, ruthless crim. played by an unrecognisable and ruthless Cecile de France.

The resulting movie is gripping, emotionally affecting, and impartial without being indifferent. Cassel is deeply impressive - but so are Depardieu and de France. The period and mood are brilliantly evoked - style serves content. This film is, simply put, a new gangster classic.

MESRINE PART ONE won three Cesars,for Best Actor, Best Sound and Best Director. MESRINE: PART ONE played Toronto 2008 and opened last year in Belgium, France, Russia, Hungary, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Croatia. It opened earlier this year in Poland, the Netherlands, Israel, Italy, Turkey, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Greece and Brazil. It opens in the UK and US on August 7th.