London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - MAMMUTH - Castigat Ridendo Mores

Typically you go to the London Film Fest and when you sit down to a French flick you get existential angst. But this year, with LITTLE WHITE LIES and MAMMUTH, I've had a wonderful, joyful time! After the hard-core psycho-drama of WOMB it was marvellous to watch MAMMUTH - with its warm colours, gonzo style DV photography, hilarious physical comedy, and ultimately uplifting sentiment. Gerard Depardieu plays a complete fuckwit called Serge Pilardosse - he's physically clumsy; sports a mullet that Mickey Rourke in THE WRESTLER would be proud of; basically, he's a walking disaster zone. Dumped into retirement, he realises that, like many working class people, he doesn't have enough money for retirement. So starts a sort of motorcycle road trip in which he tries to gather up the necessary paperwork from his seven previous casual jobs in order to qualify for a state pension. The road trip allows writer-directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervem to examine the basic injustice of an economic system in which you can work hard your whole life in blue collar jobs but still basically have nothing to show for it. But this social critique is explored with the lightest of touches and with so much good humour! Any film that can show a scene of mutual masturbation that seems utterly cute and sweet (not to mention recalling NOVOCENTO) deserves credit. And any movie that can use the device of a crash-victim (Isabelle Adjani) haunting the driver and not seem hammy also deserves credit. Depardieu excels at this kind of physical humour - and his final scenes are truly inspirational. But it's Yolande Moreau, as his long-suffering wife, who truly steals the picture with her hilarious turn dealing with automated call centres, and vengeful attitude toward the woman who stole her phone. In addition, we get a great little cameo from the evidently mental Miss Ming. What else can I say? This is a movie with a lot of heart, a good message, some first-class swearing, physical comedy and a joyous ending. Parfait!

MAMMUTH played Berlin 2010 and was released earlier this year in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria.

London Film Fest Day 6 - BELLAMY

BELLAMY is an interminable and deeply dull French cop movie directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Gerard Depardieu as the eponymous retired "flic". The movie lazily meanders through life in Nimes, where a sort-of crime is sort-of solved or rather pieced together by Bellamy through a series of happy coincidences. For example, Bellamy's wife's dentist happens to sell his car to the police chief who happens to be boffing the mistress of the alleged murderer. The mistress is - obviously - the pedicurist of Bellamy's wife. Oh, and the alleged murderer's wife's son is tutored by Bellamy's wife. The upshot is that there is no tension nor are there any steel interviews. People give up info over a cup of coffee. And anyway, the info isn't that exciting.

I just can't make BELLAMY out. What is Chabrol trying to achieve? The plotting is sub-TV quality and the production lifeless and wearisome. I swear only Depardieu's innate charm kept me from walking out.

BELLAMY played Berlin 2009. It opened earlier this year in France, Belgium, Argentina, Germany and Austria.

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.