Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, a group of the best and latest French films, arrived at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center last weekend and will continue to play throughout the month. The six-film series is co-presented by the Lincoln Center Film Society and Unifrance Films.
Think of Gaby Baby Doll, which plays Saturday, March 21, as a slacker fairy tale, and the droll French humor of Sophie LeTourneur’s film makes sense a lot more quickly. Played by Lolita Chammah, Gaby arrives with her boyfriend Vincent (Félix Moati) and another couple for some R & R at her doctor’s country mansion. Before long, Vincent departs in a huff, and Gaby’s friends follow. Gaby does not fare well living by herself. She picks up men at a local bar and takes them home so she doesn’t have to sleep by herself. Since no sex is involved, these stray men find themselves more than a little confused, and eventually Gaby is banned from the bar.
Nicolas (Benjamin Biolay), a hermit-like shack dweller, becomes her next — if resistant — conquest. He favors daylong walks with his dog, and after spending the night at Nicolas’s shack, Gaby starts tagging along. One recurrent sight gag has Gaby squatting along the path to pee during these walks.
Nicolas appears to be the caretaker for an empty chateau near his shack. With a scruffy beard and long, unruly hair, he appears daily in the same disheveled outfit. Nor does he like to chat, so he and gabby Gaby, who enjoys baths, are classic misfits. Think of a French variation on Frank Capra’s classic comedy It Happened One Night, and you’ll get the idea.
Thomas Lilti’s film, Hippocrates, plays on Sunday, March 22. This dark comedy about life in a Paris hospital earned six César nominations, and a best-actor award for actor Reda Kateb, who plays the Algerian intern Abdel. Director Lilti draws on his own experience as a primary-care doctor to explore with insight the underside of hospital culture.
Benjamin (Vincent Lacoste) arrives as a newly minted intern at the same hospital where his father (Jacques Gamblin) works. He quickly discovers how compromised the hospital’s ethics are when a patient dies on the young Benjamin’s watch. Nicknamed “Tsunami” because of his frequent hospital visits for complications from alcoholism, M. Lemoine (Thierry Levaret) suffers a heart attack, which goes undetected when Benjamin doesn’t administer an electrocardiogram. No matter that the ECG machine was broken; Benjamin’s colleagues and his father quickly cover up his mistake.
Another patient, Mme. Richard, is an elderly, terminal cancer patient under Abdel’s care. Although Mme. Richard tells the intern she doesn’t want to suffer, other staff members intervene with extreme and painful life-saving measures. Abdel, a fully trained doctor who was able to practice medicine in his country of origin if not in France, seems to be the hospital’s one caregiver committed to the Hippocratic oath, “First do no harm.” But his empathy threatens to ruin his medical career in France. Abdel serves as Benjamin’s mentor, and Mr. Kateb delivers a powerful performance. Hippocrates demonstrates many of the ways hospitals fail as institutions.
The final two films in the series are Love at First Fight and Eat Your Bones. Director Thomas Cailley’s debut feature, Love at First Fight scored three wins last year at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight category, as well as three Césars, including one for best first film. The putative couple, Madéline (Adele Haenel) and Arnaud (Kévin Asais), meet at a self-defense class. As laid-back as Arnaud is, Madéline is anything but. She insists on completing a demanding military training, and he is determined to tag along. Love at First Fight was not available for review.
Playing Sunday, March 29, Eat Your Bones is the final film in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series. Directed by Jean-Charles Hue, it is a grim coming-of-age story set in a gypsy camp. Eighteen-year-old Jason (Jason Francois) is about to be baptized, but he wants to wait until his big brother Fred (Frédéric Dorkel) arrives home after 15 years in jail. Already involved in petty crimes like stealing gas from trucks, Jason is torn between his mother’s wish to see him embrace religion and the freewheeling life of his brother, involving more serious criminal activity.
Gaby Baby Doll, Saturday, March 21, 4 pm.
Hippocrates, Sunday, March 22, 7:30 pm.
Love at First Fight, Saturday, March 28, 4 pm.
Eat Your Bones, Sunday, March 29, 7:30 pm. All films at Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, Tisbury Marketplace, Vineyard Haven. For information and tickets for these and other films playing at the center, see mvfilmsociety.com.
