3 FRENCH FILMS TO SEE AT FRAMELINE40
Frameline40 opens in San Francisco on June 16, 2016 for a 10-day festival, the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival.
The Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary. And still the same motto, which is ''to change the world through the power of queer cinema". And considering the sad and dramatic recent news, there is a lot to do!
Each year, the Festival is scheduled so that it finishes with the SF Gay Pride.
Selected movies will be screening in San Francisco and East Bay: at the Castro Theatre of course, but also at the Roxie and Victoria on 16th Street. In Oakland, that will be at the Landmark Theaters Piedmont and in Berkeley, at the Rialto Cinemas Elmowood.
There are dozens of movies. But as usual, our attention was drawn to the French films: Being 17, by André Téchiné, Summertime by Catherine Corsini, and PARIS 5:59: THEO AND HUGO
BEING 17
By André Téchiné with Sandrine Kiberlain
The story briefly...
For Thomas and Damien, high school classmates in the remote French Pyrenees, increased testosterone and unspoken feelings have created a rivalry they find difficult to understand, leading to occasional outbursts of violence. The two couldn’t be more different: Thomas (striking newcomer Corentin Fila) is the adopted child of rural mountain farmers, commuting by bus and foot for more than three hours to get to and from school. Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) is more urbane, sporting an earring and declaiming Rimbaud in class. As the boys’ animosity intensifies, Damien’s mother, Marianne, the village physician—a wonderfully warm Sandrine Kiberlain (Violette, Frameline38)—finds herself treating Thomas’s mother for a difficult pregnancy and invites Thomas to live with them for a while. The boys’ increased proximity, and the pressure to put aside their differences under Marianne’s watchfulness, may lead to a detente, but it also sets the stage for a complicated emotional reckoning for both of them.
SUMMERTIME
By Catherine Corsini with Cécile de France, Izia Higelin, Noémie Lvovsky and Kévin Azaïs.
The story briefly...
Frustrated farm girl Delphine (Izia Higelin) trades the family farm (and her family’s pressure to marry) for a job in Paris. There she discovers a group of feminist activists, and before long she’s eagerly churning out abortion rights flyers on a mimeograph machine—but the real draw is the group’s firebrand, Carole (Belgian star Cécile de France). Despite the fact that Carole has a nice lefty boyfriend, she and Delphine are soon skipping political rallies for afternoons in bed together. But when a family emergency pulls Delphine back to the farm, their relationship is challenged.
PARIS 5:59: THEO & HUGO
By Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau.
The story biefly...
Explicit sex has rarely been used to explore the contours of a new relationship as effectively as in Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s new film—an exquisite return for the pair after Born in ’68 (Frameline33) and Côte d’Azur (Opening Night Frameline29). In the wee hours of the night at a Paris sex club called Impact, Theo spots the handsome Hugo just a couple of naked bodies away. After some intense glances—and even more intense sex—they leave together, joyfully exclaiming that their intercourse “helped with world peace.” Riding their bikes through the mostly deserted streets, the two young men begin a conversation that will take them through the evening and traverse an extraordinary range of personal and psychological territory.
FRAMELINE40
The San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival
