" was graced with a darkly comic script, elegant sets and costumes, and the fluid tracking shots for which Ophuls was famous. The current French films coming to Utah, on the other hand, are distressing signs of what's happening to French cinema today. We've already had "The Valet," an amusing but slight farce about a billionaire (Daniel Auteuil) who enlists a parking-lot attendant (Gad Elmaleh) to cover up the rich man's affair with a supermodel (Alice Taglioni).
It's directed and written by Francis Veber, the writer of "La Cage aux Folles" and the director of "The Tall Blonde Man With One Red Shoe," "The Dinner Game" and a slew of other comedies. Veber, who turns 70 next month, lives in Hollywood and commutes to France to make his movies - and "The Valet" betrays a bit of Hollywood timidity about sexual content. After all, how sexy can a French sex comedy be if it's PG-13?
Later this month, we get "La Vie en Rose," Olivier Dahan's biography of French singer Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard, who was Russell Crowe's love interest in "A Good Year," portrays Piaf in painstaking detail, from her arthritic walk to her fiery singing performances. Were it in English, "La Vie en Rose" would be called "Oscar bait.
" It's a sturdy, old-fashioned biopic, as straightforward as "Walk the Line" or "Ray" - and occasionally just as likely to fall into easy cliché. In July, the Trolley Square Cinema is bringing in "Angel-A," a fantasy romantic comedy directed by Luc Besson that played at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Besson has bounced between French-language films ("The Big Blue," "La Femme Nikita") and Hollywood fare ("The Professional," "The Fifth Element") - and it's been said his movies are too French for Hollywood and too Hollywood for France.
So why does French cinema - which gave us Godard, Truffaut, Louis Malle, Jacques Tati, and Jean-Pierre Melville - feel so " was graced with a darkly comic script, elegant sets and costumes, and the fluid tracking shots for which Ophuls was famous.
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