Day 12. Bébé Tigre (2014)

Bébé Tigre

Céline’s role: Storyline consultant 

English Title

     Young Tiger

Year

     2014 (French release 14 January 2015)

Céline’s Role

     Storyline consultant

Director

     Cyprien Vial

Screenwriter

     Cyprien Vial, with storyline consultants Céline Sciamma & Marie Amachoukeli

Producers

     Isabelle Madelaine & Emilie Tisné

Form

     Feature film (1h 27 mins)

Synopsis

     Many, a 17-year-old Indian boy from Punjab, has been taken care of by the French Government when he arrived in Paris 2 years ago. On the way to an exemplary integration, he divides his time between school, friends, his girlfriend Elisabeth and the Sikh temple. His life could be the one of an average teenager if he didn’t feel the pressure to send money to his parents back home…

Trailer

     

https://youtu.be/rVozTsNZcA4

Honours/Awards

• Nominated, Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film
• Nominated, Lumières Award for Best First Film
• Nominated, Lumières Award for Most Promising Actor for Harmandeep Palminder
• Chistera for best film at the 2014 Saint-Jean-de-Luz International Film Festival for Bébé Tigre (Youth Jury Prize)
• Selection, Festival du film indépendant de Bordeaux (France)
• Selection, Festival International du Film de Saint-Jean-de-Luz (France)
• Selection, Festival du Film Francophone de Namur (Belguim)
• Selection, Abu Dhabi Film Festival (UAE)
• Selection, Arras Film Festival (France)
• Selection, Sarlat Film Festival (France)
• Selection, BUFF Film Festival (Sweden)
• Selection, Schlingel Film Festival (Germany)

Excerpts from reviews

“Cyprien Vial’s impressive debut offers a rare glimpse at a member of France's Indian Sikh community.”

Variety

https://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/young-tiger-review-1201457912/

 

“Focusing his camera on a seldom-seen part of the multiethnic enclaves surrounding Paris, writer-director Cyprien Vial offers up a compelling debut feature with his coming-of-age immigrant drama Young Tiger (Bebe Tigre). Reminiscent of the Dardenne brothers’ The Silence of Lorna in its portrayal of an illegal alien caught between economic necessities and moral ambiguities, this authentic if not entirely groundbreaking exercise could garner art house interest outside of France, especially for newcomer Harmandeep Palminder’s touching lead performance.”

Hollywood Reporter
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/young-tiger-bebe-tigre-film-764723/

 

“The social argument seems to dominate in Cyprien Vial's first film, but the humanist gesture prevails over any other prerogative. The young filmmaker nurtures a true love for the mixed youth he films. His desire to accompany his characters at all times, by means of a mobile camera, and to attach to his dramaturgy the throbbing of hearts and the tearing of choice, makes his film a modern tragedy.”

Le Monde
https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2015/01/13/bebe-tigre-itineraire-d-un-jeune-tigre-sans-papiers_4554830_3476.html

 

Comments

Cyprien Vial was in the production stream at La Fémis two years behind Céline Sciamma.

Producer Isabelle Madelaine was also the producer of the short film Mademoiselle (2014) that we looked at yesterday.

 

According to an interview with the screenwriter & director Cyprien Vial in the film’s Press Kit, Céline Sciamma “helped me to polish the structure of the film and part of the dialogue”.

 

 

Day 11. Mademoiselle (2014)

Mademoiselle 

Céline Sciamma’s Role

     Actress (uncredited)
     Role: Fille boîte

English Title

     Young Lady

Year

     2014

Form

     Short Film (17 mins)

Trailer

      https://vimeo.com/104504109

Synopsis

     Has anyone called you Ma’am? I can't remember the last time a guy was rude to me. But Ma’am? For fuck's sake, that's a totally different game. The little shit called me "Ma’am".

Director

     Guillaume Gouix

Screenwriter

     Guillaume Gouix

Editor

     Albertine Lastera

Honours

• Selection, Venice International Film Festival (Italy, 2014)
• Nomination, Best Short film, Venice International Film Festival (Italy, 2014)
• Selection, FIFF (Belgium, 2014) (Francophone film festival)
• Selection, Uppsala International Short Film Festival (Sweden, 2015)
• Selection, Chelsea Film Festival (USA, 2014)
• Selection, Jeonju International Film Festival (Korea, 2015)

News about the film

"This is the second short film I've directed, each time produced by Isabelle Madelaine of Dharamsala. In it, I've attempted to depict the confrontation between two types of femininity, and the way in which women today deal with the desire (at times violent) they provoke and the desire which they believe they no longer provoke. My first impulse was to film Céline Sallette and Fanny Touron, the film's two protagonists, and to together confront the conflicting aspects of their respective energies."

Guillaume Gouix, Director
https://en.unifrance.org/news/12483/unifrance-sends-short-films-around-the-world-september-2014

Notes

Céline Sciamma’s appearance in this short film is fleeting—blink and you may miss it! The she one of the uncredited filles boîte (club girls) along with fellow director Rebecca Zlotowski (see below). She is thanked in the credits.

Céline Salette

Céline Salette is fabulous in the leading role of this short film—she plays the role of an attractive woman who is called ‘madame’, rather than ‘mademosielle’, by a young man. This sets her into a spin about life and getting older and all that. Salette plays the role with such vulnerability—she is fabulous!

 

Some interesting connections…

Starring in this short film is Céline Salette, who was in the television series Les Revenants, which Céline Sciamma did some writing for, and she was also in L'Apollonide Souvenirs de la Maison Close (2011, directed by Bertrand Bonello) and in Un Peuple et Son Roi (2018) with Adèle Haenel. Finnegan Oldfield, who appears in this short film, starred in Nocturama (2016, directed by Bertrand Bonello) that had a cameo appearance by Adèle Haenel.

Also appearing in this short film is Vincent Deniard, who was also in Un Peuple et Son Roi (2018) with Adèle Haenel.

The screenwriter and director of this short film, Guillaume Gouix, starred with Adèle Haenel in the film Alyah (2012) and he acted in the television series Les Revenants with Céline Salette and that Céline Sciamma did some writing for.

The executive producer of the short film is Isabelle Madelaine. Isabelle also produced the feature film Bébé Tigre (2014), which we will look at soon.

 

Céline Sciamma & Rebecca Zlotowski: Filles boîte in Mademoiselle

Of note is the appearance of director and screenwriter Rebecca Zlotowski in this short film, appearing alongside Céline Sciamma as ‘Filles boîte’, which I think translates as ‘club girls’. Rebecca was at La Fémis in the class of 2007 studying screenwriting, while Céline Sciamma was two years ahead of her in the class of 2005 in the same stream. While at La Fémis Rebecca became friends with Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, who introduced her to Céline Sciamma. 

Céline Sciamma & Rebecca Zlotowski

In 2013 Céline Sciamma and Rebecca Zlotowski founded Le Deuxieme Regard, which was a network aiming to raise gender stereotypes in cinema and work toward for gender equality in the industry, by leading an information and initiatives policy, by acting as a laboratory of ideas and by constituting a force of proposals for the industry. 

It has become the 2020 50/50 Collective.

The 50/50 collective (or 5050 collective for 2020 ) is a French association whose goal is to promote equality between women and men and diversity in the cinema and audiovisual industries. To do this, it relies on quantitative studies, in particular concerning wage inequalities and the proportion of women in film production professions.

 

Day 10. Bird People (2014)

Bird People

Céline’s Role

     Screenplay consultant

English Title

     Bird People (The French version had the English title, too.)

Year

     2014

Director

     Pascale Ferran

Screenwriters

     Guillame Breaud & Pascale Ferran

Editor

     Mathilde Muyard

Cinematography

     Julien Hirsch

Music

     Beatrice Thiriet

Form

     Feature film (128 mins)
     Mostly in French, with an extended scene in English.

(I have only been able to find the DVD with Dutch subtitles, which did not help me at all. If you know where I can purchase this film with English subtitles please let me know via the comments section or messaging me on Twitter @bfowah.)

Synopsis

     In the Paris airport zone, two strangers are trying to make sense out of their lives: an American engineer under professional and emotional pressure who decides to radically change the course of his life, and a young hotel chambermaid who faces a life-altering supernatural experience.

Honours/Awards

• Selection, Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, 2014
• Selection, Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival
• Selection, Jeonju International Film Festival (Korea 2015)

 

Excerpts from Reviews

“…is brimming with ideas about solitude in the modern world, using a bifurcated narrative to follow two characters whose destinies will be determined by fate, willpower and a touch of the supernatural. It’s a tricky proposition that will surely ruffle the feathers of many viewers, but one that also makes a curious, if lasting, impression, thanks in part to strong turns from actors Anais Demoustier and Josh Charles.”

Hollywood Reporter
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/bird-people-cannes-review-702111/

 

“The best moments in Bird People soar to such heights that you almost want to forgive the parts that amount to mere droppings.”

NY Daily News
https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/bird-people-green-prince-movie-reviews-article-1.1936358

Comments

Céline’s contribution to this film is as a script consultant. A quick search returns this definition of a script consultant, and how it differs from a script doctor:

“A Script Consultant is a party that provides feedback and in-depth script analysis on screenplays. Oftentimes their services are enlisted by aspiring screenwriters who are seeking feedback on their work. However, production companies may hire script consultants to provide notes on a script as well.

The primary difference between a script consultant and a script doctor is that a script consultant does not modify the script.”

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-script-doctor-consultant

(Recall that Céline was credited as a script doctor for the film It Was on Earth That I Knew Joy.)

 

Starring in this film is Josh Charles, who played Will Gardner on The Good Wife, and Anaïs Demoustier, who was in the short film Pauline, that Céline directed in 2009. 

Anaïs won the 2020 César Award for Best Actress for her role in Alice et le Maire (Alice and the Mayor), beating both Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant for this award. This was very disappointing, though this is not a reflection on Anaïs’ performance, but rather the wonder I have at the superb performances of Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu.

 

I could only find this on DVD with audio in French and subtitles in Dutch. Sadly, I cannot understand either of these languages (my fault, not theirs!)… There is an extended scene in English, and I could vaguely follow the plot—which is rather bizarre—without understanding most of the words.

 

Day 9. Les Revenants (2012)

Les Revenants

Céline’s role: Scriptwriter

Céline was part of the writing team for Season 1, but she left before the series was made. She is thanked at the end of each episode of season 1. 

https://youtu.be/5bv_5IBPVuo

English Title

     The Returned

Year

     2012

Synopsis

     In a small French mountain town many dead people reappear apparently alive and normal, including teenage school bus crash victim Camille, suicidal bridegroom Simon, a small boy called "Victor" who was murdered by burglars, and serial killer Serge. While they try to resume their lives, strange phenomena take place: recurring power outages; a mysterious lowering of the local reservoir's water level, revealing the presence of dead animals and a church steeple; and the appearance of strange marks on the bodies of the living and the dead.

Honours/Awards

• The first season has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
• No. 1 Television show for 2013, The Guardian
• Winner Best Drama Series, 41st International Emmy Awards, 2013
• Winner, Peabody Award 2013
• Nominated for Best Television Series or Miniseries, 18th Satellite Awards
• Nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries & Specials, 2014 TCA Awards

Excerpts from reviews

“The Returned is such a delicately detailed drama that, by the end, you feel as if you have finished a beautiful, brilliant novel rather than a TV series – a sentence I thought I would go to my grave without ever having cause to say. The only fear is that season two, due later this year, cannot possibly be as good.”

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/feb/20/the-returned-box-set-review-french-drama

"Sundance’s new French import, The Returned (Les Revenants in its country of origin), succeeds so tremendously because it understands all of the above—and finds an ingenious horror metaphor with which to depict it. A loose adaptation of a French film of the same name, the series centers on a small village that becomes home to five former corpses.
…
Though it is a series with a great many strong male characters, the beating heart of the program is its women, who adapt and evolve and refuse to give up, even when assaulted by a killer in a dark alley or discovering a long-dead daughter poking around in her old bedroom."

The AV Club

https://www.avclub.com/in-the-terrific-new-horror-series-the-returned-the-mon-1798178489

"To my mind, it’s the best series of the fall, and with the tonally similar “Top of the Lake,” possibly of the year. The very real apprehension and suspense it creates come not from anticipating the sudden shocks a thousand scary movies have taught you to expect. Rather, they come from wanting things to go well for decent people caught up in something big and strange — people living and undead and in either case only human — and feeling that they well may not."

Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-the-returned-20131030-story.html

Notes

     The television series sprang from the film Les Revenant (20014) directed by Robin Campillo’s (director of BPM), but it is in a different setting and has different character, and just uses the idea of people returning to a small French town as the basis of the story.

I will confess that the film and this tv series are the first zombie genre viewing that I have done, and I have had to reassess my previous dismissal of this genre. That said, I haven’t viewed any others, and my reading suggests that Les Revenant/s (film & tv series) are in a different class to the average zombie flick!

Céline Sciamma was involved in planning out the storyline of the first series, but I can’t find a clear reason why she left the project (this seems fair enough—we don’t need to know everything!). Her contribution is acknowledged by being thanked at the end of each episode of Season 1.

 

The budget of season 1 was €11.4 million and over the two seasons we meet lots of faces that are familiar to viewers of French films. 

Some connections to films viewed in the Adèle Haenel FilmFestival and Les Revenants:

• Clothile Hesme was in Trois Mondes (2011) & LeRêve de Camille (2014).
• Céline Sallette was in L'Apollonide (2011) and Un Peuple Son Roi (2017).
• Guillaume Marquet, who plays young policeman Alcide in Les Revenants, appeared in the 2010 television film Goldman and also in Un Peuple Son Roi (2017).
• Guillaume Gouix, who plays Serge Garrell (the serial killer) in Les Revenants,  appeared in Aliyah (2012) with Adèle as Mathias.
• Frédéric Pierrot, who plays Jérôme Séguret, father of Léna and Camille in the television series Les Revenants [and Gardet In the Robin Campillo film of the same name] appeared in Les Diables (2002) as the man in the house.
• Armande Boulanger (Season 2) is the inquisitive student in Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu (2019)
• Nicolas Wanczycki (Season 2) is the mean army instructor in Les Combattants (2014).
• It is getting a bit tenuous, but what the hell:
• Jenna Thiam, who plays Léna in Les Revenants, plays the role of Axèle in the feature film L'Indomptée (the film this snippet grew up to be). This is Adèle's role in this snippet.

Day 8. Tomboy (2011)

Tomboy

Céline’s roles: Screenwriter & Director (& costume designer, uncredited).

Year

     2011 (Released in France 20 April 2011)

Editor

     Julien Lacheray

Director of photography

     Crystel Fournier

Song Credits

     Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, Jereome Echenoz
     (Para one & Tacteel)

Executive Producer

     Bénédicte Couvreur

Form

     Feature film (78mins)

Synopsis

     Laure is 10 years old. Laure is a tomboy.

On her arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she is a boy.

Truth or dare? Dare.

Summer becomes a big playground and Laure pretends to be Michael, a boy like the others… different enough to get the attention of Lisa who falls in love with him. Laure takes advantage of her new identity as if the end of the summer would never reveal her unsettling secret.

Trailer

https://youtu.be/Jb-Oys-IcWE

Available

     https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Tomboy?id=c0vyxoXCAgw

Honours/Awards

• Berlin International Film Festival – Teddy Jury Award
• Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema – FIPRESCI Prize
• Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema – SIGNIS Award
• Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario for Best Original Screenplay

 

Excerpts from reviews

96% score on Rotten Tomatoes

 

“This exquisite film is as pure as you can get, it’s observational, it’s minimalist, there’s no intrusive music except where it is part of the action. That fragility of a young girl, despite her boyish behaviour, is so painful, it’s been really beautifully and compassionately presented by writer/director Celine Sciamma. The performances are a knockout, they’re truly believably naturalistic. All the kids are great but Zoe Heran is just stunning, as is Malonn Levana as her little sister. This is just a wonderful gem of a film. Makes you glad some people make movies.”

At the Movies, ABC Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s3461276.htm

 

“…the film is still a great celebration of the excitement and freedom of childhood, that also explores the confusion of growing up and terror of being and finding out who you are. With insight and focus, Sciamma’s sophomore effort largely captures the complexity of adolescence.”

Indiewire
https://www.indiewire.com/2011/11/review-tomboy-offers-an-insight-into-gender-identity-adolescence-115246/

 

“Sciamma renders visual some of the most complicated and elusive structures at work in the constitution of personhood (i.e. desire), and never in a sentimental or manipulative way. The film’s ideas brew effortlessly before our eyes, as if it were too invested in its characters’ experiences to worry about “selling” us its story or “teaching” us its messages. Sciamma’s sensibility as a director along with the masterful performance by Zoé Héran (as well as Malon Léavanna, who plays her little sister) keeps Tomboy from making any overreaching or generalizing claims about gender, identity, or the sexuality of children. And yet we certainly “learn” from the film just as much as we “like” it. The kind of sensuous apprenticeship borne out of the aftershock of an experience so emotional, so delicate, it refreshingly eludes us.”

Slant Magazine
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/tomboy/

 

“This is the whole miracle of this film, sublimated by the summer light: showing through a half-open door that children are complex beings that adults will never understand. Except Céline Sciamma.”

Metro
(translated by Google)

 

Notes

An important element in this film is missed by those of us who do not understand or speak French—when Lisa meets Laure for the first time, Lisa uses the French pronoun that indicates that she believes that she is speaking with a male. It is this error on Lisa’s part that launches Laure on her journey that the film takes us on.

Another language-related aspect of the film is that the title of the film for the French release was the English word ‘Tomboy’. The French word for an outdoorsy girl is garçon manqué, which roughly translates literally as a ‘lacking boy’. THis seems a much more negative and judgmental term (to this English-speaker, at least...)

Much has been written in scholarly journals about this film (as with Naissance des Pieuvres). I will not try to add to this scholarly work, as I am not a scholar of films, but they can be found here, or via a search of scholarly databases. 

The DVD extras (on some versions of the DVD!) include an interview with Céline in French (with English subtitles) and one in English, and includes 'behind the scenes' footage showing the director working with the child actors

Casting

Zoé Héran (Laure) was cast on the first day of casting, and her real friends were cast as Laure/Mikel’s friends.

Céline did not go through a casting process for role of Laure’s parents Sophie Cattani & Mathieu Demy), rather, she offered the roles to the two actors who played these roles.

Mathieu Demy (who plays Laure’s father) is the son of the legendary director Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy.

 

From the Director about the film

“Tomboy was made incredibly fast. I started writing the script at the end of March 2010 and we were shooting in August. It was shot in 20 days with an initial budget of 500,000 euros and a crew of 15 people.

…

I wrote the script in three weeks. I designed it so that the film would be easy and simple to prepare in such a short time frame. Two main sets, 50 sequences. I built it around a very simple and strong argument, the story of a lie, an undercover character, so that it would produce a powerful narrative with suspense and empathy. The character has a strong goal in a double play dynamic. This efficient story allowed me to take the time to relate a vivid chronicle about childhood, with documentary aspects, and unpredictable accidents. I was also very committed to the subject surrounding identity and the question of gender. Childhood is often referred to as the age of innocence. But I think it’s a time of life full of sensuality and ambiguous emotions. I wanted to portray that.”

Céline Sciamma, Director’s Notes, Tomboy Press Kit.

 

 

 

Day 7. It Was on Earth That I Knew Joy (2010)

It Was on Earth That I Knew Joy

Céline's Role: Script doctor

Year

     2010

Screenwriter

     Jean-Baptiste de Laubier

Director

     Jean-Baptiste de Laubier

Editor

     Julien Lacheray

Music

     Jean-Baptiste de Laubier (ParaOne)

Form

     Short film (31 mins)

Synopsis

     In this film, Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, squares this hypothesis of Chris Marker: the traces of the time before are no longer contained in the brain of a survivor of the disaster but in computer memories. History having disappeared, carried away by the extinction of men, machines tell each other stories with the images that men have bequeathed to them. Like those of this narrator who could not, he or anyone, survive the final virus but who left on a hard disk images shot from the time he still lived. His travels, family, love. Life. This life and its memory of which our computer heirs hum the nostalgic air, a human feeling that we did not know they were programmed to feel.

 

Available on Vimeo 

https://player.vimeo.com/video/20593779

 

The film poster (above) was the winner of Best Poster / Billboard Design at the Annual Design Awards 2011.

Excerpts from reviews

“De Laubier succeeds in giving fragility to what he portrays. The men we see on the screen are filmed like ghosts, sometimes against the light, sometimes blurry or even veiled. They lose their contours as we lose the memory of faces over time. Nothing seems ready to be fixed eternally in a memory if it is human…
... the film offers a modern interpretation of the place of humanity in an unpredictable and fragile environment. In this anticipatory film, the director succeeds in captivating the viewer over time thanks to an atmosphere that oscillates between dreamlike and nightmarish.”

http://www.formatcourt.com/2011/03/it-was-on-earth-that-i-knew-joy-jean-baptiste-de-laubier-chris-marker-et-fubiz/

 

“Homage to Chris Marker, the film is a necessarily melancholy journey in the memory of a human being of 32 years (...) Overwhelming, It Was on Earth ... is especially by the way it has to move from the intimate to the cosmos, to make personal memories universal."

Les Inrockuptibles

 

About the Film

It Was On Earth That I Knew Joy is a 35-minute science fiction film directed by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and produced by French clothing label Sixpack France. it is a response by the filmmaker to Chris Marker's short film La Jetée (1962).

The friends and colleagues from their La Fémis days are back together for this film, with the filmmaker Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, the film's creator (writer, director & filming), joined by Julien Lacheray editing the film and Céline polishing the screenplay, as the script doctor. Some shots in the film (the tunnel in the snow) is an excerpt from J-BL's student film The First Communion (2004) that the three worked on together.

The film was premiered on February 20, 2010 at SCION Installation, Los Angeles, with the online premiere on March 9 2011 on fubiz.com.

 

From the program for the film's premier in Los Angeles.

 

Jean-Baptiste de Laubier at the film's premiere in Los Angeles in 2010

Source: https://live.staticflickr.com/4031/4384625049_2e2c99fe0a_c.jpg

 

[Re-watching this film today was a bit challenging, as it is set on post-pandemic earth. Movies about pandemics are a bit close to home right now…]