Japan reminding me of France, for the first and only time

This story about young urban Japanese men and women getting jobs in agriculture reminds me of an excellent French film about a young woman who does the same: The Girl from Paris (more meaningfully called "Une hirondelle a fait le printemps" in French, which means "A swallow [the bird] made the spring"). Definitely worth a watch

Priceless

Another mini-review:

I came to this movie to watch Audrey Tatou, who I enjoyed so much in Amelie, and to relive Breakfast at Tiffany's, a brilliant and beautiful movie of which this is a loose adaptation. In the end, though, Ms. Tatou suffers from a script and direction that to some extent reduced her to a mannequin for all the expensive labels draped over her body. The best scenes are closeups of her, where she is actually allowed to act and remind of us her gamine quality rather than being forced to strut about in a manner very much like the women in Sex and the City. However, this movie still has wit and charm, and the minor characters are all perfect caricatures (especially the dog owners at the beginning of the movie). Most importantly, I absolutely fell in love with Gad Elmaleh, whose fumbling and awkwardness is subtle enough to reveal both charm and intelligence. I've read (but not yet seen) that he is even better in the Valet, but this was plenty good for me.

Le dîner de cons

About half-way through watching Le Dîner de Cons (translated to The Dinner Game) last week, I realized it really should be a play. And, after a little research, I found it was originally written for the stage in 1993. I'm glad I found this out, and I wish I had seen it on the stage rather than as a film. The story is definitely better suited to the stage - not much happens, and it's mostly an exercise in self-reflection. It's a nice little movie, but it is just that: little. It never grows out of its self-imposed four walls.

The international title of the movie doesn’t do the title justice. A literal translation reveals much more: The Idiot Dinner. The entire plot revolves around a French intellectual and the “idiot” he has picked up to take with him as a sort of trophy to a weekly dinner where the man who brings the biggest idiot wins a prize. This competition is done with exactly the malice and superiority the previous sentence suggests (as opposed, for example, to the scatterbrained but charming Carole Lombard bringing a homeless man to a dinner as a scavenger hunt item in My Man Godfrey). But, instead of going to the dinner, the intellectual pulls his back and is confined to his apartment when his guest comes to be taken to dinner. As the movie progresses, the “idiot” Francois becomes the intellectual Pierre’s only line of defense against a litany of troubles in his apartment: his wife leaving him, an overeager girlfriend wanting to come over as soon as she hears the news, a tax auditor coming to Pierre’s too-well-furnished apartment. Through it all, Francois tries to help and constantly makes things worse. It’s funny in a painful way to see it all unfold – I found it to be much the same humor as watching I Love Lucy episodes, but without the goodheartedness or assurance that in the end Ricky’s going to come home and make it all better.

Jacques Villeret, as the prize idiot Francois, possesses a perfect combination of pathos and grating characteristics. Francois is a civil servant (working for the French IRS, basically), and in is free time makes models or architectural and engineering feats out of matchsticks. His hobby consumes him, which is why the intellectual Pierre, played by Thierry Lhermitte, decides to take him to the dinner. But always lurking underneath Villeret’s Francois is a man you know actually cares about people and desperately wants to fit in, even though he is clearly incapable of it. As I watched the film, I found myself torn between hating Pierre for taking advantage of such a helpless and hapless guy and hating Francois for being so darn dense.

In true French film style, the end doesn’t leave the audience comfortable and satisfied. Is it OK to think people are stupid? What makes someone an idiot – is it being nice, or self-important? Is being a jerk or an idiot part of a coping mechanism? The movie never takes a definitive stance, preferring instead to leave no moral and no way of knowing if any of the characters have learned anything from the events of the evening. Much more like real life, perhaps, but in a story involving an Idiot Dinner, I’m hoping we’re not striving for life-like realism.

2 out of 4 stars