The Artist & Captive set French filmfest record

More than any other mall of importance in Metro Manila, the Shangri-La Plaza holds the reputation of hosting the most foreign film festivals for free. We remember queuing up for quite a number of them, where students, senior citizens, film buffs and foreigners formed the general audience.

The latest and possibly the most innovative was the Citi-Rustan’s French Film Festival, which brought together the French Embassy, Alliance Francaise, Rustan’s and Shangri-La Plaza into partnership. Held mid-June, it premiered with the outstanding 2011 romantic comedy drama The Artist presented in the style of a black-and-white silent film.

Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, the story set in Hollywood 1927 to 1932 tells of a proud silent film star and a rising young actress in the years silent cinema is replaced by the “talkies.” Dujardin refuses to accept the death of his era, rejecting offers to act in talkies until he sinks to near poverty and deprivation. Only the love of Bejo, who had become the toast of the talkies, and that of his loyal dog saves him from his pride and sure death.  

A scene from Le Mariage a Trois (The Three-Way Wedding)

The Artist was universally acclaimed, winning at Cannes 2011, the Academy Awards, the Ceasar in France, the Directors Guild of America, Golden Globes, Goya, London Critics, etc. It became the most awarded French film in history.

We watched wondering what it had that made it universally successful. First, it was silent and didn’t fall into sometimes useless dialogue. It brought back an era of nostalgia, of the time of Glenn Miller, A Star is Born and Rudolf Valentino. And finally, it fulfilled that silent dream of bringing together the simple past through the complicated technology of today.

If The Artist triggered tears of recall of gentler days never to be experienced again, Captive brought back the horrors of war, and a never-ending search for justice and contentment. The film is based on a real kidnapping by the Abu Sayyaf that lasted for years we can’t ever forget, not only because some of those abducted were friends, but because it would have included us had we made the trip in time with them.

Apart from the role of French actress Isabelle Huppert, director Brillante Mendoza had cleverly camouflaged the identity of the other victims. Filipino actors included Rustica Carpio, Raymond Bagatsing, Ronnie Lazaro, Sid Lucero, Maria Isabel Lopez, Joel Torre, Mercedes Cabral, Madeline Nicolas and Angel Aquino who had played a nurse and sat beside us during the premiere night entranced by the live childbirth scene that Mendoza had asked her to do.

Isabelle Huppert, Rustica Carpio, Raymond Bagatsing and Ronnie Lazaro in Brillante Mendoza’s Captive

In typical Mendoza style, Captive rambled on interminably through the forest to avoid government detection, broken only by short spurts of laughter, sporadic lessons on jungle life and forced marriages that demonstrated how incredibly little we know of our Muslim brothers and they of us. We feel Captive is another Mendoza product the country will be proud of. If there is anything that disappoints us, it would be that the world has taken away time Mendoza could spend, bringing his films to the students and grassroots, which he used to do more often.  

But even as both Christians and Muslims found their respective practices alien to their tastes, more so does our Asian palate react strangely to some of the French servings. The local audience watching L’Art d’Aimer (The Art of Love) which followed the love lives of several Parisian couples were bursting into laughter at what we felt might not have been that hilarious. On the other hand, we didn’t find the advertised comedy Le Mariage a Trois (The Three-Way Wedding) funny at all. In fact we found it psychotic with an aging playwright searching for inspiration and an ex-lover of the playwright proposing to his young secretary a ménage a trois to provide the stimulus.

Apart from Captive, the festival also screened winning Filipino indies Busong, Manila, Bakal Boys as well as the shorts Au Revoir Philippe and Little. We wonder what our expat audience thought of this batch. But that’s the wonder of sharing films. We experience and learn, but not necessarily agree. Until the next festival at the Shang!        

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