For a lot of (Non-French) people, French cinema is about romance, culture, gentle good humour, affairs of the heart, beautiful (and beautifully lit) locations, and nostalgia: the Amélie model. They’ll be well served by La Belle Époque, in cinemas now, one of those expensive, commercial French products that is geared to make big bucks outside of France. The pleasant surprise is that, while it delivers that Amélie package, it’s also rather clever, witty and gorgeously performed.
Daniel Auteuil, once my favourite actor, plays a sixty-something luddite cartoonist whose wife is having a mid-life crisis, and who finds solace in the arms of a tech/media/production company that allows him, via sets, actors and other production values, to go back to the night he met her, in a bistro, in 1974. It’s not quite science fiction, but is certainly adjacent: sort of Westworld meets The Truman Show meets… well, Amélie. It’s all very charming and delightful and will bring a smile to your dial. That makes it top entertainment for the current era. Auteuil is typically winning.
On Netflix are two new documentaries: David Foster Off The Record and The Speed Cubers. Both are pacy, surprising and fun. Foster is one of the most successful pop producers of all time – he’s produced Celine Dion, Michael Bublé, Chicago, Barbara Streisand, Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli and so on, as well as Whitney Huston’s I Will Always Love You and the soundtrack to St. Elmo’s Fire – and most of his career-long collaborators weigh in, as well as his many daughters (from five wives). He’s a self-confessed problematic individual, which the film somewhat embraces, but it’s best enjoyed as a testament to an astonishing career. Meanwhile, The Speed Cubers follows the two fastest Rubik’s Cube solvers in the world as they head towards a showdown at the 2019 Speed Cubing World Championships. One of them is from Melbourne; the other is Californian, has autism, and hero-worships his rival. As with Foster, they are two of the most successful people in the world at what they do; neither, yet, have wives, let alone five, but who’s to say where success may lead them? Heartwarming, uplifting and surprising.
La Belle Époque * * * 1/2
David Foster Off The Record * * *
The Speed Cubers * * * 1/2