Emotionally turbulent, harsh in its details and overall taxing to watch -- but a rewarding experience for those who relish gusts of Gallic gloom -- "La Ville Est Tranquille" (The Town Is Quiet) unspooled Thursday at the Directors Guild of America as part of the fifth City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival.
Picked up for distribution by New Yorker Films and earning rave reviews since its premiere in August at the Venice (Italy) International Film Festival, "Ville" is directed by Robert Guediguian ("Marius et Jeannette") and features his wife, Ariane Ascaride, as the central character, a working-class mother with a daughter addicted to heroin. Comparable to "Amores Perros" and other brutally realistic cinematic portraits of a city, "Ville" is a memorable feast for foreign-film connoisseurs but not fated to strike it big with domestic audiences.
The ville of the title is modern-day Marseilles -- a large canvas, to be sure, and one shown in a panoramic, Eadweard Muybridge-like, 360-degree opening shot -- where things are hardly tranquil. The choices facing a lost soul like Michele (Ascaride) are unbearably grim, while her job at a fish market is unromanticized drudgery. She and her self-destructive daughter, Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier), live alone with the latter's baby, and what friends they have are incapable of averting a truly heart-wrenching tragedy that's several degrees more disturbing than anything shown about drug addiction in "Traffic".
Ostensibly an ensemble piece with intersecting characters and multiple plot lines, "Ville" takes its cue from the bluesy rhythms of the Janis Joplin songs on the soundtrack. While all the stories have beginnings, middles and ends, one is less aware than usual of the storytelling mechanics and generally stays pinned in one's seat as the subtitled film nonjudgmentally probes the social and psychological relationships of a dozen or so troubled people from many walks of life.
Among those one encounters are Jean-Pierre Darroussin as a lonely taxi driver who hangs out with prostitutes and starts to fancy Michele is his girlfriend, Gerard Meylan as a bartender with dark secrets and Christine Brucher as a musician with an insufferably useless husband she cheats on with an idealistic former prisoner from Africa (Alexandre Ogou). There are other memorably rendered minor characters and bit players, and the film has light, gentle moments. But as it gathers momentum at the end, "Ville" becomes awfully dark and surprises one with its final twists.
LA VILLE EST TRANQUILLE
New Yorker Films
Agat Films, Diaphana Films, Le Studio Canal Plus
Director: Robert Guediguian
Screenwriters: Jean-Louis Milesi, Robert Guediguian
Producers: Robert Guediguian, Michel Saint-Jean, Gilles Sandoz
Executive producer: Bruno Ghariani
Director of photography: Bernard Cavalie
Production designer: Michel Vandestien
Editor: Bernard Sasia
Costume designer: Catherine Keller
Color/stereo
Cast:
Michele: Ariane Ascaride
Fiona: Julie-Marie Parmentier
Paul: Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Claude: Pierre Banderet
Gerard: Gerard Meylan
Abderramane: Alexandre Ogou
Viviane Froment: Christine Brucher
Running time -- 131 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Picked up for distribution by New Yorker Films and earning rave reviews since its premiere in August at the Venice (Italy) International Film Festival, "Ville" is directed by Robert Guediguian ("Marius et Jeannette") and features his wife, Ariane Ascaride, as the central character, a working-class mother with a daughter addicted to heroin. Comparable to "Amores Perros" and other brutally realistic cinematic portraits of a city, "Ville" is a memorable feast for foreign-film connoisseurs but not fated to strike it big with domestic audiences.
The ville of the title is modern-day Marseilles -- a large canvas, to be sure, and one shown in a panoramic, Eadweard Muybridge-like, 360-degree opening shot -- where things are hardly tranquil. The choices facing a lost soul like Michele (Ascaride) are unbearably grim, while her job at a fish market is unromanticized drudgery. She and her self-destructive daughter, Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier), live alone with the latter's baby, and what friends they have are incapable of averting a truly heart-wrenching tragedy that's several degrees more disturbing than anything shown about drug addiction in "Traffic".
Ostensibly an ensemble piece with intersecting characters and multiple plot lines, "Ville" takes its cue from the bluesy rhythms of the Janis Joplin songs on the soundtrack. While all the stories have beginnings, middles and ends, one is less aware than usual of the storytelling mechanics and generally stays pinned in one's seat as the subtitled film nonjudgmentally probes the social and psychological relationships of a dozen or so troubled people from many walks of life.
Among those one encounters are Jean-Pierre Darroussin as a lonely taxi driver who hangs out with prostitutes and starts to fancy Michele is his girlfriend, Gerard Meylan as a bartender with dark secrets and Christine Brucher as a musician with an insufferably useless husband she cheats on with an idealistic former prisoner from Africa (Alexandre Ogou). There are other memorably rendered minor characters and bit players, and the film has light, gentle moments. But as it gathers momentum at the end, "Ville" becomes awfully dark and surprises one with its final twists.
LA VILLE EST TRANQUILLE
New Yorker Films
Agat Films, Diaphana Films, Le Studio Canal Plus
Director: Robert Guediguian
Screenwriters: Jean-Louis Milesi, Robert Guediguian
Producers: Robert Guediguian, Michel Saint-Jean, Gilles Sandoz
Executive producer: Bruno Ghariani
Director of photography: Bernard Cavalie
Production designer: Michel Vandestien
Editor: Bernard Sasia
Costume designer: Catherine Keller
Color/stereo
Cast:
Michele: Ariane Ascaride
Fiona: Julie-Marie Parmentier
Paul: Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Claude: Pierre Banderet
Gerard: Gerard Meylan
Abderramane: Alexandre Ogou
Viviane Froment: Christine Brucher
Running time -- 131 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 4/19/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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