Quote:
Perhaps what’s most refreshing about actor/writer/director Emmanuel Mouret’s latest effort Caprice is how equally unlikely it presents the maddening scenario of a nebbish male romantic lead courted aggressively by two incredibly attractive women. A lighter, Gallic equivalent of the type of masculine steered ménage a trois we’ve grown accustomed from Woody Allen, this treatment manages to feel equally effortless but not entirely effervescent. A series of coincidences sets off a sexual comedy of errors involving a quartet of enjoyable performers, though all is eventually for naught since none of them are exactly likeable, a problem considering they’re trapped in a romantic comedy paradigm necessitating we grow interested or even attached to at least one of their outcomes.

Clement (Mouret) is a shy, unassuming fifth grade school teacher, divorced and sharing joint custody of his preadolescent son. He’s an avid theater attendee, and his handsome features have attracted the attentions of a young woman, Caprice (Anais Demoustier), who seems to keep seeing the same shows. But a chance meeting with lauded film and theater star Alicia (Virginie Efren) finds Clement eager to court the blonde beauty, who responds in kind. But Clement’s boss and best friend Thomas (Laurent Stocker) also lusts for Alicia, and when Clement shares a drunken interlude with Caprice after he’s begun dating Alicia, matters get complicated quickly.

Mouret, who’s been starring in his own features since his 2000 debut Laissons Lucie faire!, is probably best known to English speaking arthouse crowds for 2007’s Shall We Kiss?, which co-starred Virginie Ledoyen in a narrative concerned with the consequences of one’s romantic attachments on the other person. This time around, Mouret navigates more familiar territory, depending on the comedic energy made possible when an unlikely male finds himself involved with a beautiful, highly sought after woman (weirdly recalling Mighty Aphrodite, even though Efira is an actress and not a prostitute), who believes she is destined to find love with any man not in her profession based on the advice of a psychic. Of course, this is bizarrely complicated by Alicia’s attraction to Clement’s boss, an even more dubious Laurent Stocker, and the eventual return to the narrative of the titular Caprice.

What’s perhaps most problematic about Mouret’s scenario is the rather tragic denouement of its melancholy, eponymous character, an ingénue who’s yet to discover her own self-worth, fixating on a man she believes to be her intellectual or professional superior. Demoustier remains the most transfixing onscreen personality, but we’re not led to understand anything about her beyond this eventually annoying obsession with a dry, insistently dull fifth grade teacher. In many ways, her performance recalls an aggressive version of the character portrayed by Isabelle Huppert in her 1977 breakout role, The Lacemaker from Claude Goretta, but Mouret strays clear of despair with a truncated finale and a convenient fix for all involved.

Virginie Efira, reminiscent here of a self-involved role we’d expect to see played by Katherine Heigl in an English language version, is unable to establish chemistry with either Mouret or Stocker. Worse, Alicia is a vain, unlikeable creature, as self-obsessed as Caprice is self-effacing, but why either of these two women would convince themselves of their attraction to Clement is where Caprice fails (not to mention a strange lack of screen time between Clement and the son he has from another marriage).

Though its poster art screams Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Mouret’s Caprice is a less enthusiastic derivative of Allen’s usual predicaments with Eros, and, sans Demoustier, a bit too one dimensional to warrant more than superficial comparison.

1.54GB | 1h 35m | 1017×550 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/FF900C9D605A043/Emmanuel_Mouret_-_(2015)_Caprice.mkv

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Emmanuel Mouret – Caprice (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Boris and Dimitri Pizarnik are doctors in Paris’s Chinese quarter. The two brothers work together and devote all their time to their patients. One night, they must treat a young diabetic girl being raised by her single mother, Judith. Both brothers fall in love with Judith and soon everything is turned upside down..

1.46GB | 1h 35mn | 672×400 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/DDFAF28CCB1A6C0/Tirez_la_langue,_mademoiselle.avi

Language(s):French
Subtitles:None

The post Axelle Ropert – Tirez la langue, mademoiselle AKA Miss and the Doctors (2013) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
When Norwegian scientist Marie attends a seminar in Paris on the actual weight of a kilo, it is her own measurement of disappointment, grief and, not least, love, that ends up on the scale. Finally Marie is forced to come to terms with how much a human life truly weighs and which measurements she intends to live by.

The international prototype kilogram of 1889, the mother of all kilos, is today kept in a vault at Bureau International des Poids et Mesures BIPM in Paris. It is the last physical weight reference still in use and the national prototypes must from time to time be transported from their respective countries to Paris in order to be recalibrated

Debra Young @ Hollywood Reporter wrote:
Master of the humanist comedy Bent Hamer ponders the weight of the human soul in Norway’s Oscar hopeful

No, it’s not about drugs; 1001 Grams refers to the weight of a kilogram plus a little something extra. Despite the weighty title, this is an extremely light, delicate art film that rarely makes a false move. For those who know Bent Hamer’s work, this Norwegian-Parisian love story between two scientists will come as another pleasant installment in his warm stories about human beings and their need for each other. For others the film may seem all too fly-weight and hard to get a handle on, making it not an easy choice outside of festival sophisticates. It is being proposed as Norway’s Academy Award hopeful.

With his prize-winning films beginning with 1995’s Eggs, Hamer has developed a loyal following who won’t be disappointed at the slightly off-kilter tale that toes a sweet line between irony and something straighter. Marie (Ane Dahl Torp) works at the Norwegian institute of weights and measures, where a prototype weight of the national kilo is kept locked in a vault. Treated with such enormous reverence that it can only seem absurd, this shiny platinum and iridium measure needs to be transported to Paris for an international conference, where it will be weighed to make sure it hasn’t gained or lost a microgram. Marie’s esteemed father, Ernst (Stein Winge), would normally be the one making the trip, but he is first ailing, then hospitalized. Before he dies, he muses to Marie, his only remaining family, on how much his ashes will weigh when he’s cremated. This metaphor of weighing one’s life and values hangs a little heavily over some of the dialogue.

Played with glassy precision by Torp, Marie is not a brittle woman, but she does have an overly rational approach to her life. She drives a tiny but practical electric car, which overturns at a certain crucial bend in the story, and watches dispassionately as her ex moves his furniture and other belongings out of her ultramodern house. When the task of transporting the national kilo to Paris falls on her shoulders, it becomes the occasion for a journey of self-discovery, a sort of quiet, Bent Hamer meltdown.
Closest to his 2003 film Kitchen Stories in which the Swedish Home Research Institute studies how to standardize household kitchens on a more efficient factory model, here the focus is once again on the gray area between science and human feelings. When Marie visits Paris, still processing her father’s death and her lover’s departure, she meets the warm, down-to-earth Pi (Laurent Stocker), whose quiet presence and offbeat interests help her to open up as a woman.

Everyone rows together on the technical side, from John Erik Kaada’s delightful score to cinematographer John Christian Rosenlund’s bright, clear images. The set design has a maniacal symmetry and precision until it reaches charming Paris, where the paint-chipped Eiffel Tower becomes an amusing plot point.

https://nitro.download/view/CF767C26F888A52/1001_gram_(2014).mkv

Language(s):Norwegian, French, English
Subtitles:English

The post Bent Hamer – 1001 Gram (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.