I watched the Cesars last night with a mixture of boredom, irritation and disgust. First, I think it's time for someone to come up with another format for awards ceremonies, now the same all over the world. Here the mistress of ceremonies was the over-ebullient Valerie Lemercier, who introduced the presenters of the endless awards, who took to the podium, made some banal remarks, presented the nominees and then opened the envelopes. Everything, even the 'improvisations' were scripted. The only spontaneous moment in the whole sycophantic evening came when the person who received the Cesar for Little Miss Sunshine, unknowingly kept moving his hands up and down the vertical statuette as if masturbating it as he thanked everyone he could think of. He had no idea why the audience was laughing. There were tributes to Phillipe Noiret and Gerard Oury, both of whom died last year but, naturally, in this superficial atmosphere there was no mention of Danielle Huillet. Jude Law got an honorary Cesar. Enough said. As for the awards... just a lot of commercial products. Alain Resnais's splendid Coeurs nominated in almost every category got nothing. (No mention of Flandres or Avista). The best worst moment in the long evening was after the homage to Oury, who directed The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, the stage was filled with dancing rabbis. Thank goodness, it's too early in the morning for me to be tempted to watch the Oscars. I think the Cesars have cured me of ever watching an award ceremony again.

Sounds like disheartening viewing, although there certainly are good things being said about Lady Chatterley.

As for watching the Oscars, I'm actually kind of glad to be in the Eurozone each year. If the ceremony were at a reasonable hour (and not on the night before another long week), I might feel compelled to watch the ceremony live. But we'll flip on the recorder tonight and, if all goes as it does every year, with a finger on the FF button, we'll get it done tomorrow evening in under two hours.

David, I have to admit not having seen Lady Chatterley, something I shall rectify at the first possible oportunity, but even if the Cesar juries have redeemed themselves by giving the film most of the awards, it is the whole self-congratulatory, artificial atmosphere of these events that I'm complaining about. Raymond Chandler over 50 years ago, in a wonderful piece, with a nod to Kipling, which is too long for me to quote here but is worth finding, said of the Oscars:

‘‘If you can go past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theatre without a sense of the collapse of the human intelligence... If you can stand the fake sentimentality and the platitudes of the officials and the mincing elocution of the glamour queens; if you can do all these things with grace and pleasure, and not have a wild and foresaken horror at the thought that most of these people actually take this shoddy performance seriously; if you can do all these things and still feel next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong, because this sort of vulgarity is part of its inevitable price.’

Still kicking myself for not catching Lady Chatterley at the Berlinale.

Me, too; me, too. But hopefully - surely! - these awards will get it into one or both of our cities... eventually.

The film is not "that" great, it is good but nowhere near the best French film of the year. (I saw it before the Berlinale.) I was rooting for either Ne le dis à personne or Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas to take the top prize, but no such luck. Those are two of the most intelligent character thrillers (if that isn't too much of a contradiction) to have come out of France for a long time. And the public gobbled them up, too.