Rendez-Vous. 1.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's 12th annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema opens tonight with the US premier of the film that opened this year's Berlinale: Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose. This will be followed over the next 12 days with 16 more movies. Yes, it's a feast. The society's program director Richard Peňa says that his aim each year in assembling Rendez-Vous is "to present the best recent French productions, while representing the widest variety of styles possible. Each year you'll discover provocative works by recognized auteurs, genre films, popular comedies, and more. I would like to think that, within each category, you will find the best that France currently has to offer - giving audiences a sense of the richness of French cinema today."

Updated.

As a festival devotee for the past decade, I think Peňa pretty much hits the proverbial nail on its head. For my taste, this is usually a near-terrific festival, with most of the films easily qualifying as better-than-average art and/or entertainment. While there is usually one utter clunker in the bunch (Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms took the booby prize in 2005), plus a couple of movies I might have missed without undue weeping, there is an equal number of films and/or performances I wouldn't have passed up for the world. And this festival is the only place in the US that I could have seen them.

In 2005, a young actor named Julien Boisselier delighted audiences with a pitch-perfect romantic-comedy performance in J'me sens pas belle (Tell Me I'm Pretty) that had audience members literally asking the Lincoln Center honchos for the actor's phone number during the Q&A (a first in my experience at this particular culture capital). Today, the movie remains unreleased in the US and not even available on DVD (Amazon has it via England, if your DVD is Euro-compatible). Unreleased, too, is the stylish, musical, funny and moving 2004 offering from Noemie Lvovsky, Les Sentiments (Feelings), a wonderfully original movie seen so far in the US only at Lincoln Center.

Other films may not receive a theatrical release, but if they're chock-a-block with great looking gals and guys, full frontal, and intelligent dialog that encompasses economics, history and culture, they might - as did the 2005 Grande École - turn up on DVD. Last year's festival was a rare one in that every single film proved worthwhile on some level. So far, five films from that series - La Moustache, Avenue Montaigne, Russian Dolls, Heading South and Le Petit Lieutenant - have been released theatrically over here and one more, Cold Showers, has, like Moustache, made it to DVD (the full-frontal theory in action once again). As I write, nine out of the 17 movies from the 2007 roster have been slated for US distribution, and more may be snapped up during the festival, as distributors often come to the public screenings to check out the audience response.

The main question I am always asked about this festival is: How do you decide which films to see? A decade ago, when I began attending, I chose only a couple of movies. I liked them both, so the following year I upped it to four, then eight, then... yes, right. Other than making choices based on a particular director, writer or star(s), the short descriptions in the program would seem the only sensible way. Yet, with all due respect to whomever writes these descriptions, over the years I have not found them that helpful. So, because I love movies, and especially because I trust the tastes of Mr Pena and his staff, I've found it works best to just see them all. Sometimes, the very film I would have thought I'd most enjoy proves disappointing, while one I'd never have picked, given its description, turns out to be an amazing experience.

As a freelancer, I am lucky. I work my schedule so that I can see two films per day, in the afternoon at discount prices. At $22, the opening night is a bit steep. But Film Society members get in for $18. The remaining films cost $12 for the general public ($8 for members or for seniors like me during weekday performances). Since I am still working non-stop (thanks in part to our beloved political administration), I must tell my clients that I'm "in meetings" for those festival afternoons, getting my work done instead during morning hours or at night. (If any of my clients happen to be reading this, please accept my apology. Sometimes culture's just got to trump business.)

I'll be reporting daily on the films I've seen, their qualities (or lack thereof) and whether or not they've yet been picked up for distribution, and if so, by whom. Once acquired for theatrical distribution, a film almost always makes its way to DVD. So even if you are not able to get to New York, or the nearest city in which foreign films are shown, you may still get to see these delights at home in the months (or sometimes, years) to come.

"Less politically engaged and geographically far-flung than usual, Lincoln Center's spotty Rendez-Vous With French Cinema insinuates that a nation of filmmakers is forging inward with fiercer self-determination than ever before," writes Ed Gonzalez in the Voice.

Stephen Holden opens his preview of the series in the New York Times with quite a declaration: "Marion Cotillard's feral portrait of the French singer Édith Piaf as a captive wild animal hurling herself at the bars of her cage [in La Vie en Rose] is the most astonishing immersion of one performer into the body and soul of another I've ever encountered in a film."

Updates: Jürgen Fauth and Marcy Dermansky preview five films in the series.

Clémentine Gallot celebrates the series at the Reeler.

More from Matt Peterson in the New York Press.

Posted by dwhudson at February 28, 2007 7:02 AM