|
Jacques (Gérard Lanvin), a two-bit career criminal, gets out of the joint after serving 10 years and tries to stay straight. Old and new allegiances, however, drive him into one last heist. I think we can all see where this is going, but director Sam Karmann pulls off enough postmodernist twists to keep it an engaging, if stolid, opener for this year’s Boston French Film Festival. Jacques’s pal Francis (Jacques Gamblin) dreams of becoming an actor. He takes classes and attends a stage adaptation of Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas with Camille (Julie Durand), an actress/barmaid he’s taken a shine to. The scene fits in nicely with the New Wave tradition of life imitating pop art that goes back at least as far as Godard’s Breathless, but otherwise the comparison is invidious. These small-time hoods all seem to be imitating Scorsese characters — loose cannon Didier (Clovis Cornillac) is a lightweight Johnny Boy, for example — and Karmann’s dreary vérité style doesn’t add to their charisma. Neither is the heist itself much of a grabber compared with anything by Jean-Pierre Melville. French crooks aren’t what they used to be, and neither are the films about them. In French with English subtitles. (100 minutes).
BY PETER KEOUGH
|
