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Jeanne Moreau saves
French Césars awards
of TheColumnists.com
BORDEAUX , France
I never watch the Hollywood Oscars ceremony. It airs over here in the middle of the night and can only be viewed on a cable system that I don't take. That’s okay. I don’t think I’m missing much. This year’s Oscar ratings were the lowest since 1974.
Overscripting is the issue and it’s a real one. But underscripting can be just as annoying, as I saw locally last week.
The French have their own version of the Oscars, called the Césars, and this is a big, glossy event. Last week was the 33rd edition. I have suffered through several of them in recent years, if only to stay abreast of the local buzz.
Admittedly the ceremony exists to celebrate French cinema but this is a very self-congratulatory, inward-looking production. This year it made France seem like a small country that spends too much time contemplating its own navel.
The unfettered format makes it worse. Cinema veteran Jean Rochefort opened proceedings by approaching the mike in a series of unrehearsed dance steps, and his opening line was “I was dancing. Did you see that?” Or maybe he was just stumbling drunk--it was hard to tell. He then bumbled through 10 minutes of wandering, ad-libbed bad jokes so lame the audience was rolling its eyes.
Rochefort was honorary president of this year’s ceremony and he set the tone for what was to come. When he finally danced off the stage, on came Antoine de Caunes, a slightly younger fixture in French show business, who was to provide continuity. Again the evening was subjected to a stream of weak material apparently unscripted.
One critic described facial expressions in the audience as “granite-like” as his jokes fell flat. He, however, found himself quite funny.
Late in the evening he stopped proceedings and ceremoniously pulled out a cigarette and lit it despite smoking restrictions. The audience glared at him partly for his bad taste but perhaps also because they were all dying for a smoke themselves.
The award-givers also needed help. One woman arrived at the podium carrying a bottle of champagne, which she popped open, spewing bubbles all over her envelope and herself. Finding this quite witty, she overpoured a glass and downed it in three or four gulps. Again, eyes in the audience rolled. This may have been her second bottle.
Acceptance speeches have no time limit and some winners seemed intent on telling their life story to this very bored audience. Critics and movie bloggers have been describing their embarrassment all week. “Mon dieu,” wrote one. “Fortunately the Oscars are coming soon.”
To be sure, there were some memorable moments. Jeanne Moreau’s 60 years in cinema were honored and introduced with excerpts from many of her films. She made a graceful entrance for a lady of 80 then, in an unscripted jab, she showed that she still has her wits about her.
Madame Moreau pointed out French Culture Minister Christine Albanel in the audience and, all but wagging her finger, said she was worried that reduced government subsidies to independent movie houses, “risk weakening the French cinema”, about 200 of which remained dark Friday night to protest the same issue.
The poorly managed production was unfortunate because French cinema has always had something to offer the outside world--especially this year with Olivier Dahan’s “La Vie en Rose” (titled “La Môme” in France) for which Marion Cotillard took home best actress César.
Miss Cotillard accepted her award in a flood of tears. Praising Dahan, as she did at the Oscars, she said he had changed her life. “You wrote the most beautiful script in the world and you gave me a chance to portray an entire life.”
The rest of the ceremony confirmed French
cinema as a world of auteur directors.
Best film went to “La Graine et le Mulet” (The Grain
and the Mule) of the Tunisian-born director Abdellatif Kechiche.
Best actor was Mathieu Amalric in “Le Scaphandre et le Papillon”
(The diving bell and the Butterfly). Best foreign film was “La
Vie des Autres” (The Life of Others) directed by Florian
Henckel Von Donnersmarck, a story of double lives in cold war
East Germany.
The main controversy of the evening was Amalric’s written
comments faxed from Panama where he was on location for another
film. Only a truncated version of it was read aloud, allegedly
for lack of time, but he was reported to be “furious”
that his acid remarks about bottom-line thinking in the industry
were nixed. Cut from his speech was a sharp remark on multiplexes.
“Have you ever spoken to anyone in
a multiplex?" he asked. “Not I. In fact it is impossible.
All that matters is keeping people coming in.”
He ended with a warning that if we’re not careful, movie
houses will fade away and we will end up sitting in front of
their “home cinema” screens.
©2008 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted March 3, 2008.
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