French Oscars go to Lady Chatterley

 

It was not a good idea to stage the Césars, the French version of the Academy Awards, at the weekend. The Hollywood monster has stomped on news of the clean sweep of the "French Oscars" on Saturday night by a little film d'auteur that came and went almost unnoticed at the end of last year.

Lady Chatterley, a version of the D.H. Lawrence novel directed by Pascale Ferran, won Best Picture and best actress for Marina Hands, its star. She is the daughter of Terry Hands, the celebrated British theatre director, and Ludmila Mikael, a French actress. It also won best adaptation, best costume and best photography.

Chatterley's success is a blow for the good old director's film in the face of the big-budget juggernauts that dominate the French cinema, whether US or locally made.

[Hands and Ferran accepting awards]     It was up against Indigènes (Days of Glory), the Franco-Algerian world war two saga which also failed to win Best Foreign Picture in Los Angeles.

When it came out in December, Ferran's low-budget film, which is nearly three hours long, won critical praise and excited a little media attention with its explicit sex (which will probably hinder it in the US). Some 200,000 people went to see it when it was on its limited release. In comparison, 3.2 million have watched Indigènes.   

As Le Monde noted today, the film had just about everything going against it: "A director whose last feature was 10 years ago, an adaptation of a story unknown to most (French) people, unknown actors, extreme length, a style that cannot be summed up with a formula.."

Ferran's film takes patience. Despite the sumptuous southern France scenery --  and the sex -- the well-known tale of Constance and the gamekeeper requires a suspension of the usual judgment about plot and pacing.  But it pays to make the effort. Don't take my word for it. A.O. Scott, the New York Times film critic, sang its praises at last year's Berlin festival. The film was not a typical literary costume pageant, he wrote. Ferran and Hands had modernised Lawrence's now very dated yarn. 

Every frame of the movie seems alive: with risk, with pleasure, with a sensuality that is both wild and intelligent...Lady Chatterley should, if there is any justice, break free of the festival circuit, even as it is precisely the kind of movie you come to a festival hoping to see.

Even before she won the César at the ceremony in the Theâtre du Châtelet,  Ferran went on stage to denounce the failure of the subsidy system that is supposed to keep the French film industry healthy in the face of the Hollywood onslaught. The French industry is now divided into well-financed low-brow blockbusters and a ghetto of under-funded art films, she complained. "The present system is a betrayal of the heritage of the great French cinéastes," she said to applause.

After the coronation of her film, she came back to her point. "I don't know if I should say this, but at the end of the film we were so ruined that we could not even have a party worthy of the name, so I would like to ask all the technicians and artists to come on stage because the party is now."

Le Monde weighed in this afternoon with a very French appeal to the candidates in the current  presidential campaign. It urged them to "ensure that all films are born equal and with equal rights."

For cinéphiles, here's the full list of the César awards, with English titles in brackets.

Best Actor - FRANCOIS CLUZET, NE LE DIS A PERSONNE (DON'T TELL ANYONE) Best Actress - MARINA HANDS, LADY CHATTERLEY Best Supporting Actor - KAD MERAD, JE VAIS BIEN, NE T'EN FAIS PAS (DON'T WORRY I'M FINE) Best Supporting Actress - VALERIE LEMERCIER, FAUTEUILS D'ORCHESTRE (AVENUE MONTAIGNE) Best Male Newcomer - MALIK ZIDI, LES AMITIES MALEFIQUES (POISON FRIENDS) Best Female Newcomer - MELANIE LAURENT, JE VAIS BIEN, NE T'EN FAIS PAS Best Director - GUILLAUME CANET, NE LE DIS A PERSONNE Best French Film - LADY CHATTERLEY (PASCALE FERRAN) Best Debut - YOU ARE SO HANDSOME (ISABELLE MERGAULT) Best Documentary - BEING JACQUES CHIRAC (KARL ZERO/MICHEL ROYER) Best Original Screenplay - INDIGENES (DAYS OF GLORY) OLIVIER LORELLE/RACHID BOUCHAREB Best Adaptation - LADY CHATTERLEY (PASCALE FERRAN/ROGER BOHBOT/PIERRE TRIVIDIC) Best Music Written For A Film - NE LE DIS A PERSONNE (M - MATHIEU CHEDID) Best Short Film - FAIS DE BEAUX REVES (MARILYNE CANTO) Best Cinematography - LADY CHATTERLEY (JULIEN HIRSCH) Best Set Design - OSS 117 - CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES (MAAMAR ECH SHEIK) Best Sound: THE SINGER (FRANCOIS MUSY/GABRIEL HAFNER) Best Editing - NE LE DIS A PERSONNE (HERVE DE LUZE) Best Costumes - LADY CHATTERLEY (MARIE-CLAUDE ALTOT) Best Foreign Film - LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (JONATHAN DAYTON, VALERIE FARIS)

Comments

[Jess McAree]

Just commenting because this post looks so lonely without any feedback, Charles. Perhaps this reflects the anglo-saxon world's attitude to French cinema?

"Lady Chatterley" is, of course, a typically French story. Or rather, it isn't... but it should have been. Take out the very British class consciousness stuff and it's pure French. I'm only surprised it took them so long to realise this. Actually, it can't be long before somebody in France looks at the rest of Lawrence's work; he was writing in the wrong language.

[pouet]

>"he was writing in the wrong language"
I'm not sure of that. French language is lacking adjectives, and Lawrence used it in a very subtle way. Think of the atmosphere in his novels and his poetry. He reminds me of Pierre-Jean Jouve (for the atmosphere) But Jouve was more relying on his metaphors.
I guess, that what Ferrand's movie is all about, translating the mood of the book. Which she couldn't have done, if she had stuck stupidly to the novel. I hope to watch the movie soon.

You can read Ferrand's "thoughts", here:
http://www.allocine.fr/film/anecdote_gen_cfilm=61490.html

[Helena Frith Powell]

I agree that it can't be long before the French adapt more of Lawrence's novels, they are the kinds of topics they love and that are far too complex for the Anglo-Saxon cinema industry to cope with.

www.helenafrithpowell.com

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Elsewhere on this blogsite the association of German soldiers and French women is discussed. D.H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen (cousin of the Red Baron) married in 1914 and were hounded out of Cornwall, accused of being spies, and refused passports. Both Lawrence and James Joyce preferred a Latin to an Anglo-Saxon way of life; Joyce (his Irish family were stoned in the streets), had his masterpiece, Ulysses, banned in the UK and USA, as did Lawrence with Lady Chatterly. Both were self published, Lawrence and Frieda were in Italy when Ulysses was being printed: 1922. Joyce, who loved Paris fled on a bicycle before the German hordes whom he feared as he feared thunder, lightning, horses and the sea at night. Lawrence feared loneliness, forever trying to form a commune with friends. On Friday 2 March it will be 77 years since Lawrence died in his little house Vence (A.M.). In his house are the sewing kit he used to mend his socks and clothes, for he, like Joyce lived in poverty all his life: a great English artist and an Irish genius, exiled to France and Italy, their true home.

[Ros]

Well, I did say all this on 29th december 2006 at 12H49 but no one seemed interested?

[Marie-Hélène]

Dear Mr Bremmer,

Hope you'll be happy to appear in a Blog of the french academic 'élite' ! Welcome to your great sense of humour and observation...

MH Giannésini, Professor in charge of the "Blog des veilleurs" Sciences Po Paris.

http://www.blogdesveilleurs.com/