GLORIA MUNDI - Venice Film Festival

GLORIA MUNDI is another in a long line of French social realist director Robert Guediguian's Marseille-set Marxist dramas. In this one, he's trying to tell us how modern life crushes the honest worker's hopes and dreams, leading them to crime out of desperation.  This is illustrated through the life of the family pictured. Mum is a cleaner, locked out of earning a wage because of a strike.  Dad is a bus driver, on suspended leave because he was caught using his mobile phone while driving. The elder daughter is a feckless millenial who can't hold down a job as a sales assistant.  The son-in-law is an Uber driver beaten up by conventional taxi drivers scared of the competition.  Ranged against these unfortunates is the younger half-sister and her husband - clearly depicted as front men of evil nasty capitalism. They run a pawn shop, and view their family as losers.  And entering the picture as a kind of catalyst to the story, are the elder sister's baby Gloria, and her ex-con grandad newly out of prison: a silent solemn presence.

The film is well-acted and despite its heavy-handed politics and an obvious plot worthy of a cheap British soap opera, it did hold my attention. There are a couple of set pieces that are truly affecting. One is a scene where the nasty capitalist daughter forces an obviously distressed Muslim woman to remove her veil in order to sell her toaster for five euros. That's nasty and powerful. I also really liked the depiction of the parents marriage - loving and secure, so secure that the dad and the ex-con can form a kind of friendship, jointly caring for their gran-daughter. 

The problem I had - apart from the obvious plotting and pretentious opening and closing scenes - was that the anti-capitalist message was badly executed.  These people are in trouble because they do stupid, sometimes illegal, stuff, and are rightly punished. Don't use your phone while driving - don't chat to your mum when you're meant to be working - don't start a fight.  And seeing the parents try and bail out their narcissistic irresponsible daughter again and again suggested to me that the message of the film was really to admonish Boomer parents from over-indulging their kids. 

GLORIA MUNDI has a running time of 106 minutes and had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. 

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND / UNE NOUVELLE AMIE - LFF14 - Day Four

Francois Ozon is back with another deliciously subversive and yet psychologically credible drama charting the hidden desires of the bourgeoisie. THE NEW GIRLFRIEND revolves around a series of sexual desires and fears that are awoken when a young mother tragically dies giving birth. Her husband David (Romain Duris) finds that her death, and perhaps more specifically the need to both father and mother to his baby daughter, awakens his old desires to dress as a woman. The subject matter is initially treated as a joke - something for shock value - the absurdity of seeing Romain Duris in a bad wig pretending to be a girl. But as the movie progresses it layers on depth and sympathy. In a pivotal scene, David is moved to tears by a drag act in a gay bar, seeing a transformation to beauty and a confidence in that persona that is beyond his more circumscribed options. The surprise for me is that this film, while about David, is also perhaps more importantly about Claire (Anais Demoustier). She is the loyal and loving best friend of David’s dead wife and in discovering and then abetting David in his secret transvestisism (is that the word?) she becomes just as confused about her own desires. Does she long for a gay relationship with her best friend, with David in his transvestite role, with David as a straight man, or to be a voyeur to David and her husband?

It’s a tribute to Francois Ozon that the subject matter, while treated with humour, is also treated with sensitivity and courage. No desire is left unturned and we feel credibly in the presence of two good people trying to figure out what the feel and want. The film may not be one of the most formally envelope-pushing of his works, but it may well be one of the most sympathetic. Who knew it would take Romain Duris in a skirt for Ozon to find his heart?

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND/ UNE NOUVELLE AMIE has a running time of 105 minutes. The film played Toronto and London 2014. It opens in Belgium and France on November 5th.