Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Repertory watch/Mosaique festival + Riverside Studios

legrandvoyage
The answer blows in the wind: Cazales in Le Grand Voyage

Opening briefly as part of the mini festival Mosaique at the French Institute (see links, Alliance Française), Ismaël Ferroukhi's Le Grande Voyage is a road movie that updates the generation-gap dilemma to contemporary Europe where tradition and modernity often clash. It tells the story of Reda (Nicolas Cazales), a young man living in the south of France, who finds himself forced to drive his father to Mecca a few weeks before his college entrance exams. From the start, the journey is difficult. Reda and his father have nothing in common. Conversation is reduced to the strict minimum. Reda wants to experience the trip in his own way but his father demands respect for himself and expects his son to understand the meaning of his pilgrimage. As they drive through different countries and meet various people, Reda and his father observe each other warily, facing the challenge of creating a relationship when communication seems impossible.///
Further west, the Riverside Studios shows the classic screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, the jewel on the crown of the genre (Sunday 26 June). Still at the Riverside, Richard Linklater's companion films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset show as a double bill. The Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke -starred romantic, existentialist mini-series are as good as they get these days and if you missed the chance to see them the first time round, now is the time (Thursday 30 June).

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