My editor has been away in Europe for the better part of a
month, so I’ve been doing my best to tailor my theatrical viewings to things I thought it was important to review in his absence. He can still post my reviews from the road, but he’s only had the time to see and review one movie himself while he was gone: Jurassic World: Fallen
Kingdom, which he saw in Rome just for the novelty of seeing a movie while
on holiday. It’s a sentiment I can relate to as I enjoy that quite a bit
myself. In order to keep the site feeling current, I’ve been trying to write
about two reviews per week to compensate for the absence of his usual output.
Though there are always things out that a person can review,
I’ve got this idea that we really should review something within the first week
of its Australian release if we don’t want to miss the boat on it. He differs
with me slightly on that, thinking of every review as contributing long-term to
the repository of our searchable reviews, which means it doesn’t really matter
whether you review it a week or a year or a decade after it’s released. You can
tell I was once a newspaperman, as I have the old-fashioned interest in there
being a “news peg” for something you write – even if, in the case of a movie,
the “news peg” is the release date itself.
Anyway, that brings us to this week, surely one of his last
out of town (though he hasn’t actually told me when he’s
returning). Thursday is a bit light on new releases. Hotel Transylvania 3 is coming out, but I’m not going to see that
on Thursday night when it will make a perfect movie to watch with my kids –
though whether that will happen this weekend, in time for me to review it, or
next, when it will be past my preferred seven-day window, I can’t be sure. In any case, a
lot of the time they don’t even schedule evening viewings of kids movies,
though I do remember having the odd experience of watching Finding Dory at like
9:40 at night.
One thing that’s coming out is a movie whose trailer I have
seen a number of times. It’s a French movie called Two is a Family – the title probably sounds nicer in French. (It’s
called Demain Tout Commence, which I think
translates as “Tomorrow Everything Begins.”) It stars two semi-international
stars, Omar Sy (The Intouchables) and
Clemence Poesy (In Bruges, 127 Hours,
the last two Harry Potter movies). Their characters had a fling on holiday that
produced a child – something he’s only aware of when she shows up on his
doorstep, hands him the kid, and then buggers off.
My 2018 film rankings are severely lacking in foreign
language films – in fact, I don’t yet have my first. I really like both the
stars and it looks like a sweet movie. But I am philosophically conflicted
about whether to see it at all, let alone review it.
See, this is not a French movie released to cross over to a
world audience. This is a French movie intended to be seen by French people. And
Australians, apparently.
What I really mean is: It hasn’t been released in the U.S.,
and given that the movie debuted in France in 2016, it does not seem likely to
be.
For a long time I have been interested in compiling year-end
lists of movies viewed based on trying to share common references with American
critics, such that we are comparing apples to apples when we name our top ten.
I hesitate even to include Australian films that I don’t think will receive a
U.S. release, even though this is the actual country in which I review films. I’ve
lightened up on that, which seems like a good stance to take when I am a member
of a body called the Australian Film Critics Association, which gets me into
unlimited movies in the theater for $75 a year. If I’m not even reviewing
movies made by and for Australians, I’m doing something wrong. (And I’m pleased
to say that one of these, Sweet Country,
is still in my top five for the year.)
French movies made for French people are a bit different.
The fact that an Australian distributor saw it fit to release the movie here
means that there is thought to be an audience. I don’t know if the readers of
our website are that audience, but I like to think they could be, and besides, I
have a philosophy of seeing and reviewing films from a wide diversity of
sources and about a wide diversity of people. Seeing and reviewing a movie made
by French people for French people would be good for me.
But I still feel like a U.S. release is what marks a movie
as “significant on the world stage,” and not just the niche product of a
smaller film industry that only produces a couple dozen movies a year, if that.
Two is a Family getting released in
Australia means it has exceeded those modest aims, but it may not cross my personal
threshold of what warrants a review.
Why is this, though? Are the tastes of American audiences
really such an important standard? Especially when Americans are the people who
elected Trump as president?
Would that it were so simple, to quote Ralph Fiennes and
Alden Ehrenreich. Foreign language films have never been released in the U.S.
because the distributor thought they would appeal to Trump voters. The
distributor is targeting American intellectuals, liberals, cultural snobs. And
those people’s opinions are important
to me.
If Two is a Family
is not considered to be a good bet for American cultural snobs, is it really
better suited to the French equivalent of Trump voters?
Well that’s a big no, too. As it stars a Frenchman of
African heritage, Omar Sy, it’s already alienating those people in France, of
which there are many. So it passes that minimum standard of liberal
correctness. If it’s good enough for France’s intellectuals, and if it’s good
enough for Australia’s intellectuals, should I even care if it’s good enough
for America’s intellectuals?
And France and Australia are, of course, not the only two
countries where this movie has been released. Its IMDB page shows it has also opened
in Belgium, Hungary, Estonia, Germany, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Netherlands,
Greece, Croatia, Israel, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Norway, Brazil, Peru,
Mexico, Uruguay, Sweden, Chile, Argentina, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
How can not having a release in one country – one increasingly
stupid, frustrating and annoying country – give me pause?
It shouldn’t, and in fact, it won’t. Writing this blog post
has given me the resolve to see and review Two
is a Family. Done and done.
The only obstacle now might be that I may already be going
to the movies on Wednesday and Friday nights. Wednesday, I’m thinking of going
to the restoration of 2001: A Space
Odyssey, and Friday, I may cap drinks with coworkers with a drunken viewing
of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, as
I understand that may be the best way to view it. It’ll be hard to convince my
wife, and myself, that I need to fit in a random little French movie on the
night in between.
But dammit, that random little French movie is being supported by
its Australian distributor, and I want to be the kind of film critic that
legitimizes it with a review.
I guess we’ll see what happens.
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