daniel auteuil Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Writer-director Wes Anderson is probably most famous for his quirky character studies, but lately you can't help but notice the guy has been branching out. First up was an animated film, and now it's on to any studio's most prized posession: the remake. Variety reports that Anderson has signed with Universal and Imagine Entertainment to write a remake of the 2006 French comedy, Mon meilleur ami (My Best Friend). So far, Anderson is just in charge of the script, but there's already talk he might be eying the project as his next directorial gig.

Patrice Leconte's original film starred Daniel Auteuil as a cantankerous antiques dealer who has the misfortune of overhearing his friends at a dinner party. When he learns the unfortunate truth about what they really think of him, he's forced to acknowledge his unappealing traits. But the humiliation doesn't stop there; our unloved antiquarian then makes a bet with a business partner to produce at least one friend, and of course, he doesn't have any. So instead, he hires an amiable cab driver to pose as his life-long pal.

There has always been a touch of the misanthropic in Anderson's work, so it seems like My Best Friend would be a natural fit. Besides, now that Anderson has finished working on the adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox, it's the perfect time to lock him into his next job. So even if the guy doesn't decide to direct, at least we are getting a Wes Anderson script ... and that should count for something, right?

Would you want to see a Wes Anderson-penned film that wasn't also directed by the man himself?

The second edition of the Rome Film Festival kicked off in high style last night, featuring Monica Bellucci, back to her natural brunette after dying her hair blonde for French gangster flick Second Wind (AKA Le Deuxième Souffle), and the always elegant Sophia Loren, who received a lifetime achievement award after not even being invited to the festival's first edition last year. Second Wind is a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 original; the new version also stars Daniel Auteuil and was directed by Alain Corneau (the very good Fear and Trembling). It doesn't yet have Italian distribution, so it seems like a bold choice.

Gala screenings continue tonight with what The Hollywood Reporter called "the highly anticipated European premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age." Queen Elizabeth herself -- otherwise known as Cate Blanchett -- is expected to be called on the (red) carpet. But with all due respects to the Elizabeth sequel, my greatest anticipation is for the world premiere of Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth. On Saturday afternoon (October 20), Coppola will attend a screening of his wife's documentary Coda: Thirty Years Later, "participate in a public encounter" (evidently a conversation with a moderator), and then proceed to the public unveiling of his first film in a decade.

The stars will continue to shine when the Lions for Lambs trio of Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise jet down to Rome in time for photos and a screening on October 23. Jane Fonda and Gerald Depardieu are also expected to enjoy a Roman holiday. The Rome Film Festival runs through October 27. Check out the Cinematical Gallery below to see photographic evidence of the lovely stars doing their thing on opening night.

My latest starting point is DVD Talk; their list is not comprehensive, but I appreciate the simplicity. Looking over what's out this week, I realized I need to watch more movies in theaters! I haven't seen any of these releases yet, but I plan to do some catching up. My rental picks begin with Patrice Leconte's My Best Friend. Monika Bartyzel called it "an entertaining, solid comedy." Daniel Auteuil plays "a completely conceited art dealer who is stunned to learn that none of his so-called friends like him" and is inspired to gamble on himself. The DVD from IFC includes a "making of" feature and the trailer.

The Trials of Darryl Hunt "tells the story of ... a black man who was tried and convicted for the rape and murder of [a] white newspaper reporter," according to Christopher Campbell. "Hunt was sentenced despite there being no physical evidence, simply off a testimonial given by a former Ku Klux Klan member." ThinkFilm's DVD includes bonus interviews and an "exclusive HBO featurette."

Another doc, Crazy Love, about a long-term relationship with, shall we say, questionable elements, made James Rocchi wonder: "What movie didn't get in to Sundance because this horrible, clammy, grim and pathetic tale of co-dependent madness did?" But Kim Voynar had a very different view, describing it as "an engaging, intelligent" film. Magnolia's DVD features an audio commentary by co-director Dan Klores and the couple, deleted scenes and other extras.

Other titles that sound intriguing include documentary Girl 27 (a woman hired as a movie extra in the 1930s is instead raped at an MGM party) and the box set Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy (including Blood Wedding, Carmen and El Amor Brujo) from Criterion.

One of my favorite films from TIFF last year -- Patrice Leconte's Mon Meilleur Ami -- just hit theaters a few days ago, and somehow I missed it. Luckily, it's not too late to go on about why you should see this movie. Why do I care? Beyond the fact that it is an entertaining, solid comedy, we've got a chance here to patronize a great foreign language film and show that North America can handle a non-English film that isn't directed by Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood. In February, I posted about how Brian Grazer and Universal were already gearing up for an English-language remake. But why bother when the film is now on the big screen?

Mon Meilluer Ami, which is titled My Best Friend for North American audiences, is about François Coste (Daniel Auteuil), a completely conceited art dealer who is stunned to learn that none of his so-called friends like him. Of course, he denies the accusation, and his business partner makes a bet with him -- he can keep an expensive Greek vase he picked up with their business' money if he can produce a genuine best friend. If he can't, the vase is hers. After stumbling upon an eternally-jovial cabbie a few times, he hires the man to teach him how to find a friend.

You can check out the trailer over at the film's website. The film is only in limited release now, but hopefully all of you lovely cinemagoers will patronize the available screenings like mad and inspire IFC to send the film to more theaters.

*A guest review today, from Nick Schager, of Slant Magazine


There's nothing new about the films of Francis Veber, director of The Dinner Game and The Closet. Decidedly old-school throwbacks to both classic Hollywood comedies of manners and bouncy French farces, the filmmaker's hits are pure superficiality, their intricate plot machinations and oversized performances containing barely a whiff of emotional or intellectual depth. Veber isn't about character development or thematic subtext; he's about light, frolicsome fun, the kind in which myriad strangers find themselves hopelessly embroiled in outrageous circumstances, and then stumble and bumble their way out of trouble and into love. With The Valet, he continues his career dedication to fanciful humor, spinning a tangled yarn about a restaurant valet, his small business-owning love interest, a corporate bigwig, his cold, greedy wife, and his supermodel lover, all of whom find their fates intertwined after a tabloid photographer takes an ill-advised picture.

The snapshot in question is of CEO Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil) and his gorgeous celebrity mistress Elena (Alice Taglioni), and it threatens to ruin Levasseur if it leads to divorce, as his wife Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas, speaking seamless French) is the majority shareholder in his companies. As a random passerby is also featured in the photo, Pierre claims that Elena was actually with this stranger, a cover story that forces Pierre to find the man and pay him to pose as Elena's lover for the paparazzi hordes. After an amazingly quick search, the innocent sap in question turns out to be François Pignon (Gad Elmaleh) – the name of most of Veber's naïve protagonists – a porter who lives with his clingy best friend Richard (Dany Boon) and who has recently had his marriage proposal rebuffed by lifelong love and deep-in-debt bookstore proprietor Emilie (Virginie Ledoyen), who is being aggressively pursued by a sleazy cell phone salesman (Patrick Mille).

In only its first year of life, the RomeFilmFest (See how they mush the words together? That's a sign of hipness.) is pulling out all the stops in an effort to compete with its financially trouble big brother in Venice. Though the full slate won't be announced until the end of September, proud RFF officials revealed this weekend that Steven Shainberg's much-anticipated Diane Arbus biopic Fur will hold its world premiere in Rome, opening the Festival on October 13. And, as if that's not enough, Nicole Kidman (the film's star) is expected to attend the screening, making the RFF red carpet the place to be, if only for one night.

In addition to Fur, Fest officials indicated that N -- the first (and, since it stars Daniel Auteuil, surely the best) of the many upcoming Napoleon flicks heading to our screens -- will premiere in Rome, with costar Monica Bellucci in attendance. It's also expected that Mira Nair's (Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala) The Namesake will appear, shortly after its world premiere in Toronto.

Back in April we reported on yet another remake of a foreign film, this one to be directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly from a smash-hit French comedy called The Valet. Today, in an unusual twist (at least for non J-horror films), we hear that Sony Pictures Classics will bring the original film to these shores, a move that might have DreamWorks, the studio making the remake, a little nervous. After all, how many remakes are better than the originals? I mean, what if people see and actually like the French film? So much pressure for those poor Farrellys! That said, however, I'm not sure there's a significant overlap in the audiences for their films and those for subtitled comedies ...

In case you've forgotten, The Valet (both versions, one assumes) is about a "multimillionaire tycoon photographed kissing his famous mistress. To prevent his wife from seeking divorce, he bribes a parking valet to pose as his mistress' lover." In the French film, the tycoon is played by the completely wonderful Daniel Auteuil, while his wife, surprisingly, is played by Kristin Scott Thomas. The film was directed by Francis Veber, remakes of whose works -- The Birdcage primary among them -- have been fairly successful with American audiences; it'll be interesting to see how people react to the real thing when it's released here early next year.

Michael Haneke's new film is about the two ways in which we experience life through the media: we learn from its truths, and we are influenced by its lies. Or perhaps the film is about something else – if there is one thing of which the filmmaker is fond, it is open endings. To answer one critic's question for the director, which Haneke would not acknowledge: Yes, the film could be about the Iraq War. But couldn't the insistence to dwell on the war apply such a relationship to most recent films?

The issue of open-ended stories and the ambiguous responses they allow is a frustrating problem in cinema. Aside from alienating audiences in need of resolution, they are sometimes so unconditional that all meanings are negligible. Inconclusiveness is also easily criticized as evidence of either a conceit or a cop out, and often there is doubt that some storytellers wouldn't be better off releasing a blank page or screen if they're inclined to be so indefinite.