Are French films screened here less frequently than they used to be, attracting less attention when they do make it to our screens? Perhaps so, but I still managed to recently see some interesting offering from the French film industry.
Dossier 137 is a 2025 film from Dominick Moll. It was shown in a French film festival, which I suspect means it is not going to get a wider release, which is a shame as it features strong performances and deals with important subjects in a sensitive and nuanced manner. Léa Drucker plays a police investigator of malpractice by other cops, with the film set around the time of the Gilets Jaunes protests. A youth attending the demonstrations with his mother is severely injured by a policeman, and the investigator is trying to find out who is responsible and whether they acted inappropriately. Discovering that the youth comes from the same small town as herself, she pursues the case a bit more doggedly than she might otherwise have done. The film is good on the way cops close ranks to protect their own and the human cost of being on the receiving end of state violence, while also giving a sense of how stressful it is to police riots and how easy it is to slip into making bad decisions in such an environment. Drucker's own performance is particularly impressive. It deserves a wider audience.
Alpha (another 2025 film, this time from Julia Ducournau) was screened more widely, although it proved somewhat divisive, with many seeing it as a confused load of old bollocks, for all that it did have its supporters (notably Irish Times film guy Donald Clarke). It is an odd one, with the basic premise that there is this blood-born disease going around that turns people into statues. The film mostly follows Alpha, a 13 year old girl, who unwisely gets an A tattooed on her arm at a party, leading to her mother fearing that she has been tainted by the virus. There's also a split time thing going on, for as well as the present-day Alpha storyline there is a separate storyline in the past involving her mother as a doctor treating patients in the early days of the virus. And there is also stuff about how Alpha and her family are of Berber origin, and about her recovering heroin addict uncle.
I can see why people didn't like this. I found the split time sequence a bit confusing, which irked me as missing the cues made me feel like I was too stupid for the film, which made me hate it for insulting me. But also the relationship between the two time sequences is a bit strange and contradictory, which made it unclear as to what was real and what was imaginary and who was doing the imagining. But it still felt like the film had something. The principals' performances are all very impressive and the film also makes great use of music, most notably Portishead's "Roads" at the disorienting party sequence at the start of the film. So: worth seeing even if you might not like it.
L'Atalante is an old French film from 1934, directed by Jean Vigo, who died in the same year it was released at the age of 29. It's one of those Sight & Sound top ten films and is about the eponymous barge and the people who sail on her: Jean (the cap'n), Juliette (his newly married wife), Père Jules (the salty sea dog), and the young lad (who doesn't have a name). It's mostly about Jean and Juliette and their romantic travails. It's entertaining enough and it looks very nice but I did wonder if I was missing something as it all felt a bit inconsequential and unworthy if its one-of-the-best-films-ever status. But I am wary of being too down on it as it reminded me somewhat of F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, a film I disliked greatly on first viewing and have since grown to love.
There are cats.
images:
Dossier 137 interview (Critikat: "Dossier 137")
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