THE TOURNÉES FESTIVAL OF FRENCH FILM-March 25-April 22, 2010

March 25-April 22, 2010 Budig Theater Northern Kentucky University

March 25, 2010 Azur et Asmar (Azur and Asmar)
Combining cut-out and CGI animation, Michel Ocelot’s fourth animated feature tells the story of two boys, the white, blue-eyed prince Azur, and the dark-skinned Asmar, both of whom are being raised by Asmar’s mother. Separated by Azur’s father, the boys meet up again several years later in an unidentified Arab country—where Azur’s blue eyes terrify the locals, leading him to feign blindness—in order to free a magical fairy. Deftly yet subtly addressing racism, intolerance, and superstition, Azur and Asmar also dazzles with its sheer beauty: Ocelot incorporates visual elements and techniques inspired by medieval illuminations and Arabic art, including mosaics and meticulously rendered architectural details.

April 1, 2010 Les Chansons d'amour (Love Songs)
The extremely talented Christophe Honoré shows the influence of Jean-Luc Godard’s minimalist musical, A Woman Is a Woman (1961), and Jacques Demy’s all-sung The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in this tune-filled movie set in present-day Paris about a “ménage à trois” and fluid sense of sexuality. When words won’t suffice for the characters’ surfeit of emotion, they simply break out into song. The fourteen tracks written by Alex Beaupain plumb the heights of ecstasy and the depths of melancholy and are delivered in an exceptionally casual way, as if singing were the most natural mode of communication among Honoré’s beautiful, heartbroken characters.

April 8, 2010 La Graine et la mulet (The Secret of the Grain)
This stunning film takes place in the Southern French city of Sète where Slimane, the patriarch of a large and vivacious North African family, is an elderly dockworker. When his job of many years is suddenly no longer secure, he decides to restore an old boat in the harbor, and turn it into a floating couscous restaurant. Writer and director Abdel Kechiche is a master at communicating the finest aspects of his colorful brood of characters. Vibrant cinematography and dynamic editing make this personal story all the more engrossing; each individual character is amazingly distinct, while their interpersonal dynamics are rendered with startling clarity and familiarity.

April 15, 2010 Un Conte de noel (A Christmas Tale)
When it comes to insightful, humorous dissections of family dysfunction, Arnaud Desplechin can’t be matched. Set in Roubaix—the director’s hometown—a small city in northern France along the Belgian border, A Christmas Tale concerns the Vuillard family, a nominally happy clan that has nonetheless been torn apart by death and the sibling hatred between Elizabeth, the eldest child, and Henri, the middle child. When the indefatigable Vuillard matriarch, Junon, discovers she has a rare type of leukemia, the family’s Christmas gathering—which also includes the patient paterfamilias, Abel, the youngest sibling, Ivan, spouses, significant others, children, cousins, and old family friends—is marked by frequent discussions of who will be the most compatible bone-marrow donor for Junon.

April 22, 2010 Un Secret (A Secret)
A Secret follows the life of a Jewish family in post-World War II Paris. François, the son of Maxime and Tania, is a solitary and imaginative child who invents for himself a brother and the story of his parents’ past. One day, he discovers a dark family secret that shatters his life forever: before the war and well before François’s birth, his father Maxime was married to Hannah with whom he had a son. At a wedding Maxime met Tania, a young, athletic and beautiful swimmer. He felt madly in love but decided to remain faithful to Hannah. When the Nazis invaded France, their Jewish families and friends were deeply divided on what action to take and how they should live their religion and cultural heritage as Jews. Maxime decided to move his family to the free zone and left ahead of them. On her way with her son to meet Maxime, Hannah made a decision that would change her life and that of her family forever, leaving both Maxime and Tania to make difficult choices to survive the war.

Screenings will be at 3:30 and 7:00. Movies will be free to those with an NKU ID, $5 for the general public.

The Tournées Festival was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC).

Additional Sponsors: NKU Department of English; NKU Department of World Languages and Literatures; NKU College of Arts and Sciences; NKU Department of Communications; NKU International Education Center; Cincinnati World Cinema