InvestigationFrench auteur cinema may represent barely more than 1% of the market share in the United States, it still arouses the admiration of moviegoers, but also of actors and filmmakers across the Atlantic, inspired by the New Wave. and his heirs.
“This film has just saved 2021”, “Finally cinema! »,« Give him the Palme d’Or right away, nothing can beat that. ” Under the trailer ofAnnette, 99% of comments are in English and to match. Since the announcement of its production, every crumb of information on the mysterious rock opera of Leos Carax, which takes place in Los Angeles, has made the buzz on the English-speaking Internet.
“For an American cinephile, Annette is what one can imagine more exciting at the moment ”, confirms Richard Brody, film critic at the New Yorker and biographer of Jean-Luc Godard (Jean-Luc Godard, everything is cinema, Presses de la Cité, 2011), before mentioning the long line of fans who were already waiting for Leos Carax in 2013 in front of the Alliance française in Manhattan, where the French director had come to talk about his previous film, Holy Motors (2012). “It was really very moving to see the enthusiasm he inspired in these young people. ”
Perhaps the scene reminded the critic of his youth, when he discovered cinema through Godard, like so many other American baby boomers. Richard Brody was then at the university, where a fellow film enthusiast had sent him to a screening ofBreathless. More than a revelation, it was a conversion, he says: “For me, Hollywood was neither young nor modern. It was my parents’ thing. With the New Wave, the cinema became not only an art – the French gave the world the word “author”! – but, moreover, an art of youth. “
This time when The Marquise d’O (1976), Éric Rohmer, could remain with the poster in New York an entire year, where the French filmmakers made the rain and the good weather, is only a distant memory, notes the critic. Distributor of Bruno Dumont and the first feature films of Leos Carax, the very Francophile Richard Lorber, one of the leaders in the distribution of international auteur cinema in the United States, also fallen into the New Wave during his studies, deplores the ‘“Shrunken footprint” of French cinema in his country: “France’s candidate for the Oscar for best international feature film, Two (2019), by Filippo Meneghetti, did not exceed $ 6,000 at the box office. It’s weak to the point of being embarrassing. Still, it’s one of the best movies of the past decade. In the 1960s, we would have been ecstatic. “
You have 82.26% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.