On March 26, 2005 we had the “César”, the French Academy awards. The “César” are not, as their name could let it think to anyone ignoring Cesar, a cheap imitation of the American Oscars. These Academy awards are called “César” after the name of the artist who designed the model of the statuettes (and the plural mode avoided by the Academy itself (one “César”, two “César”) in order to celebrate the uniqueness of César the Last, the well-known specialist of car-compressing. Now can you guess how France appreciates cars in its movies-theaters?

The knights of the César will celebrate their 30^th birthday in 2006. They already fight to renew themselves. The terrific fate of such ceremonies apparently is conformism, flattery and self-compassion/worshipping… Administrative efforts were made, like the creation of an award for European movies, or the invitation given to the spiritual and elegant Gad Elmalleh to present the 2004 edition. Did this drive the academy to feel relieved of commercial and corporate bounds? The 2005 edition was unexpected.

A very long engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet), and the Chorus (Christophe Barratier) were nominated in almost all categories but received only minor awards. The Chorus was apparently the audience’s favorite movie in 2004, with 8.6 billion entries (under 196). The only thing an award for best movie or best director would have brought to it may have been a support in international competition. A very long engagement followed in the statistics: same team that made Amelie Poulain, same audience. Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, famous pair of actors and film-makers, made a fuss as usual, leaving the theater when they found out they wouldn’t get the awards they awaited for their movie Comme une image. Both are known for ignoring in their public life the sense of humor they show in their work.

The Academy preferred giving a big hint to an independent movie who got only 700,000 entries in 2004: l’Esquive (best movie; achievement in direction: Abdellatif Kechiche; best screenplay: Abdellatif Kechiche, Ghalya Lacroix ; most promising actress : Sara Forestier). It also greeted Quand la mer monte, another independent movie (best first movie, best actress), and an actor who specializes in independent movies, Mathieu Amalric, for his part in Rois et Reine.

The award for the best foreign movie (non-european) was given to Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, after Clint Eastwood and his Mystic River…

L’Esquive is a striking, modern, intense story. It takes place in some suburban city around Paris. Teenagers live in small multi-ethnical groups of girls or boys, between the wrecked towers of a miserable residential area, the school and the familial flat being both places of forced relationships, forced behaviors. Abdelkrim, called Krimo is the boyfriend of Magali – a serious-looking brunette with generous curves. He secretly loves with Lydia, a blue-eyed, flat blonde with a generous smile. Lydia works on the rehearsal, at school, of a classical 18^thC. play (Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard, The Game of Love and Hazard, by Marivaux), in which she plays one of the leading roles. Krimo asks for the part of Arlequin, to play with her… her character, a servant, changes roles with her mistress to test the love of her pretender. The teacher emphasizes the social side of the plot: aristocrats fall in love with aristocrats, servants with servants, so maybe love is not so blind. The servant played by Lydia, Esquive, avoids the kisses of Arlequin. Just like Lydia tries to avoid giving an answer to Krimo who asks her to be his girlfriend, and like Krimo avoids reality. Krimo is a prisoner. His father, in jail, paints ships and Krimo pins them on all the walls of his bedroom. He lives the dream of his absent father, like in a jail himself, without the art that would give him a better way of escape. Prisoner of his language, his appearance, of the opinion of Magali and of his band (he can’t play). He can’t smile, not even to Lydia.

L’Esquive is not an easy movie. The audience is in the first scenes disoriented by the language the teenagers speak. They speak quickly, don’t articulate, use Arab terms and verlan (they invert the order of the syllabi in one word). The language the teenagers use in this kind of suburbs to avoid being understood by strangers – adults, teachers, policemen. Girls swift with a certain ease to classical speech; the boys can’t, but one – a born actor, who loves the game of theater and doesn’t care about what others would say.

It is not an easy movie, also, because of what it shows. No rape here, no violent aggression, but verbal. No religious conflict, no Islamist preachers. But there’s the gap between boys and girls, parents and teenagers that the play solves during the times it lasts. There’s the situation of these lost children. Boys who seem doomed to the same fate their fathers had.

The identity crisis of men appears in movies now in a very acute way. They find salvation in freeing themselves of the models they adopted – because indeed, no model was imposed to them by the society or the family, they have to choose and imagine. They choose what they imagined the model is…

A more recent movie presents a different version on the topic of the young man torn between the life his father wants for him and a secret attraction toward the practice of piano, as his mother was a famous pianist. It’s called De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté (My Beating Heart Did Cease), and was directed by Jacques Audiard – director of a few movies already, son of one of the most famous French dialogists of the 20^th century. The movie is inspired by an American movie, James Toback's Fingers (1971). The screenplay has been widely changed, to fit totally to a part of the Parisian society. Thomas works in the business of real estate. While his associates wearing white skirts and ties, he spreads rats in the staircases of the buildings he wants to buy to force the owners to lower the price. But at 28, he decides to try to change his life, and to become a classical pianist as his mother was. This change his life in a way he didn’t expect. Tom doesn’t get success for himself but helps a fellow artist, a woman he’s learned to love, and so he gives up his career expectations for the sake of music, for an artist better than he is. In doing so he repairs what his father did wrong in his life and in marriage. He reconciles himself with the ghosts of his dead parents, with women, with himself. That’s how he reactivates his heart…

Romain Duris plays Thomas. He’s nervous, hyperactive, moody… thousand miles from the characters he used to play, especially in Tony Gatlif’s movies Gadjo Dilo or Exils: a bohemian seducer, a joyful music-lover, a passionate traveler. He probably incarnates, in some way, the director – as Krimo was an emanation of Abdellatif Kechiche; two directors who fought social or familial determination, and found their own path through film-making.

Another French movie presents a man prisoner of his image: Le Couperet, by Constantin Costa-Gavras. Bruno D. (José Garcia) is an unemployed engineer who after looking for two years, discovers the job that would fit him exactly, and let him recover his social and most importantly, familial, situation. To get the position he must eliminate his rivals, and the man who occupies it. Bruno changes himself in a serial killer… and considers it normal. Professional life is a fight, there are losers and winners, and the end justifies the means. Costa-Gavras depicts in a demonstrative manner the social advancement and human forfeiture of a normal man. No escape for Bruno and his siblings. Women encourage them, without willing or without knowledge, whether they are a wife or a rival. Men and women are wolves, though Bruno is not yet aware of this.

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