2013 French Film Festival
Rialto Cinema
Here is this years amazing line up of films in the 2013 French Film Festival. Tickets are on sale now, and as usual with our festivals every session has allocated seating. The sooner you buy your tickets, the more choice of seats you have.
I must say that this year the line up is particularly good, with something for everyone and with the crème de la crème of French actors and directors. Sessions are limited, so make it a priority to get your tickets this weekend.
Also, for the first time this year we have a Multi Pass Card available. Buy it for $65 and see five different films in the festival saving you $15!
J'ai hâte de vous voir au cinéma bientôt.
Clayton and the team at Rialto.
91 mins - M (contains offensive language)
From the acclaimed writer of Women on the Sixth Floor and Of Gods and Men comes a film that is “long on flavour and deliciously French.”
Haute Cuisine is based on the
extraordinary true story of President François Mitterrand’s private cook,
Danièle Delpeuch. It is a must-see film for anyone who loves France: its
cuisine, its traditions, and its cinema.
Thursday 28 Feb
6:30pm
Wednesday 6 Mar
6:00pm
76 mins - PG
A chateau, flowering gardens, a threatening forest… here is what, for mysterious reasons, a Painter has left incomplete.
The Painting is a kaleidoscope of colours, brimming with life. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Henri Matisse and André Derain, the film is for anyone who has ever fallen in love with art, images, and wild imagination!
Friday 1 Mar
10:30am
Sunday 3 Mar
11:30am
101 mins - M (contains offensive language and nudity)
The Côte d’Azur. 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy.
This film is a visual delight coupled with a beautiful musical score. Renoir takes an appreciative look at Andrée’s impact on the lives of the great painter and his son.
Friday 1 Mar 12:10pm
Sunday 10 Mar 3:15pm
105mins - M (contains sex scenes and offensive language)
Montmartre dweller Sacha (Gad Elmaleh) is a talented pianist who dreams of making it big on Broadway one day. He loves his friends, his music, and partying. At night, he plays in a jazz club and seduces beautiful women.
Charlotte (Sophie Marceau) has three children, two ex-husbands, a nanny, and a professional career to juggle at the same time. She has no place for a love affair. “This film is about two people who have nothing in common,” Marceau explains, “yet who fall head over heels in love.”
Friday 1 Mar 8:30pm
115mins - PG
As its title suggests, at age ninety, master French filmmaker Alain Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour) is indeed still full of surprises. The “glowingly atmospheric” You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet saw Resnais walk La Croisette once again after being selected in the official competition of the Cannes International Film Festival 2012.
It is based on French playwright Jean Anouilh’s play Eurydice, which in turn is based on the classic Greek legend of Orpheus. Alongside spectacular cinematography by Éric Gautier, the film also features “tFrench acting royalty” including The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Mathieu Almaric and Sabine Azéma.
Saturday 2 Mar 3:00pm
112mins - M (offensive language, sexual references and nudity)
Middle-aged bachelor Martin Kazinski (Kad Merad of Welcome to the Sticks fame), is suddenly mobbed in the Paris metro one morning by people wanting his autograph. A crowd starts photographing and following him for absolutely no reason. Why is this? What has he done? Why is he famous? No one seems to know the answers and the media quickly try to profit from such an inexplicable phenomenon.
Delightfully unusual, gripping and satirical, Superstar is a film which takes you on a rollercoaster ride through the world of stardom.
Saturday 2 Mar 8:30pm
105mins - M (contains violence, infrequent coarse language and drug use)
Carefree Joseph (Monsieur Batignole’s Jule Sitruk) is 18-years-old and about to do his compulsory service in the Israeli army. When he takes a mandatory blood test, he is more worried about traces of drugs showing up to the dismay of his army commander father Alon (Pascal Elbé), than anything else.
The results however come back and shockingly reveal that he is not in fact his parents’ biological son after he was inadvertently switched at birth with Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi), the son of a Palestinian family from the West Bank.
Sunday 3 Mar 1:10pm
109mins - PG (contains mild violence)
From the director of Le Petit Nicolas comes the star-studded new adventure of France’s favourite characters, Astérix and Obélix.
The year is 50 B.C. Caesar is hungry for new conquests. At the head of his glorious legions he decides to invade the island that lies at the very edge of the known world, that mysterious land known as Britain.
Monday 4 Mar
10:30am
Friday 8 Mar
11:00am
100mins - M (contains coarse language)
In the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis, Armand (Denis Podalydès) navigates haphazardly between his job as a chemist and his passion for magic. Where matters of the heart are concerned, he’s torn between his wife Hélène (Isabelle Candelier) and his mistress, Alix (Valérie Lemercier).
When his grandmother dies, and he’s landed with the extra task of arranging the funeral. It’s all too much for Armand, who finds himself forced to battle against the mounting distractions in his life as he tries to plan an appropriate funeral for her.
Monday 4 Mar
12:45pm
Sunday 10 Mar
1:15pm
64mins - M (contains violence)
Animation Express is an anthology of Canada’s finest French-language animated short films, which commemorates the National Film Board’s longstanding commitment to animation. The line-up includes films from every genre covering themes from body image to blindness, World War II to work woes, and arctic animals to adventure.
Animation Express is a dynamic selection of short films suitable for all ages – there is something there for everyone!
Tuesday 5 Mar 11:00am
82 - PG (contains coarse language)
Idealistic pharmacist Alice (The Valet’s divine Alice Taglioni) is totally obsessed with the works of Mr Allen. She surrounds herself with images of him, continually quotes lines from his films and even prescribes her customers DVDs of his movies to help alleviate their ailments; it’s little wonder she’s still single in her thirties!
Alice’s increasingly concerned Jewish parents hope to cure her fixation by setting her up with a handsome French gentleman (Patrick Bruel), but even he quickly realises that he’s no match for the man of her dreams…
Tuesday 5 Mar 6:30pm
Friday 8 Mar
8:30pm
88mins - M (contains sex scenes and offensive language)
One morning, Sarah (Audrey Tautou) vanishes, leaving her husband Paul (Little White Lies‘ Benoît Magimel) and their young son and daughter reeling, without a word as to her whereabouts or a clue about when she will return.
As time passes, Paul anxiously but tenderly tries to retain some sense of normalcy and after a year, in an attempt to start over, he reluctantly returns to his coastal home town. There, he takes a job as a driving instructorm reunites with his estranged brother and befriends a local police officer (Isabelle Carré). But still he dreams of Sarah, refusing to let go.
Wednesday 6 Mar 11:15am
93mins - TBC
Gwynplaine (Marc-André Grondin) has a scar on his face, giving him a kind of permanent smile. Abandoned by the Comprachicos, who had kidnapped and slashed his face a few years earlier, he is taken in by Ursus (Depardieu) together with a beautiful blind girl, Déa (Christa Théret).
They move from village to village, performing a show whose star is the now grown-up Gwynplaine. Everywhere he goes his smile evokes laughter and emotion in the audience that adores him. Life goes on until it is discovered that this scarred man is the heir to a large and noble family.
Thursday 7 Mar 2:45pm
100mins - M (violence and offensive language)
Writer/director Ursula Meier’s Sister is a deeply affecting humanist drama of two siblings struggling to find a place in the world, and their determination to maintain self-sufficiency, no matter what the cost.
Against the striking canvas of the Swiss Alps, Meier adroitly explores the intimacy of two lost souls, both struggling with unique forms of self-deceit, but also an unquenchable thirst for love. Sister is a fine example of storytelling at its best. Stars new-comer Kacey Mottet Klein, Léa Seydoux and Gillian Anderson.
Saturday 9 Mar 4:30pm
110mins - M (contains offensive language and nudity)
Camille (played by director
Noémie Lvovsky) was sixteen years old when she met and fell madly in love with
the suave Eric (Samir Guesmi). One thing led to another and they quickly
welcomed their first child together.On New Year’s Eve twenty five years later,
Eric is leaving Camille for a younger woman.
Camille Rewinds is an amusing and touching story which throws light on the
decisions we make growing up and how we feel when we look back on them. Noémie
Lvovsky gives a tour-de-force performance as Camille, while French acting
veterans Denis Podalydès and Mathieu Almaric appear in cameo roles as her
eccentric school professors
Saturday 9 Mar 6:30pm
83mins - G
Sixty years after its first appearance on the silver screen, Jacques Tati’s timeless Mr Hulot’s Holiday will be screened as part of the Alliance Française French Film Festival 2013.
Mr Hulot’s Holiday follows the
generally harmless misadventures of a lovable, clumsy Frenchman, Monsieur Hulot
(played by Tati himself), as he joins the “newly-emerging holiday-taking
classes” for an August vacation at a modest seaside resort in Brittany.
Whilst holiday-makers from the city are unloading their luggage, Monsieur
Hulot, behind the wheel of his clanking old jalopy, shatters the summer quiet.
Sunday 10 Mar 11:30am