Not that I have anything against French cinema in general, but even I am getting tired of seeing thirty-something couples endlessly strolling through picturesque Parisian streets or sitting at cafés, absorbed in pseudo-intellectual discussions of their latest hormonal release…
And if I hear one more piano piece by Satie or a Bach partita in a film, I shall scream.
Go watch Public Enemy No 1 (L’Instinct de mort/L’Ennemi public n° 1 – two films, but best watched together in one sitting). Lots of action, minimal navel-gazing and no Satie whatsoever. Well, at least it’s a break from the norm.
Funny: I just finished watching (the second part) of Mesrine, 30 seconds ago. It is indeed a very decent movie, even if I’m not sure I would call it “breaking the form” (it’s pretty much your usual gangster movie fare, with the added twist of being mainly inspired from historical facts). Just before that, though, I got to watch Cedric Klapisch’s latest opus (not very originally called “Paris”) and even if it is not, in itself, a bad movie, I could not shake the feeling all along that I had seen that movie a hundred times before (and I probably have, with the same damn piano pieces, to boot).
I think I’ll go back to working my Japanese with bland Japanese comedies.