21 Nuits avec Pattie (21 Nights with Pattie)

French Film Festival 2017

Greenbelt 3 Cinema

Caroline goes to a remote town in the southern France to bury her mother whom the locals know as Zaza. She was a colorful character and well loved in that closely knitted community. But this is just 'hearsay' for Caroline as she has been estranged from her lawyer mother. Cutting her vacation with family short to take care of the funeral arrangements, she thought it would be fairly quick and done within 3 days.

But then Caroline finds herself stuck in that town when her mother's body (which was just lying in her bed) suddenly disappears. Surrounded by strangers who are a merry, eccentric group of people and out of her comfort zone, Caroline oddly finds herself in a path of self discovery and sexual awakening - something she has knowingly or unknowingly suppressed for a long period.

Set in a wine making small valley with its own peculiarities and bizarre rituals, the story sizzles as hot as the August heat that embraces its residents. Led by Pattie who was Zaza's housekeeper/friend, a woman who has no qualms narrating her sexual exploits, being quite explicit in her details. Everyone in the town are unabashed about their sexuality, swimming naked in the lake or in the swimming pool in Zaza's mansion.  

The plot also takes on a bizarre tone with images of Zaza's ghost gallivanting in her mansion to Caroline's dreamy hallucinations. At this point, one might lose interest as one realizes this is NOT a simple story about a daughter's grief and her coming to terms with feelings of abandonment, isolation and despair. But it just got too quirky and weird for my taste, unfortunately and I dozed off in the dark theater. 

Bird People

French Film Festival 2016

Greenbelt 3 Cinema

Of all the films I watched in this year's festival, "Bird People" is the most quirky, eccentric and really quite strange.

It evolves around 2 people whose lives are explored in the same setting - the Hyatt hotel located beside the Charles de Gaulle airport in the French capital. 

Gary (Josh Charles) is an American on business in Paris before proceeding to Dubai for more meetings. He communicates mostly in English and through a local who translates for him during his business meetings. Out of the blue, he decides to quit his job, end his marriage, lounge in his hotel room and just stay in Paris, indefinitely. All this he does in an eerily calm demeanor, sans hysterics, no explanation. 

The other one is Audrey, a young chambermaid at the hotel. Practically invisible to hotel guests as she diligently does her tasks, she is visibly stuck in a rut, bored and a loner. One day as she explores the rooftop of the hotel which has a bird's eye view of the airplanes parked at the tarmac of the airport, she flies! Yes, she turns into a little sparrow. No magic, no flash lightning effect ... nothing at all to indicate she would literally become a bird!

So she is all over the place, exploring the hotel grounds, flying high up in the air,. Sometimes she is talking, other times she is quiet and just flying all over. The camera zooms in and out of places, giving us a literal bird's eye view from Audrey's perspective as a sparrow.

Perhaps this transformation implies she is totally fed up with her routine life, she takes flight, literally. No further explanation is also given for Gary's sudden life altering decision to just quit everything without any sense of what he wants to do from that moment on. 

It can be frustrating as I tend to overthink and over analyze but I'd deem it is best to just let things be as they are and not turn it into something it isn't.  Either that or I just tuned myself out as soon as she started her flight as a little sparrow.

Towards the end, when the two characters briefly encounter each other in the lobby of hotel (by the way, she is back as Audrey!) there are hints that something just might come out of it or maybe not. Who knows?! We are left to form our own conclusions but the question is ... do we have to or do we even care?!