Issue d'un dimanche neigeux et pantouflard S'cusez le sujet que connexment m�dicale... Les m�dias Am�ricains en g�n�rale ne sont pas tr�s subtils Et on tendance � combler les sens plut�t que l'intelligence. �videmment il y a des exceptions Le New-York times et le Washington Post Brillants alliages de ressources financi�res et d'int�grit� journalistique. Dans un format offrant un niveau de vulgarisation intelligent et bien jaug�. Nomm�ment avec plus de faits et moins/pas d'opinions Moins de lourdeur "politique" rencontr� chez certains journaux Europ�ens. Un outil de connaissance � d�couvrir et � partager. Bonne lecture ... article sur le cin�ma Fran�ais (excellente ann�e Mmmeerrrccciii les Cousins... on en a bien de besoin ! ! !) Charles Brault EMT-P http://nytimes.com/ http://nytimes.com/2002/02/03/movies/03HOHE.html New-York Time February 3, 2002 For Frances's Youth, 'un Teen Movie' By KRISTIN HOHENADEL PARIS � French movies have always had such a grown-up attitude about sex � even their coming-of-age stories, so unlike the blushing, gag-filled comedies favored by Hollywood. So when the new English-titled French movie "Sexy Boys" featured a young guy stealing a moment of ecstasy in a pile of hot spaghetti, the French media immediately dubbed it "American Pie � la fran�aise" � "un teen movie" with "une French touch." The French have grown up watching American films, and now a new generation of filmmakers has begun making the kinds of movies they love. Producer-driven (rather than auteur-driven) movies like Luc Besson's action-packed "Taxi" series have taken on the American blockbuster. Last year, Hollywood-style special effects enhanced hit movies like "Am�lie" and "Brotherhood of the Wolf" (while the entire budget of the typical French movie is smaller than the special-effects budget of a Hollywood studio action film). And now, encouraged by its success with the first "American Pie" movie in France, Path� Distribution has taken on that staple of American culture, le teen movie. French filmmakers have often made movies about adolescence � from Fran�ois Truffaut's 1959 classic, "The 400 Blows," to the 1980 "La Boum" (which introduced Sophie Marceau) to the 2000 movie "Du Poil Sous les Roses" ("Hair Under the Roses"), which drew some less-pointed comparisons to the first "American Pie" for its "raw" treatment of teenage sexuality. But the French have rarely made movies for adolescents. "Sexy Boys," by the first-time writer-director St�phane Kazandjian, was filmed without name actors for a medium-size French budget of about $3 million, and it has sold nearly 500,000 tickets since it opened on Dec. 26, far from the more than three million racked up by "American Pie 2" but a respectable showing for a film by an unknown French director in a country where American movies still dominate the box office. The young man who showed France that Americans were not the only ones who could produce a successful gross-out teenage comedy is a curly haired Parisian of 29. Wearing dark-rimmed glasses and clean clothes and speaking a French littered with the franglais his generation has learned from American movies and television, Mr. Kazandjian held forth recently at Les Philosophes, a popular watering hole in the Marais. "I think there's a kind of `snobbisme' in France," Mr. Kazandjian said. "To make a film for an adolescent audience is considered vulgar, idiotic � because we are so much more intelligent than the Americans � and if we make a film for young people, it has to really raise the debate. All of the films I've seen in France about adolescents are made by 40-year-olds recalling adolescence as a troubled, tormented period." In lowering the debate with spaghetti-assisted masturbation and other shenanigans related to bodily functions, Mr. Kazandjian said he had been inspired by more than the equivalent culinary sex scene in "American Pie." "Le teen movie didn't begin with `American Pie,' " he said. "There was the 1980's, `Porky's,' the films of John Hughes. My references were really more `Ferris Bueller' and the films of Kevin Smith. The noodles are actually a reference to a scene in `Clerks.' " What, then, about the first scene, in which, � la "American Pie," the opening credits fade into loud panting and a young man getting caught with his hands in his pants? "That's much more a reference to `Porky's,' " the soft-spoken Mr. Kazandjian said, somewhat incredulously. "But nobody remembers `Porky's.' " Anyway, Mr. Kazandjian insisted, "Sexy Boys" is really much more "There's Something About Mary" than "American Pie." Still, Mr. Kazandjian acknowledged that without the success of "American Pie" in France, le teen movie � la fran�aise might not have begun with "Sexy Boys." "Before `American Pie,' no one would have believed that a French `film de teenager' could have worked in France," Mr. Kazandjian said of his feel-good teenage buddy movie. "It bugs me that everyone finds it normal that `American Pie 2' sold 3 million tickets here, and then we say, `Sexy Boys' did 500,000, that's totally great.' But in a way I understand. When I was 15, I wanted to see American films because I felt there was nothing in French films for me. I think in the heads of young French kids, the French cinema is for their parents." Mr. Kazandjian said that he had always dreamed of making a movie in the United States, and he has made several trips since he first visited a relative in Sacramento at the age of 12. After graduating from business school, he lived in New York for six months and also did a summer internship on a short-lived sitcom in Los Angeles. But after failing to capture anyone's attention in Hollywood with his first two scripts � English- language thrillers modeled on James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard � he returned to France and realized, he said, that Hollywood wasn't the only place to make the American-style movies he admired. Perhaps inevitably, French critics held "Sexy Boys" up against its American predecessors. Le Monde wrote in a review on opening day: "Perhaps we should, out of the charity of the season, not reveal the names of the young actors," dismissing "Sexy Boys" as an inferior imitation of "American Pie." It was Lib�ration that called it "un teenage movie � la fran�aise that doesn't equal `American Pie,' its model," going on to say that the characters were washed out by "a total Americanization of behaviors and settings." A reviewer on French Yahoo called it "a pathetic attempt at commercial recycling," a "film-suppository" with the "secret ambition" to outdo its American equivalent in tasteless humor. But Mr. Kazandjian insisted that he began writing "Sexy Boys" in 1997, before ever seeing "American Pie." And he seemed a little wounded that French critics had failed to notice � despite its being patterned on an American genre � just how French it is. For example, he said, he didn't try to turn a French lyc�e into an American-style high school. Mr. Kazandjian's characters aren't virgins and they've already received their diplomas. Seb (Julien Baumgartner) is a 20-year-old journalism student who falls for Lucie (Armelle Deutsch), a single mother; his pal Manu (Matthias Van Khache) is a stoner who works in a clothing store when he's not trying desperately to cheat on his longterm girlfriend; Franck (J�r�mie Elka�m) is a romantic who, after a failed crush, takes a not very politically correct part-time job acting in pornographic movies and turns into a raging alcoholic, vomiting in the middle of a job interview. "I have the impression that there's a kind of refusal of people to think about the film," he said, "to just reduce it to this spaghetti scene that's just like `American Pie.' Very few reviews looked at the film on its own terms, not just as `American Pie' `� la fran�aise.' And that's disappointing. In `American Pie,' that scene lasts 1 minute 10 seconds. In my film the sequence lasts 10 minutes." And, he pointed out, the adulterated spaghetti is served to Seb's friends (who question him on the secret ingredient in the delicious new sauce) and later causes his girlfriend to leave him temporarily. "When I saw `American Pie,' I thought it was funny that they never ask whether or not they're going to be able to perform the first time � it's just, `We have to do it,' " he said. "Those kinds of questions are the base of `Sexy Boys.' Seb's convinced he is smaller than average; Manu thinks he needs to get involved with lots of girls; Franck thinks he's going to marry a girlfriend who doesn't exist. These are masculine anxieties. `Sexy Boys' is more about finding yourself, and I wanted to put those psychoanalytical elements of Woody Allen in a teen movie." But audiences might have an easier time spotting the more obvious crosscultural references: the little sister who wears T-shirts that say things like "70's Soul Party" and spends her allowance at the record store buying "le nouveau Britney." "There is a real French culture and a real American culture and between the two there is `un melting pot' with many references that everyone has in common," Mr. Kazandjian said. "Everyone is nourished by the things they grew up with, and my generation saw Spielberg in the same way that Scorsese saw Godard's `Breathless' and started making little films in black and white. I'm interested in this space between `la culture trash' and respectable culture. In France we really have this cult of the auteur, as if he's a kind of genius. But I don't really think there are more masterpieces in the French cinema than there are in the American cinema." Mr. Kazandjian said his favorite filmmakers are the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson, and that he would love to have Steven Soderbergh's career. "American movies have a real energy that I think is missing in a lot of French films," he said. He recently helped write another movie, called (again in English) "Bloody Mallory," which he described as "a sort of Buffy fran�aise, an action comedy based on Roger Corman-style B movies." He is now writing a romantic comedy, "tr�s Hollywoodienne," he said. "I would really like to find a middle ground between Woody Allen and Billy Wilder." As it happens, "Sexy Boys" received its best notice in the United States, from the trade paper Variety, Mr. Kazandjian said. The American reviewer Lisa Nesselson, a longtime Paris resident, wrote: "Shot and edited with straightforward efficiency, film has guts and energy as well as grossout ideas to spare. However, the tone is nearly wholesome and surprisingly romantic." Right up, as the French would say, to "le happy end." Kristin Hohenadel's most recent article for Arts & Leisure was about movies with sad endings. Et le Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com
