FOCUS FRANÇAIS

French films feature heavily in this year’s festival, take a look!

French cinema threads through this year’s programme, from its postwar comic genius to its latest auteurs. On Saturday 17 October The Mowlem gives a full day to Jacques Tati. Prof Matthew Beaumont of UCL opens with a lecture on Monsieur Hulot’s walk, reading it through the anthropologist Marcel Mauss as a quiet comment on modern life. Playtime follows, the vast glass-and-steel satire that nearly ruined Tati in 1967 and now ranks among cinema’s great achievements. The evening brings Mr Hulot’s Holiday, then Rowan Atkinson in conversation with Matthew Sweet about Tati’s influence on his own career. Over the next fortnight the line runs from Pagnol to Camus. Daniel Auteuil’s The Well Digger’s Daughter revisits a story Pagnol first filmed under Vichy in 1940, while François Ozon shoots The Stranger in austere black and white, matching the cool detachment of Meursault’s Algiers. Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is already a modern classic about looking and being looked at, and Cédric Klapisch’s Colours of Time spins a family mystery around Monet and the photographer Nadar. We preview Just an Illusion, a heartwarming and brilliant comedy from Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, the pair behind The Intouchables, and mark 25 years of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. Animation is well served by Ugo Bienvenu’s Oscar-nominated Arco and Little Amélie, which marries European and Japanese hand-drawn traditions. Vincent Munier’s Whispers in the Woods, winner of the César for Best Documentary, follows three generations watching wildlife in the Vosges. Emmanuel Courcol’s The Marching Band, a gentle study of class and kinship, returns by popular demand to close the season.

Saturday 17 October, The Mowlem, Swanage
11am In the Footsteps of Jacques Tati (lecture, free with a matinée or evening ticket)
2.30pm Playtime
7pm Mr Hulot’s Holiday with Rowan Atkinson in conversation

Monday 19 October
7.30pm Colours of Time, Worth Matravers Village Hall

Saturday 24 October
2.30pm Arco, The Mowlem
3.30pm Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Swanage Waterworks (drinks reception from 3pm)
7pm Just an Illusion, The Mowlem
7.30pm The Well Digger’s Daughter, Swanage Waterworks (drinks reception from 7pm)

Sunday 25 October

2.30pm Little Amélie, The Mowlem
3.30pm Amélie, Swanage Waterworks (drinks reception from 3pm)
5pm Whispers in the Woods (preview), Electric Palace, Bridport
7.30pm The Stranger, Swanage Waterworks (drinks reception from 7pm)
7.30pm Whispers in the Woods (preview), The Rex, Wareham
8pm Just an Illusion, Electric Palace, Bridport

Thursday 29 October
7.30pm The Marching Band, Church Knowle Village Hall