FOCUS ON A FILMMAKER:
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE
JEAN-PAUL RAPPENEAU

 

Following Michel Hazanavicius, Cédric Klapisch, Alain Resnais, Julie Delpy and Bertrand Blier, writer-director Jean-Paul Rappeneau will be honored by COLCOA on Thursday April 21, 2016 with a special presentation of two movies including the U.S. Premiere of his new film FAMILIES. The writer-director of CYRANO DE BERGERAC, will have a one-hour conversation with the COLCOA audience during a Happy Hour Talk.

 

 

 

RENOIR Theater - 2:00 pm

A MATTER OF RESISTANCE (LA VIE DE CHATEAU)

Comedy • 1966 • Digitally restored • World Premiere • COLCOA Classics

 

The setting for this classic farce is a tumbledown country estate in Normandy, 1944, shortly before D-Day. Young Catherine Deneuve plays Marie, a fitfully bored lady of the house taken to wistful dreams of an exciting life in Paris, and exalted flirtations with some of the hunkier locals. Her husband Jérôme is a meek fusspot 20 years her senior, preoccupied with his apple orchards and placating his taskmistress mother. The answer to Marie’s prayers falls from the sky, in the form of Julien, a rakish officer of the French Resistance, here to scout for enemy artillery. And just when things start to get complicated, Kommandant Klopstock requisitions the chateau as a German garrison in order to pursue Marie himself. As sworn enemies do battle for Marie’s favors, one man remembers that there’s a real war raging all around them. COLCOA is proud to showcase this meticulously restored recipient of the 1966 Louis Delluc Prize.

(Free access on a first come first served basis – No reservation needed)

 

 

 

RENOIR Theater - 4:00 pm ~ 5:00 pm

HAPPY HOUR TALK

A one-hour conversation with writer/director Jean-Paul Rappeneau

(Free admission – Followed by a wine and cheese reception).

 

 

 

RENOIR Theater - 8:30 pm

FAMILIES (Belles familles)

Drama, War • 2015 • US Premiere • Official Competition

(Followed by a Q&A with Jean-Paul Rappeneau)

 

Mathieu Amalric leads a nimble comedic cast as Jérôme, a globetrotting businessman based in Shanghai, who makes a pit stop in Paris to introduce his business partner/fiancée to his mother. Jérôme’s estranged father has recently passed away, and when he learns that the sale of his family’s elegant Loire Valley manor is in bureaucratic limbo, he decides to send his fiancée on to London and take care of the matter personally. Upon arrival, Jérôme’s finds that his private memory lane is about to be paved over by the highway of progress. To begin with, the man threatening to lay his ancestral home to block-development waste is none other than Grégoire, an old rival from school. Then it dawns on him that for years his father had been managing an elaborate alternate life in the old place. But it’s Grégoire’s girlfriend Louise (Young and Beautiful revelation Marine Vacth) that really intrigues him. She dislikes him more than she should, for a man she just met.

(Ticket needed to access this screening – Box Office and reservations will start March 31)

 

 

ABOUT JEAN-PAUL RAPPENEAU :

Jean-Paul Rappeneau started out in film as an assistant and screenwriter collaborating with Louis Malle on ZAZIE DANS LE METRO in 1960 and VIE PRIVEE in 1961. In 1964, he was co-screenwriter for THE MAN FROM RIO, which starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and received an Oscar nomination. The first film that he both wrote and directed was A MATTER OF RESISTANCE. Although it was a great critical and popular success, he did not make another film until 1971, when he directed THE MARRIED COUPLE OF THE YEAR TWO, again starring Belmondo and Marlène Jobert. Since 1975, Rappeneau has written only for his own films, including CALL ME SAVAGE, starring Yves Montand (COLCOA 2012) and ALL FIRED UP (1981), again with Montand, who co-starred with Isabelle Adjani. Known for his meticulous blocking and dynamic camera moves, the Rappeneau style reached its apex in lavish period productions CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1990). His adaptation of the classic French play by Edmond Rostand, starring Gérard Depardieu in what may become known as his greatest role. Rappeneau's film version is the most elaborate film version of the play ever made, and one of the most expensive French films ever produced. It is the only rendition of the play in the original French to be released widely. After THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (1995) and BON VOYAGE (2003), Rappeneau is back with FAMILIES presented as a US Premiere at COLCOA. It will also be the first appearance of this preeminent French writer-director at the festival.