Lashings of Frenchness at Film Festival

The Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, opening in Adelaide on March 20, promises yet again that alluring mix of emotion, passion love, and drama – as well as a new genre – “A French Touch Around the World’’.

It will present four films of the 45 in the festival this year, which will celebrate co-productions  – encounters between French and foreign cinema. As an added twist, the festival links into the International Day for Francophonie, on March 20, which falls during the Festival.

As expected from French film,   the largest genre “It must be Love’’ features a smorgasbord of eight romantic films, which capture French society’s obsession with love, including Romantics Anonymous,  The Art of Love and the Silence of Love.

Then there is a sprinkling of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, stories of happy families (?) and yet another cluster of films categorised into It Happened in your Neighbourhood category.

The festival, sponsored by Peugeot, grows from strength to strength with a record number of 130,000 Australians attending across Australia last year.

France’s official submission for the 2012 Academy Awards, Declaration of War (La Guerre est declaree)  will be the powerful movie to launch the 2012 festival.

It wouldn’t be a French film festival without at least one film featuring France’s much-loved ageless actor Catherine Deneuve  and this year does not disappoint when she teams with a slim, handsome Gerard Depardieu (circa 1980) in Francois Truffault’s 1980 classic The Last Metro.

More details from www.affrenchfilmfestival.org.

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Speaking of Paris’s Underground  Metro, it reminds me of a plaintive cry from a rejected French lover. And the wonders of Internet brings this story of Love on the Paris Line 12 from a fellow blogger, who wrote:

Chéri called me last week one day, early morning, from Paris. “I miss you and I just quickly want to tell you how much I love you.’’ Later, during  the weekend I found out what stirred his emotions on that early morning. He found a letter on his seat on the metro, line 12, the one he takes to work every day. It is a love letter from Julien to his lost love Leyin. It is written with passion and sadness and a hope that she’ll take line 12 again, find his words of love dedicated to her and be so touched by it that she returns to him. He ends his letter with a poem and a request that the letter not be destroyed, but left on the seat where you found it, as it is more than just a letter…it is a symbol of love. Here it is:

“Her name is Leyin. I am Julien. For 6 years we were together until she left me 7 weeks ago. If you will allow me, I will share this story of love and passion with you, a piece a day, for as long as my faith keeps up or  until she comes back to this line 12, which she takes regularly. My wish? To touch her, move her and at the same time, bring some beauty to this world of the Paris metro.“

(Back to my French blogger froemd’s Post-script:) So…I know many will immediately think this is a hoax, scam…or a joke…or anything else, except honest and real. Maybe it isn’t real. Maybe it is a joke. Or a scam. But then, in my opinion, it is a positive one. One that leaves you with a smile and a twinkle in the eye…a dream…. and one that has your husband of 30 years  call you early morning to quickly tell you that he loves you. THAT is honest and real.

 

 

 

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