The New Protocol

2008 FR Thomas Vincent
✰✰✰

Captivating, low-key French thriller about a father who loses a son and goes after the pharmaceutical company that may have been responsible for his death. As paranoia grows, so do implications of immoral business practices both within France and without. Throughout, however, Vincent's camera remains fixed in the grey everyday, grounding big ideas by expressing them personally rather than emphatically: car chases, conspiracies seen through the eyes of a grieving parent. Suspense, drama are earned. Debt is paid to the American paranoia films of the 1970s. The delicious Marie-Josée Croze plays a damaged, crusading nutjob (or is she?) who helps our hero in his quest. Ambiguity hovers like a fog, but the ending is an uppercut. The New Protocol explores the same territory as Fernando Meirelles' much-lauded and more-popular The Constant Gardener, but is the better film. A good, smart thriller—it's been a while. Original title: Le nouveau protocole.

Love Songs

2007 FR Christophe Honoré
✰ 1/2

Musicals tending toward the more-natural have been made; this is not a good example. Leaps off the opening titles, and only flaps its wings toward the end. How boring! Paris, je ne t'aime. Dreadful songs, has the aura of cheapness on-the-quick. Film made in a few days (?) without vibrancy, without energy. Characters come and go, all cut from the same self-absorbed cloth—absorbing their own secretions. Only a young-adult French humanities student could love himself enough to love this. The last straw: they even cheat me out of my Ludivine Sagnier, giving me man-faced Chiara Mastroianni instead. No wonder the boy turns gay! Original title: Les Chansons d'amour.