The Children of the Century (Diane Kurys, 1999)

Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche in The Children of the Century

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Magimel, Stefano Dionisi, Robin Renucci, Karin Viard, Isabelle Carré, Patrick Chesnais, Arnaud Giovaninetti, Denis Podalydès, Olivier Foubert, Marie-France Mignal, Michel Robin, Ludivine Sagnier. Screenplay: Murray Head, Diane Kurys, François-Olivier Rousseau. Cinematography: Vilko Filac. Production design: Bernard Vézat. Film editing: Joëlle Van Effenterre. Music: Luis Bacalov. 

Handsomely mounted and splendidly acted, Diane Kurys's The Children of the Century ultimately goes the way of all biopic costume dramas: history and fact bumping up against dramatic and narrative imperatives, and opulence overwhelming story. It's fun to watch Juliette Binoche throw herself into the role of George Sand, but it's more fun to watch her in films in which she has to create a character from scratch rather than from what books have already us about the character. Benoît Magimel goes grandly over the top in giving us the mood-swinging Alfred de Musset, but at the cost of making us wonder why Sand would have put up with his excesses as much as she did. Still, there's magnificent chemistry between the actors in the best scenes and even if the film doesn't do much to illuminate the works of Sand and de Musset, it's easy on the eyes.  

One Sings, the Other Doesn't (Agnès Varda, 1977)

One Sings, the Other Doesn't (Agnès Varda, 1977)

Cast: Thérèse Liotard, Valérie Mairesse, Robert Dadiès, Mona Mairesse, Francis Lemaire, Ali Rafie, Jean-Pierre Pellegrin, François Wertheimer. Screenplay: Agnès Varda. Cinematography: Charles Van Damme. Production design: Franckie Diago. Film editing: Joëlle Van Effenterre. Music: François Wertheimer.

Agnès Varda's feminist fable has not held up quite as well as it could have, though even when it was first released it got a derisive snort from Pauline Kael, to wit, "The sunshiny simplicity of the feminist movement celebrated here is so laughable that you can't hate the picture. You just feel that some of your brain cells have been knocked out." It's not quite as risible or as damaging as that, I think, but whenever Kael invokes the inclusive "you" in her judgments of movies I tend to resist. Taken as an evocation of a moment in the history of the women's movement it has some true significance. Its leads, the one who sings (Valérie Mairesse) and the other who doesn't (Thérèse Liotard), are skillful and charming, and the plights of the characters they play are real ones: marriages that go awry, unwanted pregnancy, anti-female laws, and unsupportive families. It's in the "sunshiny" resolution of these plights -- which are darkly presented -- that we may feel that Varda has pulled her punches, and I find a little of the film's music goes a long way -- unfortunately, there's a lot of it.