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Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 18:44:35 GMT by: projectcyclops
Posted under: review mvoie drama foreign

Year: 2009
Directors: Juliette Garcias
Writers: Juliette Garcias
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: projectcyclops
Rating: 6 out of 10

Does anyone remember a scene in the short-lived John Lovitz animation, ‘The Critic’, where his character, a snooty NY film critic, is dancing around singing, “I like French films, pretentious, boring French films! I like French films, two tickets s'il vous plait!” to the tune of Frere Jacque? I think he may have found his ideal movie here.

A feature debut by Juliette Garcias , Be Good, begins with a young woman called Nathalie (Anaïs Demoustier), starting a new job in a rural French bakery, where she delivers bread to the locals, who vary from kooky, elderly eccentrics, to beautiful young swingers. She’s a deeply troubled girl with a mysterious past and a dark secret, and she begins a journey to expose a severe form of hypocrisy that leads to her redemption, and the destruction of another’s life. That’s pretty much the best I can do as far as a synopsis goes, the film is steeped in heavy-handed symbolism and has a glacial pace, which makes it an extremely difficult film to ‘tough-out’.

Nathalie spies on the various inhabitants of the village, indulges in a spot of overtly sexual self-harm, makes friends with the old-folks (clipping their toe-nails in one instance) and eventually becomes the babysitter for a pair of musicians, one of whom is linked to her past. In one scene she slowly dips her hand into a large bucket of raw, living snails; an old man lifts her hand out and washes it in a river. She lies constantly to people about having a boyfriend, then a fiancé and finally, claims widow status. After an argument she runs through a field at night, while a dog chases her and humps her legs, she kicks it off and screams.

These were the ‘highlights’ in a film that, while a complete story, and an interesting one, takes it’s time in the telling. Perhaps it’s that I’ve been seeing two or three films a day at the EIFF, but more than any, this seemed to drag on and on, to the point where it would take Nathalie ten minutes to walk slowly across a room, and look at a chair. Some of my favorite films are indeed from France, so this not a cultural difference or distaste for subtitles or symbolism, I just wish it had employed a more get-up-and-go sense of direction, and been less wistful and lulling.

Some people eat this stuff for breakfast, and to them I say; go forth and engage with it, it’s certainly not a bad film, it’s well acted, well shot, and contains a few real shocks. I just prefer a brisk pace and less staring in the mirror and bursting into tears. By the end I was absolutely bored rigid, and was so glad to get outside and experience real life again, if you think you might end-up feeling the same way after such a slow moving piece, then my advice is to leave well alone. If you’re unsure, bring a book.

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