Ooh, Aah, Cinema

WITH a varied and exciting programme that includes as many as 50 new feature films - including one featuring promising newcomer Eric Cantona - the 8th French Film Festival opens at the Savoy cinema, Dublin next Thursday with the new Patrice Leconte film, Ridicule, which opened Cannes in May. Set in the court of Louis XVI, this sumptuous production follows the serpentine route a concerned landowner (Charles Berling) has to take when he seeks permission to drain the fever-infested waters on his estate.

A cutting satire on hypocritical mores and absurd customs, Ridicule is jaggedly funny, splendidly played by a fine cast and dazzlingly photographed.

The 15-day festival closes in the Savoy on October 31st with another of this year's Cannes highlights, Jacques Audiard's clever, caustic and immensely entertaining Un Heros Tres Discret (A Self-Made Made Hero) which features Mathieu Kassovitz, director of Ia Haine, in a wonderfully deadpan performance as an importer who becomes a hero in a war in which he has not fought.

The leading French director, Claude Sautet, whose recent work includes Un Coeur En Hiver and Nelly Et M. Arnaud, will be a special guest of the festival, and six of his films will be shown, including both those recent films along with Les Choses De La Vie (remade in the US as Intersection), and Vincent, Francois, Paul Et Les Autres, featuring a remarkably slim Gerard Depardieu as a young boxer. The festival will also present an 18-film salute to the veteran French film-maker, Eric Rohmer.

The rising young French director, Arnaud Descheplin, will attend the festival with his first two features, La Sentinelle and Comment Je Me Suis Dispute (Ma Vie Sexuelle), both of which were selected for competition at Cannes. Actress Madeleine Assas will be present to introduce the new Jean-Luc Godard movie, Forever Mozart, in which she takes the leading lute. And young French actors Elodie Bouchez and Stephane Rideau, who featured in last year's Les Roseaux Sauvages, will be present for the first feature directed by their former co-star, Gael Morel - the moody and vital youth drama, Full Speed.

Among the many other movies worth noting on the programme are: the world premiere of Eileen Anipa and Jason Wood's documentary, A Short Film About Dekalog: An Interview With Kyzysztof Kieslowski; Etienne Chatiliez's Le Bonheur Est Dans Le Pre, featuring Michel Serrault and Eric Cantona, and a major French box-office hit this year; the new and reputedly must accessible Raul Ruiz movie to date, Three Lives and Only One Death, starring Marcello Mastroianni; Christine Pascal's Adultery - A User's Guide with Richard Berry. Karin Viard and Vincent Cassel; from Totu The Hero director Jaco Van Dormael, The Eighth Day, for which Daniel Auteuil and the Down's Syndrome actor, Pascal Duquenne, shared the award for best actor at Cannes this year; Francois Cluzet and Guillaume Depardieu in The Apprentices from Wild Target director Pierre Salvatori; first-time director Laurent Bouhnik's Select Hotel, critically well-received at Cannes this year; the first Irish screening of Jean Eustache's highly acclaimed and controversial 1973 sexual drama, The Mother And The Whore; Lucite Hadzihatovic's well-regarded La Bouche De Jean Pierre, dealing with a young girl whose mother has attempted suicide; and the new film from fast-rising director Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep, featuring Maggie Chueng and Jean-Pierre Leaud.

And much much more.