PARIS LETTER:Popular films here often have a pastoral setting, preferably with a child as narrator or as hero who triumphs over adversity, writes RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC
IN MIDNIGHT in Paris, Woody Allen's latest comedy, disenchantment with the present leads Gil, a naive but endearing American played by Owen Wilson, to return to the golden age of the 1920s. One night, having taken leave of the fiancee who doesn't understand him, he is wandering the streets of Paris when a clock rings out the chimes of midnight. A vintage black car pulls up, its doors swing open and its passengers invite him to a party. After a while it dawns on Gil that he has been transported back in time to a soiree where he finds himself in the enjoyably loquacious company of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Picasso and Dalí.
If Midnight in Parisis actually about anything, it's the idea of seeking refuge in the idealised past. Gil's nostalgia is a product of his grievances with the present; eventually he reconciles himself with the here-and-now, and Woody lets the credits roll. To French viewers, however, there's another dramatic conceit at work. Where exactly is this here-and-now that we see all around Gil – this postcard montage of quaint vignettes and timeless cliches that obscures any hint of the modern, lived-in Paris? It's another layer of artifice – a Robert Doisneau photograph fleshed out on screen. The film is as much about Woody Allen's own longing for a place that doesn't exist as his character's.
Parisians might smirk knowingly at this neat thematic circle, but the French film industry itself is hardly shy about using nostalgia to fill cinema theatres. Scan the box-office rankings on any given week and you’ll see the first rule in producing a commercially winning film here is to root it firmly in France’s idealised version of itself. The formula usually requires a sunny, pastoral setting, preferably with a child in the role of narrator or as the hero who triumphs over the big guy.
The story will take place during the trente glorieuses, the three roaring decades after the second World War, or another of France's fondly remembered spells. In the past few weeks alone two remakes of Louis Pergaud's 1912 novel La Guerre des Boutons (The War of the Buttons)have appeared, and the listings are bulging with comedies about chirpy village postmen or similarly well-worn tropes of the genre.
None of this is to say that French film is drowning in syrupy sentimentality. The industry is thriving, turning out consistently acclaimed productions that travel better than ever. But if this latest feel-good glut amounts to a movement, then it probably began with Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain(or Amélie), the fairy tale that made a star of Audrey Tautou in 2001. The most successful domestic box-office hits in French history have all followed Amélie, both in time and theme. Leading the line, with a staggering 20.4 million tickets sold, is the 2008 comedy Bienvenue Chez les Ch'tis, in which a Provencal postman moves north, encounters hicks with funny accents and discovers they're not so bad. In second place is the 2004 hit Les Choristes(8.4 million), about a teacher who wins over tough boarding school boys through song.
Each of these films manages the trick of being far enough from the realities of modern France yet close enough to an imaginary version of it that everybody recognises.
Just like Woody Allen’s character, French audiences’ taste for a certain idea of their past may well have something to do with their anxieties about the present. Polls consistently show the country is not especially conservative, and less concerned with the idea of decline than outsiders might assume. But many French people pine for the past.
A recent survey for think-tank Fondation Jean Jaurès found almost one third (29 per cent) of people liked the idea of “turning back the clock” – a sentiment that cut across the left/right divide.
In a country wracked by concerns over rising prices, threats to the welfare state and the strains of globalisation, these films reconnect people to a time where things must have been simpler, more innocent. Note how many of them have schools, children or adults who behave like children at their heart.
The historian Marc Ferro has pointed out the principal characters in these productions tend to be teachers, priests, postmen and shopkeepers.
“They were the pillars of our society, and of the cinema of the 1930s to the 1950s. They were replaced by the executive, the banker, the administrative elite . . .” – in other words, by some of the least popular people in modern society.
“France, since the middle of the 19th century, has been one of the most pessimistic countries in the world. These films are an antidote,” Ferro said.
With their formal conservatism, historical selectivity and predictable formulas, these films tend to excite critics much less than the French masses, although the 10th anniversary of Amélie’s release this autumn has reminded everyone that the first film in the wave had many reviewers swooning.
They’ve now had a decade to gather their composure and agree that perhaps films of nostalgia aren’t quite what they used to be.