Zany Frenchy

Zany Frenchy is the only blog entirely dedicated to contemporary French comedy in all its forms. You want to know more about this new wave of comedies that appeared in the early 2010’s? Then don’t wait any longer, and discover an audacious, hybrid, imaginative and political cinema, and unlike what you may think, as close to life as possible.

[zanyfrenchy]

It’s just a goodbye

The time has come to say goodbye. I leave you today with a mixture of joy and sadness. Joy to have explored in your company a part of the contemporary French cinema, joy to have laughed while remembering the inventive comedies that fed this blog during several weeks. But also sadness to close it that early. The new French author comedy is indeed full of themes and issues, which would deserve to be explored in more depth, so as to understand how it manages to get rid of the constraints of production and broadcasting, in order to offer to the audience a new kind of comedy. If we didn't have the time during these few weeks to go deeper into the making of these comedies, I invite you to discover them and above all to cultivate your own curiosity.

And at a time when financial institutions rather like to support consensual movies that respond to a logic of profitability, let's encourage singular movies and daring filmmakers, in order to guarantee the French cultural exception and to ensure the diversity of artistic expression.

And above all, don't forget : keep smiling, keep laughing!

[zanyfrenchy]

#3 The new french frontier : producers who play it different

Caroline Bonmarchand, girl power (Avenue B)

« Among women producers there is a real solidarity, a sisterhood that does not necessarily exist among men. » Caroline Bonmarchand

Caroline Bonmarchand

If Caroline Bonmarchand is a well-established producer in the French film industry (she has produced most of Sébastien Marnier’s and Marc Fitoussi’s movies), her career took a new turn as she received at the beginning of the year the Daniel-Toscan-du-Plantier award for her work on Enorme by Sophie Letourneur.

Caroline Bonmarchand decided to create her own production company after a stay in the United States, at the end of 2002. For the record, "Avenue B" was in fact the address where she lived in New York. As she was already producing movies independently, she didn't wanted to be accountable to someone else and preferred to be able to choose the projects she would work on. Her need for autonomy thus led Caroline Bonmarchand to set up her own production structure in order to support the projects that she really believed in.

If we look closer at Caroline Bonmarchand's filmography, we can see that she cultivates a strong taste for psychological dramas and thrillers, like Irreprochable by Sébastien Marnier or Marche ou crève by Margaux Bonhomme. Yet, she owes her greatest success to the comedy Enorme, which was a critical and public success and won numerous awards in festivals.

Caroline Bonmarchand likes to follow "in-house" directors over time, like Fitoussi or Marnier. But the producer also likes to be a seeker, to discover new talents, but also to seek them out, as she did with Sophie Letourneur. Indeed, Caroline Bonmarchand told Sophie Letourneur that she already appreciated her movies, and Sophie then proposed her the script of Enorme, moving on from Emmanuel Chaumet to a new producer. Because Enorme was a much more ambitious movie than her previous features films (the cast is huge, as well as the artistic and technical ambitions), Sophie Letourneur decided to associate with Avenue B (which regularly produces movies for over 3 millions euros), leaving Emmanuel Chaumet, who would not financially been able to assure the production of the film. The fact that Letourneur chooses to associate with Caroline Bonmarchand for Enorme can also be explained by the themes of the movie. As it deals with feminism, female mental load, oppression but also gender reversal, we might think that Letourneur wanted to work with a female producer - Caroline Bonmarchand being especially involved for gender equality in the cinematographic industry (she’s an active member of the Collectif 50/50).

However, Caroline Bonmarchand does not want to produce movies that deal only with feminist issues. Instead, her filmography rather shows a taste for genre cinema. She produces lots of thrillers, fantastic movies but also comedies, in a joyful mix of genres.... And we can only be delighted to see that women producers like Bonmarchand are able to assert their production desires without limiting themselves in the topics and genres of the movies they produce.

We thus hope that the Avenue B editorial policy will inspire future women producers to produce ambitious and singular movies without any boundaries or glass ceiling.

The female revolution in the cinematographic industry is underway !

[zanyfrenchy]

#3 The new french frontier : producers who play it different

Philippe Martin, the wise man (Les films Pelléas)

« Directors are artists who can take you to places you would never have imagined ». Philippe Martin

Philippe Martin

Founder of the Parisian company Les Films Pelléas, which has produced more than 60 feature films and discovered numerous authors (Pierre Salvadori, Mia Hansen-Love, Serge Bozon and Axelle Ropert among others), Philippe Martin, who works with his partner David Thion, is a rather discreet personality on the French cinematographic scene, but the movies he produces are nevertheless full of audacity and irreverence, reflecting Martin’s cinephilic tastes.

Philippe Martin is interested in authors. According to him, it is really the meeting with an artist and his outlook that clinch it when it comes to producing a movie. The editorial line of Les Films Pelléas consists in supporting authors in whom Philippe Martin believes deeply.

At the beginning of his career, he was essentially producing first movies, but he recently got interested in more experienced filmmakers like Nicole Garcia or Christophe Honoré, whom he now produces regularly. While at first sight we might think that Philippe Martin belongs to the category of "wise" producers, producing naturalistic and bankable dramas such as Mia Hansen Love or Arthur Harari's movies, the producer also cultivate a taste for hybrid and eccentric movies, which translate into his support of offbeat comedies. He has produced popular but no less imaginative comedies such as Pierre Savadori’s, but he also shares a taste with Emmanuel Chaumet for risky movies as he produces most of Serge Bozon’s works, such as La France, Tip Top or Madame Hyde. While he claims that the movies he has produced with the most enthusiasm have never really been trendy, we understand that Philippe Martin also likes to take on riskier productions, even if it means stepping out of his comfort zone, putting himself in danger in order to allow a filmmaker to create while benefiting from a certain financial comfort. Indeed, if Emmanuel Chaumet produces author comedies for less than 1 million euros, minimizing his risk-taking, the comedies produced by Les Films Pelléas often reach 5 millions euros, like Serge Bozon's latest movie, which was produced for 4.6 million euros. Therefore, we can say that Philippe Martin and David Thion are really driven by the personality, the vision of a director .

We can conclude by saying that Philippe Martin and David Thion are also interested in supporting directors in the long term, helping him or her to build a career and not simply one movie. Without Les films Pelléas, Serge Bozon’s or Salvadori's movies wouldn't have the impact and public recognition they have today. And as Serge Bozon is currently shooting his next comedy, Don Juan, with two of the most popular French actors (Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira), we hope that this movie will be a success and that it will contribute to legitimate and democratize the new French author comedy.

[zanyfrenchy]

#3 The new french frontier : producers who play it different

"There is a lack of poets in film production, a lack of risk-takers " Vincent Macaigne

As we come to the end of this exploration of contemporary french comedy (sadly), the time has come to meet those who have succeeded in giving a new impulse to the French comedy, to allow offbeat filmmakers, on the edge of the industry, to make their zany and inventive movies a reality. Who are they ? The producers of course !

Indeed, the emergence of a new author comedy was only made possible thanks to the unfailing support of a handful of independent producers, who prefer risk-taking to profit, who are not afraid of failure and who all have in common an unshakeable faith in cinema, a faith that allowed them to make movies that were at first rather complex to produce.

Caroline Bonmarchand, producer of Sophie Letourneur's latest feature film (Enorme), David Thion and Philippe Martin, who produce Serge Bozon's movies, or Emmanuel Chaumet, who produced Yves, La bataille de Solferino, La fille du 14 juillet; this generation of producers share the same vision of the 7th art: the belief in little-known filmmakers, with the promise that one day their work will be recognized by the greatest number of people.

Without further ado, let's dive into the world of these producers with very eclectic backgrounds, and discover their working methods, the movies that made them famous, the strategies and risk-taking that allowed them to create daring films.

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Emmanuel Chaumet, the daredevil (Ecce Films)

« An ambitious movie that is a failure will always be better than a successful movie without ambition » Emmanuel Chaumet

Emmanuel Chaumet

The audience of the movies produced by Emmanuel Chaumet is not very large, but still is deeply faithful. Ecce Films productions work as a promise of escape, a call to exoticism, an invitation to wildness. Among the films that have earned recognition, we can mention those of Bertrand Mandico (Les garçons sauvages), Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel (Jessica Forever), but also Justine Triet's offbeat and sometimes cruel comedies (La bataille de Solferino, Victoria), and Benoît Forgeard's astonishing ones (Gaz de France, Yves).

The producer’s passion for comedy is fed by his love of Italian cinema. As he regards the conventional « auteur cinema » with a touch of suspicion, it is therefore not a coincidence that he prefers in-house directors or filmmakers who come from art schools rather than directors who have graduated from La Fémis.

In an increasingly competitive industry, producers and filmmakers of author comedy are driven by a common idea: working efficiently and quickly. To get around practical obstacles, producers like Chaumet do not hesitate to opt for radical choices. For exemple, the outdoor crowd scenes in La bataille de Solferino were shot without official authorizations and the shooting of La fille du 14 juillet was spread out over two summers in order to divide the production costs. We can explain these radical choices and Emmanuel Chaumet’s taste for risk by the fact that he was for several years the apprentice of Paolo Branco, another adventurous producer of the 70s, who transmitted to him the taste for risk and daring. We can then believe that it is also Branco who convinced Chaumet that a producer survives thanks to the trust of the filmmakers.

Because the movies that Chaumet defends shows an audacity and an originality that is not unanimous, public and private investors will not readily support this type of movie. To overcome the lack of subsidies, Chaumet practices self-financing and produces movies with part of his personal cash flow. This uncommon production model is therefore particularly interesting in the sense that it is also part of a particular economy, that of first films and short films.

While 2014 marked a turning point for Ecce Films, with the huge successes of La bataille de Solferino and La fille du 14 juillet, which were seen and praised at the Cannes Film Festival, Emmanuel Chaumet continues to assert his singularity. Ecce Films breaks new ground, plays with formats (short, long, medium-length), dares to explore genres long before they become fashionable again (burlesque, fantasy, teenage chronicles, stories...) while remaining in the category of low-budget films, those that don't put the "s" in the word million. In 2021, Chaumet has not changed much his methods. At least the authors have grown up, starting with Justine Triet who signed Victoria with Virginie Efira in 2016 and totaled 657,000 admissions France (the biggest public success of Emmanuel Chaumet to date). The producer also pay interest to other faces, younger, such as Alexia Walther and Maxime Matray (Bêtes Blondes) or Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel (Jessica Forever).  French author comedies keeps moving on…

[zanyfrenchy]

#2 To have and have not - girls have it too !

Enorme by Sophie Letourneur

"I don’t want to make a cinema of representation, it is the particularities that interest me » Sophie Letourneur

In both her short and feature films, Sophie Letourneur gives prominence to female figures, whose portraits are the antithesis of the recurring fantasies and stereotypes of women in cinema. For a more natural and spontaneous effect, she also likes to mix professional actors with  people passing by or friends, who agree to act just for a film.

Let’s analyse these two aspects, deeply present in her latest film entitled Énorme, in which Sophie Letourneur intermingles documentary images shot in a hospital with a fictional plot.

Enorme tells the story of Claire (Marina Foïs) who becomes pregnant against her will after her husband-impresario, Fred (Jonathan Cohen) has exchanged her pill for candy bars. One is overexcited and omnipresent, the other is confused and not ready to face a pregnancy that would interrupt her career as a renowned pianist.  

From the outset, this comedy with its raw sense of humor reflects on the phenomenon of mental burden and objectification of women in our society.

Indeed, in Énorme, it's not the woman who wants a child, not her who wants to put her life as an artist on hold for a while, not her who experiences the pregnancy, or so little of it. No, it's her overexcited husband, Fred. He is the one who manages her appointments, who knows everyone at the hospital, takes childbirth preparation classes, eats more, swells. By making such a reversal, Sophie Letourneur gives the woman the status of an object, of a body sheltering a little being so desired by the man: she is in the light, he acts in the shadows, pulling the strings. The roles are reversed, for better or for worse.

Marina Foïs's passivity meets Jonathan Cohen's extraordinary enthusiasm, and from this reversal of values comes the mischievous humor of the film. The situational and visual gags (Jonathan Cohen trying to get out of a room with his big belly or taking relaxation classes at the maternity hospital) also contribute to highlight stereotypes that are still deeply rooted in the image of couples and parenthood.

By reversing all the stereotypes, Sophie Letourneur creates an offbeat humour and at the same time invites to a collective awareness of the right of each and everyone to enjoy one’s body as one wishes and to be in control of one' s own decisions.

Let's add that the incisive humor of the film is largely due to the great comic duo formed by Marina Fois and Jonathan Cohen, carrying most of the twists and turns of the film. Moreover, the combination of different types of dialogues, which are half-written, half based on preliminary improvisations, and sometimes inspired by the director's own experience, gives a surprising and refreshing result.

Letourneur finally chooses to integrate real health professionals in the last third of the film, which gives the movie a hybrid form, between fiction and documentary. Claire and Frédéric are never as funny as when their weirdness collides with the cool composure of the nurses, gynecologists and other specialists. This editing strategy operates micro-breaks of tone within the shots and reverse shots, and finds its acme in the very expected scene of childbirth... which I’ll let you discover yourself!

***

I hope that this presentation of French « auteur » comedy from a sociological and feminist perspective will make you eager to discover these singular films and to explore further the filmography of these talented women filmmakers.

See you in a few weeks to discover the working methods of those who made the renewal of this genre possible, the producers of these comedies : adventurous and ready for anything!

[zanyfrenchy]

#2 To have and have not - girls have it too !

Notre Dame by Valérie Donzelli

« What I love about cinema is that it makes us believe in the impossible. »  Valérie Donzelli

From her first short film Il fait beau dans la plus belle ville du monde to the recent Notre Dame, Valérie Donzelli has asserted herself as a director of zany, improvised and imaginative comedies, nourished by the accidents and wanderings of adult life.

Notre Dame, which takes the world of architecture as its setting, goes a little further than her previous movies and satirizes urban planning policies through the unexpected portrait of a chaotic Paris, given over to all kinds of disturbances.

That is indeed in a Paris drenched by perpetual rain, where the radio pours out catastrophic information at all times, that Maud Crayon, a Parisian architect and mother of two children, wins a competition to redesign the square of Notre Dame. Despite the fact that her project wins the competition, her work is rejected by the general public, to Maud's great despair. At the same time, Bacchus Renard, a teenage love, resurfaces and her ex-husband, Martial, moves in with her against her will.

From the outset, Maud Crayon is thus introduced as a woman under pressure, and this at all levels : the boss of the architecture agency bullies her, she has to balance her work and her life as a single mother, not to mention the love troubles she is in, between her ex-husband and her lover.

However, Valérie Donzelli amazes by her ability to convert the faults of modern life (work pressure, precariousness, incivilities, the hypocrisy of politicians) into a comic and combative energy, which also appears as a survival manual for her protagonist Maud Crayon. The dynamic editing, the lines exchanged as if in ping-pong game, the unpredictable gestures and attitudes (for instance passers-by giving one another big slaps in the street) define a rough shaggy freewheeling type of comedy, where the eccentricity of the protagonists is a response to the aggressiveness of the world. Each scene is thus a new arena of play, where the actors are free to push the limits of reality, to resort to almost childish jokes.

By portraying herself as a disoriented eccentric woman, Donzelli brings together the burlesque and the absurd to portray contemporary society in the style of a modern Tati.

The freewheeling tone of Notre Dame undoubtedly attracts anyone who watches it. The film is part of a hybrid form of cinema, which experiments to serve the narrative, alternating between comedy, singing and dancing and with some forays into the supernatural. By moving away from naturalism to explore the possibilities offered by fantasy, Donzelli manages to take the necessary distance to see the world from another angle and invites us, the viewers, to dream of another world : funnier, more surprising, more alive!

[zanyfrenchy]

#2 To have and have not - girls have it too ! (The comedy of manners among women filmmakers)

A few weeks ago, we began our exploration of the contemporary French author comedy through the presentation of three movies, eccentric nevertheless in tune with the current social and political climate.

This week, I have the pleasure to introduce you to another aspect of the French author comedy, which has been essential to the renewal of the genre: feminist comedies.

What is particularly interesting with the reinvention of the comedy of manners by women filmmakers such as Valérie Donzelli, Justine Triet or Sophie Letourneur, is that they add to the general social criticism a satire of the relations of power between men and women. With a lot of humor, a touch of sarcasm and a pinch of self-mockery, these filmmakers brilliantly deconstruct the clichés related to love relationships and to women’s place in society.

Without further delay, let’s discover together these refreshing, destabilizing and above all feminist comedies !

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La bataille de Solferino by Justine Triet

"How do you reinvent yourself, how do you deal with truth and lies by making movies? " Justine Triet

For her first feature, La bataille de Solferino (2013), Justine Triet managed to create a movie that can be situated between the intimate chronicle and the collective epic by telling the story of a couple torn apart in a very trivial and realistic way.

The plot, both simple and complex, tells the following story:

Sunday May 6, 2012. Laetitia, a journalist for a 24-hour news channel, has to cover the second round of the presidential election and sets up her camera in front of the headquarters of the Socialist Party in Paris, rue de Solferino. She therefore called on a (male) baby-sitter to look after her two young daughters. But her ex-husband Vincent is determined to see his daughters despite  Laetitia’s ban. Therefore, an intimate battle and a collective one are then waged head on.

What is brilliant about this comedy, which starts out more like a drama, is that the viewer is never able to anticipate the actions to come. The events follow one another, we go from a laughing fit between Laetitia and her baby-sitter to a nervous breakdown in the rue de Solferino, ending with a tearful fight between Laetitia and her ex-husband Vincent. Entering the messy daily life of a Parisian family, La bataille de Solferino quickly makes us understand that the film will have nothing to do with Napoleonic battles. Other wars are at play in this first exciting movie, documenting conflicts at multiple levels: intimate (child custody conflict between two divorced parents), political (it's the day of the second round of the presidential election), aesthetic (between tension and humor, fiction and documentary).

What is constantly surprising in Justine Triet's first feature film is the complete porosity between narrative and reality, fictional characters and real people, simulated violence and actual danger. In the film, it's all about intrusion, about reversals of situations. The laughter is not caused by visual gags but rather by the dysfunctional relationships among the characters and by their constant mood swings.

The great success of the film is therefore its fluid mix of fiction, humor and documentary, which sometimes makes it impossible to distinguish what is written and planned from what is captured live on election day. Mixing fiction, documentary and humor is not so easy, but Justine Triet handles it brilliantly.

The documentary-fiction combination begins with the characters, who have the same first names as the actors (Vincent Macaigne and Laetitia Dosch). And Triet's bordering on frenzy direction contributes greatly to this hybridation. The intimate space is filmed like a live report, forming a seamless continuum with the locations of the presidential countdown. While Laetitia is counting the scores of the two candidates, she makes an inventory of her relationship with Vincent. And as she struggles between her interview and her ex-husband, the film gains humorous twists and turns while Laetitia gains self-affirmation. It is finally through the intrusion of fictional sequences in the heart of an uncontrollable live event that the incisive humor and message of the movie emerges and spreads.

At the end of the « battle », we get the impression that Justine Triet was looking for (and found) a type of cinema that has the same intensity as a rock concert. Something that is not smoothed out, that is spat out or stuttered. SO LET’S ROCK AND ROLL !

[zanyfrenchy]

#1 Satirical and political comedies, that claim a formal hybridity

Madame Hyde by Serge Bozon

« The basic shift is that the film starts out a bit like a comedy and doesn't end up like a comedy at all. There is a confusion that rises little by little. » Serge Bozon

With his latest movie Madame Hyde (2017), Serge Bozon offers, with a zany and electric comedy look, a real social and political reflection on the greatness of teaching and the difficulties that come with it. Loosely based on from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Madame Hyde tells the story of Mrs. Géquil, a physics teacher in a professional high school. Shy, she is constantly victimized by her colleagues and students. After being struck by lightning during an experiment in her laboratory, her personality is gradually transformed.

As Mrs. Géquil (Isabelle Huppert) begins to develop « special powers » after her electrocution, the movie brilliantly shifts into the bizarre, the fantasy, the comical, and some spectators will certainly be puzzled, not knowing which side to hold on to. And this is what undoubtedly makes the charm and the strength of the film.

Serge Bozon managed with his co-writer Axelle Ropert, to avoid the traps of the genre film in order to make his movie a hybrid cinematographic object, always evolving, almost alive. He pushed back, to the point of absurdity, the limits of normality of a movie on education thanks to extreme contrasts to better bring out the comedy. As a result, Madame Hyde reverses in a jubilant way all the clichés of the representations of teachers, suburban students, men and women, family, disability. Madame Hyde is therefore at the same time a social film, where skin color, rap and the suburbs are more than just a setting. It is a fantasy film, which relies on a transformation of the protagonist, and a film about school, in the simplest sense of the term: why should knowledge be transmitted and how should it be transmitted? And why is it so important and so hard to transmit it?

The dress gags, the visual effects and the surreal dialogues are also very enjoyable and are part of an imagery that contributes greatly to the understanding of the story, sometimes reminding of photo novels. As the director skilfully maintains suspense and surprise, the movie never goes where one would expect. Indeed, Mrs Géquil is not a monster, she is a fairy, an incandescent fairy, who shows us the way for a better world.

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I hope you will enjoy these first three articles, and that they will make you eager to discover these films. See you next month for an exploration of the comedy of manners among women filmmakers. Keep on laughing!

[zanyfrenchy]

#1 Satirical and political comedies, that claim a formal hybridity

Yves by Benoit Forgeard

« I want to create comic forms that confuse the viewer as well as they amuse him » Benoit Forgeard

From the early 2000s, Benoit Forgeard's movies have been set in a reality stylized by the use of artifice in order to better understand the world's failings. In all his films, Forgeard sets up comic tales that explore the mutations of the 21st century : the political debate in Gaz de France, the media acceleration in La course nue, and above all the AI and technological omnipresence which, from Stève André to Yves, has become a real obsession. The diversity of the theme his movies deal with is the source of an ironic and satirical tone that allows Benoit Forgeard to disrupt reality to better question it.

Forgeard's third feature, Yves, released on a hot day in June 2019, has a refrigerator as its eponymous character. This oxymoron resonates with the logic of distortion of reality and humor that runs through all of his work. Yves tells the story of Jérem, a young loser who moves into his grandmother's house to compose his first rap record. He meets So, a mysterious investigator for the « Digital Cool » start-up. She convinces him to test Yves, an intelligent refrigerator, which is supposed to simplify his life. We are then plunged into a near future where household appliances are characters in their own right. 

From this moment on, the fridge Yves will quickly stir up trouble: from bugs to love disputes, the scenario draws on the springs of misunderstanding and vaudeville, at the same time as it delivers a comment on new technologies and the tyranny of celebrity. In this respect, one of the tastiest scenes is the copyright lawsuit, to find out who, Jérem or Yves, signed the rapper's latest hit.

The trademark of Forgeard, whose films are produced by Emmanuel Chaumet (Ecce Films), lies in his ability to mix in his scenarios the reality of society and his overflowing imagination. The movie captivates by its scenic inventions, the intelligence of the dialogues and the soft madness of the actors. In this sense, the fridge, the film's protagonist, far from overshadowing the actors, magnifies them (William Lebghil and Philippe Katerine together form a duo as incongruous as it is funny).

Full of ideas, funny all the way through, Yves is a movie that is seemingly simple but which carries many lines of thought about society. Closing the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, while Le Daim opened it, Yves shows, in the same way as Quentin Dupieux's movies, that a kind of French Touch, characterized by a nonsensical approach, also exists in the contemporary french auteur comedy, and we can only be delighted.

[zanyfrenchy]

#1 Satirical and political comedies, that claim a formal hybridity

La fille du 14 juillet by Antonin Peretjatko

« For me, humor is a lifeline to avoid drowning in the mediocrity of our society. »  Antonin Peretjatko

As we eagerly wait for the reopening of theaters and the release of his third feature film, La Pièce rapportée, which has been postponed several times due to the coronavirus crisis, let's explore the work of Antonin Peretjatko through his first movie : La fille du 14 juillet. This young filmmaker is not the best known among French director, yet his first two comedies, La Fille du 14 juillet and La Loi de la jungle, delighted audiences and raised critical acclaim in 2012 and 2015. 

Lovers of films with a polished image and smooth editing, pass on, La fille du 14 juillet is not for you. However, if you like imperfection, if you like road movies in the Godard style, if the idea of spending an hour and a half watching images shot in 16 mm doesn't seem like the height of cheesiness, then keep on reading!

Here is the plot of this zany comedy : It's July 14th. At the Louvre Museum, Hector meets a pretty young woman who attracts him and whose name is Truquette. From now on, he has only one obsession, to seduce her. And how can he do that ? By taking her to the seaside by car. With three friends, Charlotte, Pator and Bertier, Truquette and Hector drive along the beautiful roads and beaches of France against the backdrop of an economic crisis and a new reform of school vacations.

In this movie, rather than the road, it's the side roads that interest Antonin Peretjatko. From the screenplay to the dialogues, including the music, everything is in the second, even third degree.  The filmmaker manages to impose a very singular comic touch, where burlesque and political satire are in harmony. In La fille du 14 juillet, you will not find any "poetic moment", because the whole film is an uninterrupted poem. In the movie, you will however find a patchwork of eras, an exotic way of filming Paris on the National Holiday, as if we were back in the 1960s. Antonin Peretjatko shows a taste for collage, for visual games that plays with the smallest logo or the smallest inscription, as if to underline Paris' future as a big advertisement. Thus, the desire of the characters to escape from  daily life is not a futile pretext, but feeds a hidden anger, letting a real revolutionary desire grow beneath the summer indolence. If La fille du 14 juillet is linked to a post-New Wave tradition of the vacation movie, it also recalls a well known 1968 slogan: under the paving stones lies the beach.

[zanyfrenchy]

Let’s laugh while drawing up an inventory of the contemporary French author comedy

Zany Frenchy aims to introduce you to a more confidential type of comedy, made by young French directors who, at the turn of the 2010s, managed to federate a new generation of filmmakers, by making humor in a different way and by reinvesting comedy, a genre that was neglected for too long by  French cinema.

Every month and through 3 articles dedicated to a film, an author or a producer that marked the contemporary French comedy, we will discover together some talented filmmakers, whose stylistic and dramaturgical creativity allowed to create free and carefree works. As we are all waiting to regain our lost carefree spirit, let's recreate it in our minds by exploring these energetic and cheerful comedies!

[zanyfrenchy]

Born to be alive

On our screens as well as in our lives, it has been a year now since we have been waiting for an image, a story and among everything, a return to normal life. In the last few months we have lost the unexpected, the extraordinary, the superb and the exciting : all the things that made life so special. Fortunately, we can still escape from the sadness of the time through imagination and even if the theaters are closed until further notice, there are still MOVIES we can discover or rediscover. In the way they accompanied our childhood, they made us fall in love with actors, opened us to the world, movies are part of our individual constructions and of our daily life.

In these strange times, we need to be comforted more than ever. So what better way than to watch movies that make us smile, movies with an unbridled imagination that make us laugh out loud as much as they surprise us ? Needless to say that comedy movies are THE remedy to the ills of life !

[zanyfrenchy]

Free spirited movies 

[zanyfrenchy]

«There is a lack of poets in production and writing, people prepared to risk it, no matter what

Vincent Macaigne 

[zanyfrenchy]

Zany Frenchy

Zany Frenchy is the only blog entirely dedicated to contemporary French comedy in all its forms. You want to know more about this new wave of comedies that appeared in the early 2010's? Then don't wait any longer, and discover an audacious, hybrid, imaginative and political cinema, and unlike what you may think, as close to life as possible.