The French critics' verdict - 21/05/2009
Resnais magic beats Basterds
By Fiachra Gibbons/RFI
It took Quentin Tarantino five bottles of wine and a "strange kind of cigarette" to persuade Brad Pitt to star in his spaghetti war movie, Inglourious Basterds. That is at least Pitt's version of events. (Tarantino paints an even more bacchalian picture of the evening.) One hopes that the actor was similarly fortified before he looked at the reviews of the film this morning.
To say that the critics hate Inglourious Basterds is a little like saying the Pacific was a mite choppy on the morning of the tsumani. Eric Neuhoff of Le Figaro, in almost charitable mode, says that you "could cut Pitt's hilarious accent with a hachet".
Cliché piles upon cliché in his depictions of occupied France, he says, before rolling out his most brutal criticisms - Tarantino has simply become old and dull. "In Pulp Fiction, the dialogue went with the action. In Inglourious Basterds, it replaces it." Then he delivers the final coup de grace. "Tarantino is like a child left to play with a gun who then shoots himself in the foot. You feel sorry for him, because as one of the characters says in the film, 'The French respect film directors.'"
Le Parisien didn't know which way to go, commissioning two critics with opposing views of the film to fight it out. So it's either a masterpiece or a disaster. It's your call.
Le Monde was resigned in its disappointment. It documents the films many flaws, and asks if Tarantino is trying to satirise the "rough questioning" used by the US on the "war on terror" in the torture scenes in the film, or is he instead going for the lowest common denominator. It's final verdict, "Could do much better."
Not such reprimands for the doyen of the festival. It is respect all the way for Alain Resnais and his comic love story of the third age, Wild Grass. The octogenarian auteur receives as adoring reviews as he has ever got for any of his 50 or so films. Neuhoff in Le Figaro says when you look at the story "it is really nothing, yet see how he makes it fly, and see how he shakes these lives... Love carries all. This is kind of an Amelie for adults. Resnais is 86, but you would never think that from his film."
Le Parisien waxes lyrical too, heaping praise on his actors Sabine Azéma and André Dussollier, who have stayed loyal to the master for decades. Le Monde too was utterly seduced by its playfulness and verve, and by the way in which Resnais delighted in taking his fans by surprise with such a lyrical comedy.
RFI's David Page talks to Quentin Tarantino
Our round-up of the earlier French reviews:
Day 1: Up and No One Knows About Persian Cats
Day 2: Fish Tank, Spring Fever, Air Doll and Coppola's Tetro
Day 4: Un Prophète, Taking Woodstock and Yuki & Nina
Day 6: Looking for Eric and Antichrist
Day 7: Vincere and Broken Embraces
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