French Film Festival

Movie goers don't worry about being bored in Jakarta because there are quite a few film festivals here (I can name 4 just off the top of my head thanks to Blitzmegaplex, Indonesia's newly movie theater franchise). Most recently was the annual French Film Festival (Festival Sinema Perancis). For its 13th time, the festival was not only held in Jakarta, but also in Semarang, Yogyakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Bali.

I'm absolutely no fan of french movies. My image of french movies are that they are usually very artsy, taking simple daily life events and looking at them from a different, often surreal & usually thought-provoking angle....well...thought-provoking for some people, for me....I just go : Heh?! What happened? So the movie has ended already? What was the movie actually about?!

So when the film festival began last weekend, I didn't plan on going....until I read a synopsis of one of the films that would be shown :

Ma vie..n'est pas une comedie romantique

In romantic comedies, when a man meets a woman whom he was crazy in love at the age of nine, it is obvious that these two will kiss each other at the end of the film and that it will be nice and moving. But life is not a romantic comedy...

Being the romantic comedy fan that I am, I was curious how this film was going to end...afterall...we are talking about a french film here! And it turned out to be very very amusing! Maybe I enjoyed it so much because it was more like the normal American blockbuster movies that you see....straight to the point, not full with poetic symbols embedded in the scenes, but yet...there was still this light philosophic twist...

I liked it so much that I even bought another ticket for the next day's show :

Odette Toulemonde

Odette Toulemonde has nothing to be happy about, but is. Balthazar Balsan has everything to be happy about, but isn't. She dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favourite author, to whom - she believes - she owes her optimism. The rich and charming Parisian writer then turns up in her life in an unexpected way. A tale about the comic encounter between atypical survivors with nothing in common.

Now this movie...I could feel its "frenchness". Though I do admit that it was good, unfortunately I didn't enjoy it as much as Ma vie...just because I thought it was more on the poetic side. All in all...after watching these two movies, the only question that I was wondering about : Why are French & Sex strongly associated? (Watch these 2 movies, you'll see why I thought about this....)

For more information about this festival, please visit its website : http://www.sinema-perancis.com/