Just as European cinema was beginning to lose impetus, a genuine talent appeared over the horizon in Xavier Giannoli of France. He was 34 when he directed The Singer in 2006, providing Gerard Depardieu with his finest role in many years; opposite him was a vulnerable looking Cecile de France, an actress of depth and sensitivity. The story of an ageing dance-band singer in a small French town (Clermont-Ferrand) falling in love with a woman half his age, with a child, and problems of her own, could have easily fallen into a sentimental trap generally favoured by American films from Hollywood. Giannoli, instead fills his film with wit, gentle humour, real feeling, subtle insights into human nature, and character of individuals, particularly those with messy private lives.
Depardieu’s Alain Moreau is a good singer without being a great one, and he knows it. He is, however, a dedicated professional and is much loved locally. His bear-like presence suggests a good but difficult man. His ex-wife, Michele, now in love with a mutual friend, played with confidence and insight by Christine Citti, still cares enough to be Moreau’s nurturing manager. It is a Chekhovian story for the obviously difficult, but morally responsive times, that the director and his audience lives through in France. The film’s humane conception of love and life seeps into the unconscious of viewers from other cultures.
Three years later, in 2009, Giannoli came up with In The Beginning , a film that was vastly different from The Singer , at least outwardly. Here we have an ordinary conman caught in an extraordinary situation in recession-hit small town France. Paul alias Philippe Miller comes to a place set in rural France which was once flourishing. A highway that was being built had to be abandoned because local environmentalists found a large number of almost extinct beetles there: ironically, this led to unemployment on a large scale.
Paul, driving through, hits upon the idea of posing as a representative of an exceptionally large construction company that was earlier responsible for building the highway, so that he can make a few quick hits in these cash-strapped times. True to form his scheme backfires, he actually almost gets the highway made using every trick in the book, gets caught just before its completion, goes to jail and does not get the girl, who happens to be the local mayor, and a youngish widow. As in the true story on which it is based, the film informs the viewer, via title cards, that the highway was actually completed, and thought to be of the standard required by the Department of Roads and Bridges. The bank that Paul, aka Philippe Miller, approached in desperation, in the end, financed the completion of the highway and paid the people involved their dues. Philippe Miller went to prison and then, disappeared after his release.
The film moves briskly without ever losing sight of its objectives. It reminds us simultaneously of two great 19th century Russian literary masters, Nikolai Gogol and not unsurprisingly, Anton Chekhov. There are also echoes of Roberto Rossellini’s, General De La Rovere , a film about a conman in Italy during World War II, made by the Fascists in power to masquerade as a Partisan General, to whom he bears a strong physical resemblance. The conman played with amazing subtlety by Vittorio de Sica, has a change of heart, refuses to cooperate, and happily goes to face the firing squad. Francois Cluzet’s performance in, In The Beginning , shows a range of sensitivity similar to de Sica’s General De La Rovere.
Giannoli’s two films also have a touch of pathos mixed with humour that bring him close to the French New Wave master, Francois Truffaut and the tradition of complicit understanding he inherited from the greatest of all French directors, possibly of all in the cinema, Jean Renoir. “Every man has his reasons”, said Renoir, in an effort to explain seemingly inexplicable behavior in individuals. Alain Moreau, in The Singer , a loner longing for love but seeking it with both shyness and occasionally repressed school boy aggression, and Philippe Miller from In The Beginning, the lost conman seeking his place in life, are really two sides of the same coin; both, unknown to themselves, are men of moral courage.
The two films have a sure but unhurried pace. Giannoli’s narration is nuanced. His eye for detail is quietly impressive. Like many masters before him: American, European and French, he knows the value of genuine emotion in a film and uses it with commendable restraint. Actors eat out of his hand; Depardieu, a difficult character to please, is full of praise for him. He is able to create cinema of substance and integrity out of the existential realities of today. He is young and has many more films in him.
— parthafm@gmail.com