It's April - a good time to be French in Toronto; both Burger King and McDonald's now serve poutine, and Cinéfranco is back! So snuff out those Marlboro Lights, get inside the Canada Square and commiserate between reels of cinema with other Frenchies about how much you'd rather be in Paris in the springtime instead of Toronto.

Les spoilers ahead.

La faute à Voltaire
(Abdel Kechiche, 2000)

France - she'll save you a place at her table unless you're an economic refugee who just wants to have a better go at life, at which point she'll flash you her ass as you're whisked by deportation officials to the next flight out. LA FAUTE À VOLTAIRE argues against narrow categorization and fleshes out the story of one such economic refugee (Sami Bouajila) with acuteness and intimate sincerity. The latter half coasts on Élodie Bouchez's mercurial character a bit too long and Bouchez acts so guilelessly and luminously that she threatens to take over the story. It's the film's only gaffe, and how can one be churlish after you've been so charmed?

Yes, but...
(Yves Lavandier, 2001)

Emilie Dequenne's character asks her best friend what it is like to lose your virginity. She replies, "it doesn't hurt much," "it takes up space." The film feels like a bit of both. The device of the charmless psychiatrist talking directly to the audience is mildly unpleasant, certainly not as unpleasant as the regret you feel over other things you could've done with your time. Uneventfully, the film occupies 104 minutes of your life. Despite the attempted fuss over her supposedly overbearing mother there is no doubt that Emilie's character will have her hymen broken and gain a surer sense of self. The sum has all the the dramatic gravity of a feather. No ado? Minutes adieu!

Tanguy
(Étienne Chatiliez, 2001)

East vs. West in more ways than one. The parents of a career graduate student scheme to get their son to move out of their home. Their efforts are frustrated by the son's zen-like calm (he holds degrees in philosophy, Japanese and is now working on a Chinese thesis). Chatiliez explores the concept to exhaustion, but when an enraged André Dussolier mouths off he manages to shake off a bit more generosity.

Mortal Transfer
(Jean-Jacques Beineix, 2000)

What's Beineix doing scavenging through Joe Esterhasz's script rejects? The once-charmed director of DIVA and BETTY BLUE can't elevate this beyond its clumsy, senseless title. Two lessons after watching MORTAL TRANSFER: (1) keep wary when faced with such blandly-titled mystery-suspense fare à la BASIC INSTINCT and PRIMAL FEAR, and (2) be very afraid of psychiatrists with murderously suggestive artwork hanging on their office walls.

One of its few merits must be its almost boorish playfulness: the Sharon Stone flash is replaced by lingering shots of arty renderings of vaginas and PVC-covered vaginal whippings, and there are bits involving the dead body that wouldn't feel out of place in A WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S. There's a rush to ridiculousness on every front, each hoping for a reaction, but the resulting gumbo dares you to care.

Roberto Succo
(Cédric Kahn, 2000)

Roberto Succo tried to pass himself off as the swarthiest Dutchman but apparently he had a way with the ladies who'd happily hop in his getaway car despite meeting him only a few minutes before then seeing him gun someone down not much later. There's a good handle on his mercurial nature but otherwise Succo's mystique evades Kahn himself, and getting a better grasp of this mystique isn't helped much by the focus on police procedurals and their failed interventions.

Hair Under the Roses
(Agnès Obadia and Jean-Julien Chervier, 2000)

The presence here of Alice Houri (and Nicolas Duvauchelle) reminded me of Claire Denis and her U.S. GO HOME, a 1994 film also featuring Houri as a teen. Basking in the memory of U.S. GO HOME's many merits quickly ended as HAIR UNDER THE ROSES launched its own charm offensive courtesy of Julie Durand as Roudoudou, the little femme that could, a mixture of childlike straightforwardness and curiosity with a precocious fantasy life not far removed from Hustler cartoons. Durand's charms are so enslaving that one suffers a giddiness withdrawal when Roudoudou's story gives way to the sullen confusion of Romain, the teenage boy whose appointments at the psychiatrist's routinely follow hers. Roudoudou may be the hothouse flower but Romain's half of the film is the charm latebloomer. Both halves are uncommonly brash in exploring the biological and comic awkwardness of burgeoning sexuality.