The Spanish festival reveals titles of the first competitive edition of the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section that will award a $22,200 (€20,000) prize.
Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary A Journey Through French Cinema, seen at Cannes Classics, will be the opening film of the Zabaltegui-Tabakalera section of the festival, which includes diverse titles that have premiered at other festivals. San Sebastian notes that the section is “open to the most varied and surprising movies of the year.”
The French director has been a San Sebastian regular since 1982, when Coup de Torchon was screened in the Official Selection, and he later was honoured with a retrospective of his films. Two of his titles — It All Starts Today (1999) and Holy Lola (2005) — have landed the audience award. Tavernier was also at the Spanish festival in 2013 where Quai D’Orsay won the best screenplay award.
It’s the first time that the Zabaltegui-Tabakalera section is competitive, with a prize of $22,200 (€20,000) for the winning film. The rest of...
Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary A Journey Through French Cinema, seen at Cannes Classics, will be the opening film of the Zabaltegui-Tabakalera section of the festival, which includes diverse titles that have premiered at other festivals. San Sebastian notes that the section is “open to the most varied and surprising movies of the year.”
The French director has been a San Sebastian regular since 1982, when Coup de Torchon was screened in the Official Selection, and he later was honoured with a retrospective of his films. Two of his titles — It All Starts Today (1999) and Holy Lola (2005) — have landed the audience award. Tavernier was also at the Spanish festival in 2013 where Quai D’Orsay won the best screenplay award.
It’s the first time that the Zabaltegui-Tabakalera section is competitive, with a prize of $22,200 (€20,000) for the winning film. The rest of...
- 7/14/2016
- ScreenDaily
- #100.In the Electric Mist Director: Bertrand Tavernier (A Sunday in the Country) Screenwriters: Tommy Lee Jones, Jerzy and Mary-Olson Kromolowski Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon (Holy Lola) and Michael Fitzgerald (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) Distributor: Currently Seeking Distribution The Gist: Scripted by Jerzy and Mary Olson-Kromolowski and Jones, this is an adaptation of James Lee Burke’s novel, which centers on Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux. New Iberia Lt. Dave Robicheaux is trying to link the murder of a local hooker to New Orleans mobster Julie (Baby Feet) Balboni–back in his home parish as co- producer of Hollywood director Michael Goldman’s Civil War film–when sozzled/psychic movie-star Elrod Sykes, pulled over for drunk driving, starts babbling about a corpse he found in the Atchafalaya Swamp–the corpse of a black man Dave had seen murdered 35 years before. Fact: This is veteran French director's English-language debut. See It:
- 1/28/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival
Plenty of films have dealt with the longing for a child or the emotional and political ramifications of adoption. But Holy Lola, Bertrand Tavernier's vivid and affecting new film, immerses viewers in the experience of foreign adoption. Revolving around a French couple's moment-to-moment endurance test through hope, red tape and an unfamiliar culture as they try to adopt a child in Cambodia, the film convincingly re-creates the semi-stateless state of Westerners who travel abroad in pursuit of a baby to love. At once thoughtful and visceral, the well-acted drama, which screened at the City of Lights, City of Angels fest, deserves wider stateside exposure.
Holy Lola is similar in setup to John Sayles' Mexico-set Casa de los Babys but without being static or didactic. Tavernier wastes no time on background before plunging into the humid downpours of monsoon season in Phnom Penh, where 40-ish "country doctor" Pierre Ceyssac (Jacques Gamblin) and his wife, Geraldine (Isabelle Carre) -- a bespectacled blonde who's weary of being told how young she looks -- have come to adopt a child. Along with other guests at their hotel, which caters to French would-be adopters, the Ceyssacs inhabit a strange limbo somewhere between tourism and exile.
The script by Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier and the director is refreshingly free of psychologizing; through shorthand and the cast's naturalistic work, we know all we need to know about the hotel's cross-section of France, from working-class couple Marco and Sandrine (Bruno Putzulu and Maria Pitarresi) to Annie (Lara Guirao), alone and especially resilient. Whether still searching for a child or awaiting exit paperwork, they seesaw between hope and disappointment for weeks on end.
The drama's moral questions are as implicit as the need to care for a child. In postcolonial Cambodia, where bureaucrats quote Hugo or appreciate offerings of Shalimar, Westerners' only power is money. Wielding the most power are the story's unseen Americans, while the Ceyssacs ply local orphanages with food and toys, hoping to be in the right place at the right time when a child becomes available. They befriend a clinic doctor (Vongsa Chea) who helps them navigate the labyrinth. An encounter with baby traffickers in the impoverished, mine-dotted countryside proves dispiriting on many levels.
There's a wonderful moment when the Ceyssacs and another couple cross a dangerously busy thoroughfare four abreast, arms linked. It's a lovely picture of the way they collectively withstand the dislocation and try to make sense of a formidable bureaucracy. The equanimity Pierre and Geraldine attain during months of uncertainty becomes clear only when new people arrive at the hotel, anxious and green.
Alain Choquart's ace camerawork captures the intimate drama with immediacy, and Henri Texier's propulsive music is a major contribution.
HOLY LOLA
A Little Bear/Les Films Alain Sarde/TF1 Films Prods. production with the participation of Canal Plus, Sofica Valor 6, Sogecinema 2
Credits:
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier
Producers: Frederic Bourboulon, Alain Sarde
Executive producers: Agnes Le Pont, Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Production designer: Giuseppe Ponturo
Music: Henri Texier
Costume designer: Eve-Marie Arnault
Editor: Sophie Brunet
Cast:
Dr. Pierre Ceyssac: Jacques Gamblin
Geraldine Ceyssac: Isabelle Carre
Marco Folio: Bruno Putzulu
Annie: Lara Guirao
Xavier: Frederic Pierrot
Sandrine Folio: Maria Pitarresi
Michel: Jean-Yves Roan
Dr. Sim Duong: Vongsa Chea
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes...
Plenty of films have dealt with the longing for a child or the emotional and political ramifications of adoption. But Holy Lola, Bertrand Tavernier's vivid and affecting new film, immerses viewers in the experience of foreign adoption. Revolving around a French couple's moment-to-moment endurance test through hope, red tape and an unfamiliar culture as they try to adopt a child in Cambodia, the film convincingly re-creates the semi-stateless state of Westerners who travel abroad in pursuit of a baby to love. At once thoughtful and visceral, the well-acted drama, which screened at the City of Lights, City of Angels fest, deserves wider stateside exposure.
Holy Lola is similar in setup to John Sayles' Mexico-set Casa de los Babys but without being static or didactic. Tavernier wastes no time on background before plunging into the humid downpours of monsoon season in Phnom Penh, where 40-ish "country doctor" Pierre Ceyssac (Jacques Gamblin) and his wife, Geraldine (Isabelle Carre) -- a bespectacled blonde who's weary of being told how young she looks -- have come to adopt a child. Along with other guests at their hotel, which caters to French would-be adopters, the Ceyssacs inhabit a strange limbo somewhere between tourism and exile.
The script by Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier and the director is refreshingly free of psychologizing; through shorthand and the cast's naturalistic work, we know all we need to know about the hotel's cross-section of France, from working-class couple Marco and Sandrine (Bruno Putzulu and Maria Pitarresi) to Annie (Lara Guirao), alone and especially resilient. Whether still searching for a child or awaiting exit paperwork, they seesaw between hope and disappointment for weeks on end.
The drama's moral questions are as implicit as the need to care for a child. In postcolonial Cambodia, where bureaucrats quote Hugo or appreciate offerings of Shalimar, Westerners' only power is money. Wielding the most power are the story's unseen Americans, while the Ceyssacs ply local orphanages with food and toys, hoping to be in the right place at the right time when a child becomes available. They befriend a clinic doctor (Vongsa Chea) who helps them navigate the labyrinth. An encounter with baby traffickers in the impoverished, mine-dotted countryside proves dispiriting on many levels.
There's a wonderful moment when the Ceyssacs and another couple cross a dangerously busy thoroughfare four abreast, arms linked. It's a lovely picture of the way they collectively withstand the dislocation and try to make sense of a formidable bureaucracy. The equanimity Pierre and Geraldine attain during months of uncertainty becomes clear only when new people arrive at the hotel, anxious and green.
Alain Choquart's ace camerawork captures the intimate drama with immediacy, and Henri Texier's propulsive music is a major contribution.
HOLY LOLA
A Little Bear/Les Films Alain Sarde/TF1 Films Prods. production with the participation of Canal Plus, Sofica Valor 6, Sogecinema 2
Credits:
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Screenwriters: Dominique Sampiero, Tiffany Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier
Producers: Frederic Bourboulon, Alain Sarde
Executive producers: Agnes Le Pont, Christine Gozlan
Director of photography: Alain Choquart
Production designer: Giuseppe Ponturo
Music: Henri Texier
Costume designer: Eve-Marie Arnault
Editor: Sophie Brunet
Cast:
Dr. Pierre Ceyssac: Jacques Gamblin
Geraldine Ceyssac: Isabelle Carre
Marco Folio: Bruno Putzulu
Annie: Lara Guirao
Xavier: Frederic Pierrot
Sandrine Folio: Maria Pitarresi
Michel: Jean-Yves Roan
Dr. Sim Duong: Vongsa Chea
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes...
- 4/13/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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