Film Noir Night: Don’t put your Hands in The Black Box

Last night was Film Noir night, which has been one of my favorite parts of the festival since I’ve been attending it – I just realized it’s already my 5th year at COLCOA. As usual I missed the 1st screening, as I was stuck in traffic — yeah, I know, I live behind the Orange Curtain.

While the crowds were gathering for Sky Fighters, another “marvel” from the Michael Bay à la française, Gérard Pirès, the smaller theater was showing The Black Box, a dark thriller by actor/director Richard Berry (also starring in The Valet featured at the festival). Even though I’ve never been a fan of Berry as an actor, I was looking forward to this film but ended up fairly disappointed with this David Fincher-style take on loss of memory. Narratively far-fetched and visually impersonal, The Black Box was mostly worth it for another great dark and intense against-type performance from José Garcia, probably the best comedic talent coming from France. Mr. Berry was there to introduce the screening but nowhere to be found for a Q&A. Before the screening he stated that “he makes films because he doesn’t like to make speeches”, which I understand — others use words in songs, websites and blogs to say what they have in mind! — but when a festival flies you from The Land of the Never-ending Strikes to introduce your film, the least you could do would be to answer questions from the audience afterwards, rather than sipping champagne in the VIP area.

After sacrificing myself and hitting a couple of glasses of champagne, tartare toasts and a cigarette during the break, I was going back for a Noir encore with Anne Fontaine’s In His Hands starring the great Benoît Poelvoorde and the always cute Isabelle Carré. This thriller centered around the unexpected affair between a young married woman and a middle-aged weirdo, with a serial-killer sub-theme in the background was the highlight of the night, focusing on this woman’s dark attraction to danger, rather than on exploitation-type scenes. Some people, who were probably expecting a slasher-type thriller full of Paris Hilton-like bimbos in short shorts getting slaughtered, were complaining that the film dragged. But since it was aiming at offering a different angle from the victim’s perspective without any judgmental consideration, the film was exactly in the right format and delivered what it was supposed to.

As I always look for recurrent themes in films and programs — not that I’m one these 60 year-old pseudo-intellectual bores, it’s just that here at Plume Noire we read films rather than review them — the new thread that came to mind is to wonder what makes French-speaking best comedic talents such as José Garcia, Benoît Poelvoorde and Albert Dupontel so good for these dark and intense roles? (If Berry had done a Q&A, as an actor/director he could have answered that question.)