Francois Ozon‘s “Young and Beautiful” screened at TIFF this week (we reviewed it when it premiered at Cannes), its first appearance on this side of the Atlantic: but the hardest working man in whatever-the-French-is-for-Hollywood is just days away from starting his next shoot, in keeping with his (roughly) movie-a-year schedule.
Close as it may be to shooting, we nevertheless know next to nothing about “Je suis femme.” We know who’s in it—Romain Duris, arguably the best French actor of the moment (“The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” “The Big Picture,” various terrible rom-coms which unfortunately seem to be the only films of his that get a release outside France), backed up by Raphael Personnaz (“Anna Karenina”) and the excellent Anais Demoustier (“Time of the Wolf,” “Therese Desqueyroux”).
So, it’s a good cast, but it’s still next to impossible to tell what the film’s going to be about, given the cryptic title and Ozon’s immensely varied back catalog, which includes campy musicals like “8 Women,” overlooked English-language melodrama (“Angel”), and tougher stuff about teenaged sexuality, into which category fall films like “Swimming Pool” and the aforementioned “Young and Beautiful.” It has to be said that the quality of Ozon’s work can vary as much as the content, too, but with a cast like this, “Je suis femme” seems hopeful. [Yahoo France]
