These three films from 2022 are united by the French language. In The Beasts, it is a language that exists alongside Galician and Spanish. In Close, it is occasionally interrupted by Dutch. In One Fine Morning, it is pretty much the only thing that you hear. I am not going to say that French is what makes these films great - but I am not avert to that idea, either. These is some of the best cinema of 2022.
The Beasts (2022)
God what a chilling, nerve-wrecking experience this film is. The Beasts is what you would call a countryside thriller. A middle-aged French couple moves to a village in Galicia to grow and sell eco-friendly vegetables. They used to live in France (Antoine is a former teacher) but they are now seeking to be close to nature and to lead a simpler life. If that sounds idyllic, wait till you start watching this film. The Beasts thrives on tension.
The problem is that the local people are not exactly happy to see the intruders. Two brothers in particular take active dislike to Antoine due to the fact that the latter blocked the deal involving the sale of land to a wind farm (the deal would prove lucrative to the few village inhabitants). Things turn from tense to downright ugly with inevitability and in disgusting slow-motion. There is vague abuse, there are direct insults. There are scenes in the local bar where the atmosphere could be sliced with a knife. At some point, Antoine and his wife discover that their tomato harvest has been spoiled. From that point on, Antoine takes a camera and starts shooting the abuse he is getting from the brothers and showing the videos to local police who remain passive and largely disinterested.
The tension just builds and builds until you can barely take it anymore. And yet, oddly, you cannot look away. The film is harrowing, hypnotic, and utterly compelling. The fact that it is loosely based on real events is frankly disconcerting.
Close (2022)
If Quiet Girl was my favourite coming-of-age film of 2022 (if not, in fact, my favourite film of 2022), then Close takes the second place. When it comes to portraying teenage friendship and pressures of growing up, the film gets so many things right that I felt a personal connection. Even the details; when the boys are playacting an attack from an imaginary army of brutal enemies, it takes me back a million years.
The two boys are Léo and Rémi, and they are friends. Close, intimate friends. They playact, they run through gorgeous flower fields in rural Belgium, they daydream and they even sleep together in the same bed. However, a moment comes (and it is usually but a moment) when things begin to change. A girl at school asks them a question: are you together, like, are you a couple? There is a barely perceptible ripple in the air ("No, of course, not!"), and a few awkward silences, and then a small rupture appears. The rupture grows in size, and then all of a sudden Léo wants to take up ice hockey and what is the point of riding to school together, anyway? It is all very uncomfortable, and heartbreaking, and all of sudden there is something terrible you will have to live with for the rest of your life.
Close is also a very beautiful film. The aforementioned fields of Belgian flowers are breathtaking, but even they are merely a backdrop to the simple story that contains a bitter lesson. Ironically, it is a lesson you cannot really learn before the bell actually rings.
One Fine Morning (2022)
Mia Hansen-Løve is hailed a genius by a great many credible film critics. To my shame, One Fine Morning was my first film by this French director, and I had clearly been missing out. I watched it late at night in a small hotel room, and it has stayed with me ever since. This is sensitive, sensual, powerful cinema.
The ever brilliant Léa Seydoux plays Sandra, a young widowed woman whose life is both hectic and incredibly stressful. She works as an interpreter and a translator (which is symbolic in the context of the film), she has to raise a daughter, her ageing father is suffering from neurodegenerative disease and her personal life is at worst nonexistent and at best deeply troublesome. The events are mostly centred around Sandra's father (formerly a renowned philosophy teacher) who keeps forgetting things and is in urgent need of a nursing home (distant echoes of Amour and The Father - but the film has a distinct voice of its own). Again, it is a simple story that contains lots of subtlety and substance (as well as a great deal of sex). To me, the film has many profound things to say about the interplay between reality, wishful thinking and pretence. And all that against the ravishing views of Paris (the film ends with a striking scene by the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur) and a song by Bill Fay.
One Fine Morning (actually a reference to the title of a possible biography by Sandra's father) is simply great French cinema. It is full of beautiful, complex characters who could speak about politics in a taxi car in a way that is no less stylish and alluring than a visit to the Musée d'Orsay.
