Bertrand Tavernier by Lynn Anthony Higgins (review)

Reviews 211 fantastiques ne boudent pas la production française, et Micciche note que les festivals étrangers en raffolent. Pour Michel Etcheverry, le problème du film fantastique français est dû en grande partie à la production énorme des États-Unis et de l’Angleterre, qui dispense les producteurs français de s’investir dans ce genre et d’en développer les capacités techniques. Après avoir traité du sous-développement du film fantastique français, le volume inclut, dans une deuxième partie, une collection d’articles déjà publiés qui montrent la progression du genre. Ces articles, datant de 1926 à 1995, sont reconnus comme “textes d’orientation” (145). Il est intéressant de voir comment les critiques des différentes époques reconnaissaient déjà les lacunes du film fantastique français. University of Alabama Sandrine Hope Higgins, Lynn Anthony. Bertrand Tavernier. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7190-5922-3286. Pp. 304. $95. Recently Tavernier’s films have explored a French couple’s odyssey to adopt a Cambodian orphan, an American policeman investigating murder in the Louisiana bayous, and the sentimental education of a young noblewoman in sixteenth-century France. Contemporary issues of baby-trafficking inspired the first feature; the other two were drawn from literary sources, American and French respectively. Tavernier, an extraordinarily multi-faceted individual, heads his own production company, co-writes many of his screenplays, has authored encyclopedic collections on American film directors , and through his connection to the Institut Lumière in Lyon actively defends and promotes French cinema. The breadth of this director’s knowledge of literature, history, and cinema is legendary, as is his reputation for strong passions, many of which infuse his films. Lynn Higgins introduces us to a clearly complex figure and one she ultimately suggests no generational or stylistic label can adequately encapsulate. The volume is slender but offers a remarkably thorough and creative distillation of the life, education, career, and films to date of one of France’s foremost cineastes. Although she begins her study with the director’s first feature and ends with his last, Higgins’s approach is more holistic than chronological and strongly resembles the one she identifies as Tavernier’s own mode of presenting characters in his films—allowing a personality to unfold within a dual context of historical moment and everyday life. Higgins paints with broad strokes (May 68, Algeria, Nouvelle Vague, Heritage Film), but does not neglect revealing details (Tavernier’s exhaustive historical research; his affinity for CinemaScope and long takes; his team approach to filmmaking; his inspirations derived from Westerns directed by John Ford and Delmer Daves). In clear, jargon -free language she discusses all Tavernier’s major fiction and documentary films by clustering them around four focal points—intergenerational relationships, portraits of professional artists, historiography, and documentary vision and technique. This proves a particularly felicitous approach because it allows exploration of the myriad filiations connecting the films among themselves and to the director’s interests and artistic vision. Critics have faulted Tavernier’s films for problematic endings, faltering plots, and departures from genre expectations. Higgins successfully neutralizes such criticism by examining these instances through the lenses of other art forms such as melodrama, jazz, and documentary film practices and suggesting that these “flaws” are not carelessness but rather indicate aesthetic choices the director has made in attempting to capture a character’s internal logic. The resulting bending of genre and blending of artistic creative processes, she believes, has led Tavernier to develop forms (she suggests the terms“historical fiction”and“investigative drama”) that represent his distinctive contribution to cinematic history. In her concluding chapter Higgins appraises the director’s disastrous experience with his 2009 Dans la brume électrique; and, closely comparing the American-edited, bowdlerized version with Tavernier’s own director’s cut, utilizes the differences as an opportunity to recap the hallmarks of Tavernier’s unique auteurist vision. Readers will find the comprehensive filmography and concise bibliography of works both by and about the director useful for further reading and viewing. University of Idaho, emerita Joan M. West Lefebvre, Philippe, réal. Une nuit. Int. Roshdy Zem, Samuel Le Bihan, Sara Forestier, Gérald...