Salve Regina’s seventh annual French Film Festival will again bring a French cultural flair to Newport with live music, wine tasting and six new, important and diverse French films, all with English subtitles. Join us March 18-29 to see what attracted more than 2,000 spectators from the Salve Regina and Newport communities last year alone.
The festival will open with a reception at the historic Jane Pickens Theater, located at 49 Touro St. in Newport. To avoid lines at the door, buy a festival pass online or call (401) 341-2250. All other films will be screened on campus in the O’Hare Academic Center’s Bazarsky Lecture Hall.
Film Schedule
The Names of Love/Le Nom des gens (romantic comedy)
Trailer
7 p.m. Sunday, March 18 at the Jane Pickens Theater, 49 Touro Street, Newport (reception begins at 6:30 p.m.)
This quirky comedy and winner of three César awards, including best actress and best original screenplay, mixes laugh-out-loud scenes with some serious issues that result in a thoughtful but charming film. Left-wing Baya seduces right-wing men in order to convert them. During her escapades, she encounters a man nearly the complete opposite of herself. Meet Arthur Martin, double Baya’s age and a straight-laced expert on the diseases of birds. He is swept up into Baya’s whirlwind of misadventures, where there is a never a dull moment. (Description from Ariel Guertin, 2012 festival intern)
Rapt (kidnapping drama)
Trailer
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 20 in the O’Hare Academic Center
One morning, the rich and powerful industrialist Stanislas Graff is kidnapped outside his home by a commando group. Completely cut off from the rest of the world, and only aware of what the kidnappers tell him, Stanislas cannot understand why his friends and family are taking their time to pay the demanded ransom. Outside, his world breaks down as the details of his double life emerge. All of his most intimate secrets are revealed to his family, the police and the public. Everyone discovers a man far different than the one they had imagined. (Description from Kino Lorber Films)
The Princess of Montpensier/La Princesse de Montpensier (historical drama)
Trailer
7 p.m. Thursday, March 22 in the O’Hare Academic Center
Set against a background of the savage Catholic/Protestant wars in the 16th century, Marie de Mézières, a beautiful young aristocrat, and the rakish Henri de Guise fall in love, but Marie's father has promised her hand in marriage to the Prince of Montpensier. When he is called away to battle, her husband leaves her in the care of Count Chabannes, an aging nobleman with a disdain for warfare. As he experiences his own forbidden desire for Marie, Chabannes must also protect her from the dangerously corrupt court dominated by Catherine de Medici. Director Bertrand Tavernier translates Madame de Lafayette's 1622 novella into a bracingly intelligent and moving evocation of the terrible conflict between duty and passion. Though the themes are classic, Tavernier, with cinematographer Bruno de Keyzer's vivid landscapes and Philippe Sarde's pulsing score, makes them feel passionately, urgently contemporary. (Description from IFC Films)
Le Havre (comedy/drama)
Trailer
2 p.m. Sunday, March 25 in the O’Hare Academic Center
In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa into the path of Marcel Marx, a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoe shiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, “Le Havre” is a charming, deadpan delight. (Description from Janus Films)
A Screaming Man/Un Homme qui crie (drama set in Africa)
Trailer
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 27 in the O’Hare Academic Center
In this quiet and tender but heart-wrenching drama from Chad, a French colony in Africa until 1960, a family struggles with the political and personal problems of postcolonial life. Adam (Champ) and his teenage son Abdel work comfortably as hotel pool attendants; they appear content teaching children to swim and lazily cleaning up in the evening. Amidst job layoffs and the imminently approaching civil war, however, tension and envy threatens the close father/son bond. The film won the Cannes Film Festival jury prize and the Lumière Award for best French-language film outside of France. (Description from Ariel Guertin, 2012 festival intern)
The Women on the 6th Floor/Les Femmes du 6e étage (comedy)
Trailer
7 p.m. Thursday, March 29 in the O’Hare Academic Center
In 1960 Paris, Jean-Louis lives a bourgeois existence absorbed in his work, cohabitating peacefully with his neurotic socialite wife Suzanne while their children are away at boarding school. The couple’s world is turned upside-down when they hire Spanish maid María. Through María, Jean-Louis is introduced to an alternative reality just a few floors up on the building’s sixth floor, the servants’ quarters. He befriends a group of sassy Spanish maids, refugees of the Franco regime, who teach him that there’s more to life than stocks and bonds, and whose influence on the house will ultimately transform everyone’s life. (Description from Strand Releasing)