Imagine you've got a hard-on for thirties Hollywood - Fred, Ginger, the Golddiggers, Bill Powell, Myrna Loy, Frank Capra, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Screwball Comedy, Katie Hepburn etc - and you check out your local Multiplex and damned if someone hasn't turned out a perfect pastiche. Alas, you'll have to make do with imagination because, let's face it, you just can't get the staff; no one currently writing and/or directing out of Hollywood has the affection, empathy, love and let's call a spade a spade, Respect for yesterday. This is not to say that Clint Eastwood, for example is a bad director, far from it, but he's not interested in that kind of stuff and there's no reason he should be. If, on the other hand your hard-on is for French films of the thirties, if in other words you lapse into drool mode at the mention of Arletty, Gabin, Prevert, Carne, Duvivier, Darrieux, Carette, Dalio, Raimu, Qai des Brumes, Hotel du Nord, Spaak, Jeanson, Aurenche et al then, mon amis, you have just died and gone to heaven, Hog Heaven yet because four years after his international hit Les Choristes, Christophe Barratier has come up with a Faberge egg of a movie that evokes all that's best about the era. The plot - a Music Hall is forced to close and the employees decide to run it themselves - is a nod to Prevert's Le Crime de Monsier Lange when it was a publishing house that got made over and indeed the Popular Front (in which Prevert was active) is very much in evidence. Gerard Jugnot is excellent as is Pierre Richard and Clovis Cornillac is be-capped a la Gabin albeit light years away from him in talent and charisma. Did I say there were songs as well? You better believe it. All in all a gem.
Review of Faubourg 36
