Minne + The Game of Love
COLETTE… the legendary writer (1873-1954) was a singular figure in French life & letters for more than half a century, whose novels indelibly captured the vagaries of Belle Epoque life and love with a discerning, feminist eye. After World War II filmmakers caught up with her, bringing her taut but tender tales to the big screen.
AUTEURES kicks off with a full day of these films, featuring four distinct and fascinating women at the center of the action, beginning with the matinee of Gigi and Chéri and an evening screening of Minne and The Game of Love / La Blé en herbe.
Minne / Minne, l’ingénue libertine
4:45 PM Danièle Delorme and Jacqueline Audry are reunited in another Belle Epoque romp. Minne, a dissatisfied young wife, haunts the tango parlors and roués’ love nests of Paris in search of erotic fulfillment – and finds it where she least expects it. (1950, dir. Jacqueline Audry, 90m)
The Game of Love / La Blé en herbe
6:30 PM Colette shocks again! A boy (Pierre-Michel Beck) and a girl (Nicole Berger) who have grown up together, their families spending summers by the sea, are teetering on the brink of sexual awakening. This delicate balance is overturned by the appearance of a worldly older woman with a bent for erotic pedagogy–the sublime Edwige Feuillère, another MCP favorite (the alluring headmistress of Olivia, the doomed lover in There’s No Tomorrow). (1954, dir. Claude Autant-Lara, 106m)
Midcentury Productions’ AUTEURES: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LOST CONTINENT ’24 features 15 films from France zeroing in on the status of women in the cinéma de papa period. These films feature women both in front of and behind the camera, covering a rich panorama of their perspectives about their place in French society. Based primarily on researches by Phoebe Green, AUTEURES is an eye-opening look at unjustly neglected works ripe for rediscovery.
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