Christophe Honoré's Les Chansons d'amour | Love Songs (2007)

Christophe Honoré's Les Chansons d'amour is a homage to the Nouvelle Vague, and to Jacques Demy in particular. It's a musical like several of Demy's films, and its structure is in three parts, all with the same titles as Les Parapluies de Cherbourg: Le départ, L'absence and Le retour. The differences are that in Parapluies Guy has to leave Geneviève to join in the war in Algeria, whereas in the contemporary Chansons Julie Pommeraye (Ludivine Sagnier) leaves her lovers Ismaël Bénoliel (Louis Garrel) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme) by her death; and in the return (to a semblance of normality) in Parapluies the pregnant Geneviève is more less forced to marry another person, whereas begins a tentative relationship with a guy: the lycéen Erwann (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). 

And those aren't the only references to Demy's films: as Ismaël and Erwann are walking along the street two sailors are at the back of them, which is an allusion to the group of sailors in both Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Lola; the three sisters in Chansons bear the surname Pommeraye, a reference to the Passage Pommeraye in Demy's Nantes, which features in Lola; Catherine Deneuve plays Geneviève in Parapluies, where they eat the galette des rois and Geneviève is crowned queen, whereas in Chansons it's Jeanne Pommeraye (Chiara Mastroianni), who is Deneuve's real daughter, who is crowned; etc.

Of course, Demy is not the only director associated with the Nouvelle Vague whom Honoré pays homage to: the ménage à trois of Ismaël, Julie and Alice refers, for instance, principally to Truffaut's Jules et Jim and (to a lesser extent) Les deux anglaises et le continent – both based on two autobiographical novels of the same name by Henri-Pierre Roché – but I'll come to literary references proper in the next paragraph;* on the telephone, Julie tells Ismaël: 'je pense à quelque chose tout à coup...tu m'emmerdes' ('I've suddenly thought of something...you piss me off'), which is exactly the same line Angela tells Émile in Godard's Une femme est une femme; etc.

As for literary references, they are all over the film: Ismaël, Julie and Alice read Alison Louise Kennedy, James Salter and Adam Thirlwell in (the same) bed (and inevitably this reminds us of Jean-Paul Léaud reading in bed in Truffaut); if Erwann's books by Edmund White, Hervé Guilbert and Dennis Cooper are indicative of a homosexual content, Ismaël's 'Salinger quand même' is a tacit note that not all Erwann's book collection has the same subject; etc.

This is an intelligent, humorous, delightful feast of a film.

*The famous ménage à trois in Jean Eustache's La Maman et la putain could of course also of note.

Christophe Honoré's Les Malheurs de Sophie | Sophies's Misfortunes (2016)

Les Malheurs de Sophie is loosely based on the Comtesse de Ségur's first two books in a trilogy: the book in the title (1859) and Les petites filles modèles (1866). Three feature films and one television film had previously been made of it, it's something which many French people remember from childhood, although Honoré gives a more modern twist to it.

This isn't the same twist he made Madame de La Fayette's La Princesse de Clèves as La Belle Personne, which of course was in modern dress and intended as a reply to Sarkozy's crass remarks on the lack of relevance to the present day of the book though: it's set in the period when it was written, although it contains more of a modern outlook towards children, and the music is in tune with the times, particularly in the final song.

And far from being a children's film, this suits all ages. Eight-year-old Sophie lives with her parents in a castle in France with relatives from the Fleurville family, her mother being Madame de Réan (Golshifteh Farahani) although we don't see her father. Sophie (Caroline Grant), in spite of her elaborate clothing, is something of a tomboy, or at least someone who likes to experiment with things, play jokes and take things apart: for instance when her father sends her a doll she pushes its eyes into its skull, then melts off its feet in boiling water; she gives her cousins undrinkable water as tea with chalk as sugar; steals the goldfish and cuts them up to 'feed' to her doll; etc.

She tries to 'corrupt' her more straitlaced cousins into mischief with mixed results, such as catching a squirrel and bringing it back to the château: for practical purposes, another trick that brings animals into the present time is that this is in fact a cartoon squirrel, and later they'll be cartoon hedgehogs and a cartoon frog.

It's on a trip to America that her mother dies, her father hastily remarries in order not to have a motherless child, but then he too dies and she returns to England not to her original château but to the home of Madame Fichini (Muriel Robin), who is a sadistic tyrant who believes in whipping children who don't toe the line. Luckily her enlightened Fleurville relatives contrive to take Sophie in while the monster is in Italy, which is much to everyone's agreement, especially as this is where Sophie gets to stay.

Christophe Honoré's La Belle personne | The Beautiful Person (2008)

I've no idea if France has ever had such an uncultured president as Sarkozy, but in Febrary 2006 the leader-to-be spouted out about Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678), ludicrously asking if people had ever thought to ask a guichetière (female ticket clerk) what they thought of the book. The underlying idea behind this was that La Princesse de Clèves belonged to a long gone era. Little did Sarko realise that his very odd remark would dog him for his whole rule, that the book would as a result of his vituperative remarks become a best seller, that groups would hold outside readings of it, or even wear badges announcing that they were reading it.

It even provoked director Chistophe Honoré to make a film based on it in the present day, showing just how relevant La Princesse de Clèves still is. The main characters, with Madame de Lafayette's names first, followed by their modern character names, then their real names: La princesse de Clèves is Junie de Chartres (Léa Seydoux), Le duc de Nemours is Jacques Nemours (Louis Garrel), Le prince de Clèves is Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and Le vidame de Chartres is Matthias de Chartres (Esteban Carvajal Alegria). The main setting is in a lycée.

Junie's mother has died so she goes to live with her aunt and uncle and their offspring, Matthias being her cousin. At the new school she causes quite an attraction and soon bonds with Otto, who is madly in love with her. Also, though, the local Lothario, Jacques, the teacher of Italian, falls for her in such a way that he forsakes his other lovers. The problem: Junie feels the same about Jacques, although she is determined to remain faithful to Otto.

One very testing time is when Jacques is seen to let fall a letter which goes the rounds of the school and eventually ends up in Junie's hands: it's a love letter from a girl. Obviously Junie is heartbroken, although things are a little more complicated than they seem initially, and Honoré has of course changed the original book in a few places, including giving it a gay update. Matthias is concerned that the true story of the letter will come out as he, not Jacques, dropped it and it's from his boyfriend Martin: he reveals this information to Jacques, who passes it on to Junie.

Junie doesn't believe him, and although she's torn the letter up she suddenly remembers the final word in it is 'amoureux', not 'amoureuse': for some reason she's omitted to notice the sex of the writer. So Jacques is back in her good books, although she can't reciprocate his love because she can't break with Otto.

But Otto suspects she's two-timing him and in class sends out a spy to find out what Junie's doing, although the spy misconstrues her behaviour and believes Junie is secretly seeing Jacques. Of course the original Prince de Clèves wasted away, but the modern Otto throws himself from the school balcony into the courtyard. When a suitable time has elapsed after the suicide the ever-smitten Jacques continues trying to court Junie, but with no success. And Junie doesn't retreat to a convent as her seventeenth century counterpart did, but goes away on a ship, and by the appearance of the expanse of the sea she's going a very long way away.

Christophe Honoré has proved the relevance today of this very old novel, and also proved the stupidity of Sarko. Chapeau ! 

Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris (2006)

Dans Paris is Christophe Honoré's third feature film and is something of a remembrance of Nouvelle Vague movies, in particular those of Truffaut, but there's also a hint of Godard. The film stars two brothers: Paul (Romain Duris) and Jonathan (Louis Garrel, the director Philippe's son). Paul is depressive after having split up from his long-term partner, and has joined his sex-crazy student brother at their father's flat overlooking the Tour d'Eiffel.

The father is the Italian Mirko (Guy Marchard), who reads La Repubblica and was the husband of their mother (played by Marie-France Pisier), who has a fleeting bit part in this. Mirko does his best to console Paul and control Jonathan.

Paul seems suicidal: he films himself with a mouthful of pills, only to spit them out; he appears on his father's balcony on tiptoe, as if about to join the mobile phone he has sent, splintering, to the pavement below; and, on the only 'trip' he takes out, he jumps into the Seine but survives: just before Christmas this seems unlikely, but then his brother will later do the same and survive too.

Johnathan (casting himself as the narrator and looking directly at the camera like a Truffaut character) is a very different personality: while Paul spends his time in his dressing gown and underpants crying in the room and listening and singing along to Kim Wilde's 'Cambodia' (on an old 45 rmp), Jonathan is out in Paris, wandering around much like Truffaut's Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) in the streets of Paris. In a day Jonathan beds three women and returns to his father's in the early hours of the morning to find some rapport with Paul, looking through a child's picture book about a wolf and a rabbit, which they knew by heart as children.