Tag: france

Furies: Season one

  By

★★★½
“Hell hath no Furies…”

Not to be mixed up with Furie, The Furies or even Furies – the last of which also showed up on Netflix recently. Confusion seems almost inevitable (and I’m not helping, by largely recycling the tagline for Furie). However, those three are all films – two Vietnamese, one Australian – while this is an eight episode TV series from France. It begins with Lyna Guerrab (El Arabi) living a fairly idyllic, and certainly well-heeled life, with no bigger issue than whether or not to marry her cop boyfriend Elie (Nadeau). Things get upended in no uncertain fashion, when her accountant father is assassinated. Turns out, he kept the books for certain criminal organizations, and someone wanted him very dead.

Lyna vows to find whoever was responsible for her father’s demise, and make them responsible. That opens up a whole can of worms, as she has to venture into the domain of the Parisian criminal underworld, which is far more expansive and influential than expected. To a degree, it feels like the system shown in the John Wick franchise, with six crime families, working in different areas, e.g. prostitution, robbery, etc. who govern things and make sure nobody does anything that would upset their highly lucrative apple-cart. As their collective enforcer is a woman, Selma (Fois), known as the Fury, a hereditary position, passed down the matriarchal line, and she has the skills to keep everyone else in line.

Or does she? Because as Lyna enters the game, it becomes apparent that someone is out to disturb the balance of the system. Coming under the Fury’s patronage, as a possible successor, may not be enough to save her from the war which is becoming increasingly inevitable. As well as John Wick, there are quite a few elements here which feel inspired by Luc Besson in one way or another: the world-weary assassin who takes on a feisty young apprentice, for example, could be straight out of Leon. The fight scenes are well-crafted, slick and hard-hitting: I vaguely recall action director Jude Poyer as part of the Eastern Heroes crew in London, back in the nineties, so nice to see him kicking professional ass.

It does sometimes feel too over-stuffed, trying to juggle too many threads and characters. The script solution to any problem seems to be, throw in another subplot. The makers also deserve a demerit for ending on a horrendous cliffhanger. The streaming service have made no announcement regarding a second series: the show seems to have done reasonably well, but Netflix gonna Netflix. If that doesn’t happen, you should whack off a full star, since the way it ends is definitely not satisfying. But there does remain a good deal here to admire. I particularly liked the performance of Foïs, who brings a lot of nuance to a character that initially seems one-dimensional. The extended duration allows her to develop, though all told, it might have been better as a two-hour self-contained Besson flick.

Creators: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Jean-Yves Arnaud, Yoann Legave
Star: Lina El Arabi, Marina Foïs, Mathieu Kassovitz, Jeremy Nadeau

Blondie Maxwell Never Loses

  By

★★★
“Miss-nority report”

This French film takes place a little way into the future, though society has undergone radical changes. Law enforcement is now privatized, with investigations contracted out to private investigators, who have to balance their costs in order to turn a profit on the cases they accept. One such PI is Blondie Maxwell (Langlart) – and to get the obvious out of the way first, no, she is not blonde It’s mentioned once, but never explained. She is currently on the trail of the terrorist Boloch, who has been mounting a campaign against Chronos Industry, the all-encompassing tech company, which is invested in almost every area of everyday life. The reward would go a long way to solving her perilous financial situation.

She gets a case to investigate the murder of an escort. It seems an open-and-shut case with the evidence squarely pointing at a journalist. However, something doesn’t sit right with Blondie, and the more she picks at the crime, the more it seems a set-up job. Even her getting the case seems suspicious, since authorities know she doesn’t have the resources to investigate it properly. The journalist claims the victim was actually his source, who was going to blow the lid of Chronos, not least a “dark” area of their network where murder for hire is bought and sold. Is he telling the truth, and what does this have to do with Boloch and his campaign?

As the tag-line above implies, this bears a significant resemblance to Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, with its tale of law and order run by technology. which someone on the inside gradually comes to realize isn’t as idyllic as it seems. This is rather less nuanced. At one point, a colleague of Blondie says, “Our job is to make the world safer. If that means sacrificing a little liberty, it works for me. It works for us all. It’s a choice we make as a society.” However, it’s clear Ivanowich’s sympathies are more aligned with Benjamin Franklin. This is very much a pre-liberty screed, though credit for being at least somewhat ahead of the curve with its concerns about artificial intelligence, an issue of increasing scrutiny in 2023.

Unlike Minority Report, it doesn’t have the budget to create a fully-fledged future society. This one looks like ours in almost every way, just with a few added bits of gadgetry, such as displays embedded into contact lenses. Maxwell’s main trait is her dogged determination to find out the truth, regardless of the personal cost, and she makes for an admirable heroine. As played by Langlart, she’s down to earth, though there were points where it seemed like the script had all but forgotten about Blondie. Either Ivanowich fell too much in love with the setting. or the story might have benefited from fewer characters and a sharper focus. Definitely not terrible though, and a good example of what can be done with imagination instead of budget.

Dir: Julien Ivanowich
Star: Léonie Langlart, Stéphane Dufourcq, Vincent Terrier, Boris de la Higuera

Meander

  By

★★½
“Tunnels of love.”

I guess, if you want to watch a woman crawling along a series of ducts for an hour and a half, this is the film for you. I’m afraid it’s just not a particular fetish I share, so the appeal of this is largely lost to me. Lisa (Weiss) lost her daughter in a tragic accident and has been plagued by guilt ever since. She wants to end it all, and to that end, is lying in the middle of the road, when she is convinced to accept a lift from passing drive, Adam (Franzén). Except, he turns out to be a roaming serial killer, who knocks her out. This is where it gets weird, since she recovers consciousness to find herself in a twisty little maze of passages, all alike.

They’re not quite all alike, to be honest. For they contain a series of traps, which have the potential to crush, burn or simply dissolve Lisa, as she makes her way through them, towards an uncertain resolution. She also encounters Adam, who appears to have been in the maze for even longer, and is no less of a threat than he was in the outside world. All this is, from a technical point of view, quite well handled. Indeed, considering the general lack of content, it is better than it might sound. However, the further into it I went, the more I had an increasing feeling that the story was not going to be able to stick the landing,

That certainly proves the case, with an abrupt resolution that is not much less contrived than “It was all a dream.” Oh, I guess it’s kinda clear what Turi is going for in general, though the specifics are vague, and some elements (like the apparent alien abduction elements) don’t mesh well with the intent. Let’s just say, it’s never a good sign when you Google the film, and the first suggestion in the “People also ask” section is, “What is Meander movie all about?” It’s fairly clear that Turi is using the genre as a metaphor for guilt; he has just buried the details too deeply for them to be of any use to the average viewer. 

In one interview, the director said, “There are clues in the movie, some of them so well hidden that I think no one will ever find them.” This begs the question: what is the freaking point, beyond allowing him to feel smug? It does seem part of a recent trend by horror film-makers to use the genre as a tool to address psychological or social issues. This is fine, until it interferes with and becomes more important than the story itself. When the message becomes the medium, you’ve crossed a line and it’s difficult to recover thereafter. Until the very end, I was hoping Turi was going to be able to pull back. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and you’re left with a film where only the last five minutes truly matter.

Dir: Mathieu Turi
Star: Gaia Weiss, Peter Franzén, Romane Libert, Frédéric Franchitti

Altitudes

  By

★★★
“Climb every mountain…”

I was really surprised to discover that this French film is actually made for television. It has a certain gravitas and thoughtfulness to it, that you rarely find in a genre which is (often rightfully) derided as being formulaic and cliched. This doesn’t escape those criticisms entirely – in particular, there’s a “Disease of the Week” subplot, which does feel as it it might have strayed in from Lifetime or Hallmark. However, even there, it feels handled in a relatively natural manner, rather than being shoehorned in there to elicit sympathy from the viewer. It definitely looks better than most TVMs out of Hollywood. Whether this is down to Félix von Muralt’s cinematography, or simply the stunning Alpine landscapes, is open to debate.

It begins at a funeral. Isabelle Dormann (Borotra) has returned following fifteen years away, after the death of her father, a former mountaineer, who then ran a lodge high in the Alps. This allows her to reconnect with her friend, Kenza (Krey), a world-class climber herself, but also more awkwardly, with Antoine (Stévenin), a man with whom she had a relationship which helped precipitate Isabelle’s sudden departure from the mountains. She decides to honour her father by climbing a new route up Les Roches Brunes, the nearby mountain after which the lodge was called. At 4,357 metres high, it’s the tallest peak in the area, and Isabelle always talked with her father about pioneering a new route up it, to be named for the family.

She and Kenza decide to honour her late father by doing just that. However, it turns out Isabelle is suffering from a neurodegenerative condition, which is slowly but inevitably killing her, making it a race against time before her physical abilities just aren’t there. It seems this is a fight she has lost, as practice sessions don’t go well. Yet after Kenza calls off the attempt, Isabelle decides to strike out on her own for a solo ascent. Kenza and Antoine follow, hoping to save her from herself.

I like films about climbing, when they concentrate on the climbing. Yet, it seems inevitable to tack on personal drama of one kind or another. It’s not enough simply to have one person taking on nature. Too often, they need to have a dead fiance or similar motivation, and the results often tend to resemble bad soap-opera. That’s definitely the case here, with the whole Isabelle-Antoine relationship dramatically overcooked, and muddying the water. The same goes for Isabelle’s condition: she could simply have been not experienced enough to take on the climb. However, when the movie sets such formulaic conceits aside and concentrates on the almost primeval struggle, it’s much more effective. I can’t even dock it significantly for Antoine effectively white-knighting things, since the ending is bittersweet enough to justify it. I think it’s one which will stick in my mind, for longer than it felt it would at the time. 

Dir: Pierre-Antoine Hiroz
Star: Claire Borotra, Déborah Krey, Sagamore Stévenin, Isabelle Caillat
a.k.a. The Climb

Wingwomen

  By

★★
“A wing and not much prayer.”

Netflix describes this as “Charlie’s Angels meets Lupin, with a dash of Killing Eve.” Um. About that… While I haven’t seen Lupin, I can confidently state any similarity to the others is tangential at best. For example, the only thing this really has in connection with Charlie’s Angels, is that there’s three of them. But here, it’s more like 2.25, since the third member is largely useless. It’s almost entirely the story of Carole (Laurent) and Alex (Exarchopoulos), two thieves who work for the enigmatic Marraine (Adjani). But Carole has discovered she’s pregnant and wants out of the business. Marraine is not happy, but agrees, providing Carole does that hoariest of film clichés: One Last Job.

This involves stealing a piece of art from a church, and they ordered to bring a getaway driver on board. She is Sam (Bresch), and is entirely pointless. Carole does the actual thieving, and Alex is a crack shot. But Sam? I can only presume she’s there to fulfill some kind of diversity quota. Because she has no talent past driving, and at no point in the movie subsequently is a quick getaway required. The same goes for other elements. There’s a John Wick-like thread where Alex’s bunny is killed. But the film forgets all about it for an hour, before suddenly remembering. Only to dispose of it in a scene, that seems to exist more so Carole and Sam can do a spot of flamenco.

Laurent has been here before, albeit a while ago. Back in 2011, we reviewed Requiem pour une Tueuse, in which she played an assassin who goes on… [all together!] ONE LAST MISSION! So it’s ironic to see her now directing a movie based around the same trope. It is very focused on the Alex/Carole dynamic, and that might be where the Killing Eve comparisons come from. But there’s nothing remotely adversarial about things here. It is nicely handled, the pair possessing the easy dynamic that only results from long familiarity and comfort with each other. However, this arguably sits closer to Thelma & Louise than anything, and certainly is more intense than you’d find on the male side of the genre. 

To be honest, Laurent seems to prefer this aspect to the action. For instance, she cuts from the meat of a fight between Alex and an assassin, to (presumably!) his tarpaulin wrapped corpse being dropped into the ocean. The stuff which is present, is not especially memorable. Even the art heist turns into more of a comedy of errors, as the target has become the location of a movie shoot. While there are some cool ideas – the stunningly well-disguised hideout in the middle of a forest being one – this feels like a relationship drama disguised as an action movie. It’s especially so at the end, when it almost topples over into hysteria. Give me an Alex solo film instead, and I would probably have been more interested and entertained.

Dir: Mélanie Laurent
Star: Mélanie Laurent, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Manon Bresch, Isabelle Adjani
a.k.a. Voleuses

Vesper

  By

★★★½
“Battle Angel Nausicaa”

As the above suggests, I was getting a strong manga influence, in particular from the works of Hayao Miyazaki: it feels like the script could have been something he’d have written on a gloomy Wednesday in January. Feisty teenage heroine? Check? Ecological message? Check. For this takes place after some kind of change in the world, which has left the bulk of the population clinging on to existence by their grubby fingernails, in a world now owned by bizarre flora. Vesper (Chapman) is one such, tending to her paralyzed father (Brake) whose consciousness has been transferred into a drone. She trades with her uncle, Jonas (Marsan), swapping blood for the seeds they need to survive.

Yet there’s also elements of Battle Angel Alita, with a sharp delineation between the haves and the have-nots. The latter live privileged lives in Citadels, served by artificial lifeforms called “jugs”, and as suppliers of the seeds, hold everyone else in their control. One day, a Citadel craft crashes near Vesper’s home, and she rescues Camelia (McEwen) from the wreckage. She promises to take Vesper and her father back to her home. Yet it eventually becomes clear that Camelia is not being 100% honest about her own situation either. On the other hand, she is potentially the key to liberating everyone from under the thumb of the Citadels, and ending their monopoly on the resources necessary for survival. It’s not something the rulers will give up easily, however.

This is rather ponderous in its progress, running close to two hours, and is clearly content to take its time getting to any of its points. If you’re willing to accept that, there’s a lot to appreciate here, not least some great visual style and world-building. This has to be one of the most fully convincing post-apocalyptic landscapes I’ve seen, a remarkable achievement considering its budget was a mere five million Euros. Vesper is a heroine right out of the Nausicaa playbook: someone who is smart and brave, rather than physically strong, devoted to her family, and who has an inherent affinity for the natural world. Her mother left the family, under circumstances best described as murky, and Camelia is a surrogate, to some extent.

It does feel as if the makers fell in love with their creation a little more than I did, and wanted to wallow in the imagination, at the expense of developing the plot. No-one seems in a particular hurry here, and for every scene which moves the story forward, there’s another that seems to exist purely as a visual showcase. I think it might work better at 90 minutes than 120 – or alternatively, expanded beyond the confines of a feature film. This is the kind of thing I could certainly imagine HBO developing into a series. The ending came close to toppling into “Eh?” territory, before a final shot where it made sense, and wrapped things up on easily the most optimistic note we’d heard. Miyazaki would likely approve.

Dir: Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper
Star: Raffiella Chapman, Rosy McEwen, Eddie Marsan, Richard Brake

Home-Sitters

  By

★★★
“Home not-so-sweet home”

June Williamson (Guillot) is an out-of-work actress, who just broke up with her boyfriend, Oliver (Vernet), and is behind on the rent to her creepy landlord. An unexpected lifeline arrives in the shape of a very well paid gig, house-sitting a large house, deep in the countryside. Things get annoying when Oliver and his asshole pal Marcel (Thevenoud) show up. They get worse when Oliver admits they had an accident on the way, and there’s a body in the car boot. A stare of “terrible” is reached when the body vanishes. And we reach peak awful, when the house comes under siege from Wolfströeme (Bary) and his heavily-armed gang of mercy, who are looking for…

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? June doesn’t have a clue, yet Wolfströeme is very insistent she does. Fortunately, the house has some defensive systems, which help delay the inevitable. There’s also an underground section, with a firmly locked gate, which may be keeping everyone out… or keeping something in. It’s quite a lot for the film to handle in just 90 minutes, and doesn’t all get the exposition needed to work. To be fair though, it’s mostly a delivery system for the action, and there’s no shortage of this, in the second half at least. June leads the way here: Oliver is fairly useless (both as a boyfriend and as a fighter), and all you need to know about Marcel is, he’s wearing a T-shirt depicting Donald Trump as Rambo.

I do have to wonder why she is quite as competent as she appears. Are unemployed French actresses usually able to wield automatic weapons effectively, and go toe-to-toe with professional soldiers? I kept expecting an explanation for her skills to be forthcoming. Never showed up. Taking this as read though, it’s not badly-staged, without the frenetic editing style which I hate. Truth be told, there were times when this could perhaps have used quicker editing – probably the first time I’ve ever said that! – in order to punch up the impact and heighten the pace. There is also some underwhelming CGI blood that, for example, flies through the air without landing on anything. I’d be inclined not to have bothered with it at all.

I did like the ending, which has a glorious sense of the makers deciding they might as well go big or go home. It might not work for everyone, to put it mildly. Yet it did for me, in a way that’s hard to describe. The end credits then thank the likes of John Carpenter, John McTiernan and Tsui Hark, which made me wonder if the director had been rifling through my DVD collection. They finish by acknowledging the owner of the Chateau de Laye, where this was filmed, and justifiably so, as it’s almost an additional character. As an indie effort, the heart here is always apparent; for me, that goes a good way towards balancing the less effective elements.

Dir: Chris Rakotomamonjy
Star: Chloé Guillot, Francis Vernet, Boris Thevenoud, Bary
The film is now available to view on Tubi – depending on your region, perhaps!

Joan of Arc (2019)

  By

★★★½
“Joan the Younger”

I liked this considerably better than its predecessor. Part of that was, perhaps, knowing what to expect going in: a minimalist retelling, with occasional musical numbers. Except, this proved rather more than minimalist (though still very restrained), and there was hardly any singing at all. Curse you, Dumont, for confounding my expectations. It begins, much as Jeanette ended: with a lot of standing around in sand-dunes, chatting. However, the cast this time cannot be counted on the fingers of one hand, and there aren’t any staggeringly bad performances to take you out of the movie. You still don’t get any great battles. Instead, these are basically represented by team dressage, two groups of horses and riders, swirling around near each other.

But, you know what? It works, far better than you might expect. Similarly, the capture of Joan (Prudhomme) is simply portrayed by her galloping off on her horse, then cutting to her horse trotting on without a rider. Again, it gets the point over, with an elegant simplicity, befitting the understated nature here. Most of this second part is concerned with her trial for heresy, and the church’s efforts to manipulate proceedings so they could let the secular authorities do their dirty work. Yet Joan’s refusal to co-operate proves increasingly problematic to this “show trial” end. There’s a great scene where she’s being lectured by one of the prosecuting clerics, and her silence triggers increasing frustration in her interrogator.

The way Prudhomme is a far younger actress than typical also merits discussion. She was only 10 when she made this, barely half the age of Joan at her death. This certainly enhances the elements of childlike innocence throughout, and it’s hard not to feel for the little girl. Yet her spiritual backbone is made of steel, and leaves her accusers in a no-win situation. I liked the little inserts where “common people” such as her guards would discuss the topic of the trial, which again brings some much-needed humanity to proceedings. The star of the second half though, is the amazing setting of Amiens Cathedral where the trial takes place. It looks stunning, and Dumont wisely decides not to pack it with people, a decision which allows its grandeur to shine.

There’s definitely a better sense of the sacred and divine here, or at least it is generated with a higher degree of effectiveness. That seems to have been the overall focus of these two movies, albeit successful only intermittently. I did appreciate the effort to try and do something different with the concept, even if – to put it mildly! – I would not have made all of the same artistic decisions. The results unquestionably fall into the “something different” category. After being distinctly underwhelmed by the first half of the story, I felt this was a significant improvement, though it’s not a spiritual journey I think I will take again, any time soon.

Dir: Bruno Dumont
Star: Lise Leplat Prudhomme, Jean-François Causeret, Daniel Dienne, Fabien Fenet
a.k.a. Jeanne

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc

  By

★★½
“Joan of Arc: The Musical”

I initially intended to review this and its sequel, Jeanme, by Dumont as one entity, for a couple of reasons. They really only work as a single item. This confused the hell out me, because the second film turned up on a streaming service by itself. Five minutes in, I was so confused, I started searching the Internet, only to find I had, in effect, joined a movie already two hours in progress. Also, I suspected I would be hard-pushed to deliver 500 words on each of these. I’m not saying they’re slow-paced, but you’d overtake them riding a glacier. The first 90 minutes is basically Jeannete (Prudhomme when young, Voisin when older) standing around sand-dunes, looking after her sheep, with the occasional religious debate or vision. Three years pass here, in the blink of a caption.

Yet, here we are, since there are still topics to discuss. For example, I forgot to mention: it’s a musical. Yep, full-on songs and everything. Though not exactly contemporary to the 15th century. There’s rap. There’s rock. There’s a head-banging pair of nuns, who often speak their lines together, like a clerical version of the Mothra Twins. Now, I guess this kind of thing can work. Hamilton was very popular, though let the record show, I couldn’t sit through it. This is… Well, I can’t say it wasn’t interesting to watch. Though the overlap between “interesting to watch” and “never want to see again” has rarely been so resoundingly demonstrated. It’s apparently an adaptation of a play, The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, written in 1910. No clue if that had songs or not.

I’m really not sure what the intent here was. From what I’ve read, it seems to have been trying to recapture the spirit of naivety found in medieval passion plays, using non-professional actors. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t: the scenes featuring rapper Durand Lassois as Jeanne’s uncle are excruciating. Yet there are moments where, Voisin in particular, captures the serious intensity necessary. Do they justify the endeavour as a whole? I’m far less certain. Though matters were not helped by the distribution company going with white, unaliased subtitles that are often entirely illegible, given the variety of white backgrounds: sand, nuns’ habits, sheep, etc. Perhaps that simply was intended to add to the mystery of it all.

Even as an eight-year-old, this Jeanne seems deeply concerned about the Hundred Years’ War against England, which has been going on for far longer than she has been alive. But when three saints (at least somewhat restrained in their dance moves) show up, she doesn’t exactly leap into action. That’s when we get the three year caption mentioned above, and even further visions have her reluctant to leave her family. In the end, she bids them farewell, makes arrangements for her sheep, and hops on a horse to head off with her uncle in the direction of Orleans, and the second movie. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back. Though I didn’t exactly have other plans…

Dir: Bruno Dumont
Star: Lise Leplat Prudhomme, Jeanne Voisin

The Real Joan of Arc

  By

★★★
“Live to fight another day?”

Pun mot intended, but the reality is, we know very little for sure about Joan of Arc. Not even what she looked like in detail, for there are no surviving portraits of her, dating from when she was alive. The facts about her life are equally as uncertain, because everything about Joan was subject to spin, depending on who was talking, when they were saying it, and what agenda they sought to achieve. Because everybody involved had an agenda of one kind or another: either elevating Joan up to the level of literal sainthood (finally achieved in 1920, almost half a millennium after her death), or tearing her down, as a tool of the Devil. Even basic facts – was Joan a shepherd when she was young? – are uncertain, with contradictory testimony. 

It’s really in that light you need to view all this documentary shows. Indeed it largely opens by admitting to the above. This opens the door to questioning the standard narrative, in which Joan is a humble farm-girl, who heard divine voices and was inspired to lead France to fight back against the English invaders. However, I was also left with as much doubt about the alternative suggestions the film provides, because the evidence for them is little if any less sketchy. These theories are certainly interesting – and from a secular viewpoint, elements are perhaps no less plausible than the “voices of God” explanation. On other hand, it feels as if they raise as many questions as they answer. 

The first is the suggestion that Joan was actually of noble birth, perhaps an illegitimate child. This could explain things like her reported ability to ride and wield a lance, and speak “proper” French, rather than the coarse dialect of her village. She was, in effect, created for the specific purpose of becoming a figurehead. It’s an intriguing idea – though given events unfolded over a period of several years after she came to public attention, whoever was responsible clearly had to be playing a remarkably long game. It is, though, small beer beside the theory which occupies the second half: Joan was not burned at the stake, but survived, resurfacing a few years later as Jeanne des Armoises, getting married and living a whole second life.

Yeah, big if true. The evidence for this begins with alleged oddities around her death. Joan’s head being covered on her way to the stake; an unusually high pyre; hundreds of English soldiers keeping the locals at bay. Yet there were a lot of people who were present, and subsequently provided, albeit years later, sworn testimony as to her fate. It would have been a remarkable cover-up, to put it mildly. I’m more convinced by the second element: someone, representing herself as Joan, did resurface a few years later, even getting as far as the royal court and meeting Charles VII of France. However, most accounts agree that de Armoises ended up admitting to the fraud, being unable to tell the King information Joan would have known.

I still enjoyed watching this, and the intellectual exercise it provided. It’s always good to keep an open mind about history, and contemplate alternative scenarios, whether they pan out or not. Though some of the recreations leave a little to be desired, this is a decent, well-assembled piece, with good “talking heads”. It did give me pause for thought, and no documentary which does so can be considered a failure. 

Dir: Martin Meissonnier
Star: Marcel Gay, Francoise Michaud Frejaville, Colette Beaune, Philippe Contanime
a.k.a. Vraie Jeanne, fausse Jeanne