DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
At the end of the 18th century, a boy wandered out of the woods in the south of France who had apparently grown up entirely alone in the wild. He became a singular case study in how humans socialize and acquire language. Of course, themes of growing up and fitting into the world always played a major role in many of the films of Francois Truffaut, so for the director to make a film based on the Wild Boy of Aveyron seemed a natural choice. In the film, also set in the 18th Century, Truffaut himself takes on the role of a doctor who takes responsibility for caring for, teaching, and studying a 12-year-old boy found living in the wild. It was a rare lead performance for Truffaut, who often slipped into uncredited bit parts and cameos in his movies, but it’s a performance that obviously had a great deal of personal resonance for the director.
Whether or not his presence in the role of the doctor and teacher can be read as symbolic of the older, wiser Truffaut attempting to shepherd his own metaphorical “wild child” into polite society is debatable, but not far-fetched considering how often he used film to work through the difficulties of his own tumultuous youth. More clear, though, are the director’s statements about the state of nature and that of polite society not being as far apart as one might think. The former has its nobilities, and the latter its savageries, though assimilating from one to the other is never easy. The basic themes here will be familiar to anyone whose seen a Tarzan movie or two, but Truffaut, characteristically, handles them with an uncommon beauty and grace.
View the trailer.
A brand new 35mm print opens today for one week only at E Street.
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One of the most talked about movies from France this year, I’ve Loved You So Long stars Kristen Scott Thomas as a woman released from prison following a fifteen year term. Her crime is danced around in the plot, but involved a death in which her sister, who she’s now come to live with following her release, was also implicated. It’s a recipe for high and supremely dysfunctional familial tension that tells its story as much with what its characters aren’t willing to say to one another, the spaces between words and the uncomfortable looks of distrust. One of the highlights of last month’s European Film Showcase at the AFI is back for a proper theatrical run.
