A Festival rich and strange / That doth suffer a sea-change

les-garcons-sauvages
Wild Boys

L’Étrange Festival
6 – 17 September 2017
Paris, France
L’Étrange Festival website

Three films by French directors turned this year’s L’Étrange Festival into something even richer and stranger than usual.

Every year L’Étrange Festival delights us with oddest and weirdest productions from all over the world. What is quite unusual, though very heart-warming, is that the three films that stood out this year (at least in the eyes of your humble reviewer) were the work of French directors. Three films permeated with literature. Three treasure islands. Three voyages celebrating the mysteries of the sea, but in ways that could not be more dissimilar. Xavier Gens’ Cold Skin is a Hollywood-ish adaptation of a novel by Sanchez Piñol; Bertrand Mandico’s Wild Boys is a neo-feminist tale that gives free rein to the director’s wildest fantasies; and F.J. Ossang’s 9 Fingers is a 21st century reassertion of the surrealist manifesto.

Continue reading A Festival rich and strange / That doth suffer a sea-change