Café de Flore (2011)
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Jacqueline is a young mother living in 1960s Paris with her disabled son Laurent. Abandoned by her husband, Jacqueline sacrifices everything to care for her son and vows to give Laurent a “normal” life full of happiness. Antoine, is a successful DJ in present day Montreal who seems to have it all: a thriving career, two beautiful daughters, partner Rose, with whom he is passionately in love. However, nothing is perfect and Antoine’s ex-wife Carole remains devastated by their recent separation.
3 connections found
View:
3 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Café de Flore to
Directed by French-Canadian Jean-Marc Vallee (“Cafe de Flore”), coming off a 2013 triumph with “Dallas Buyers Club,” another film about a sinner and a spiritual journey, “Wild” features one of the most fascinating American heroines in quite a while.
Yet Valle and his editor Martin Pensa are masters of the craft, with their work on the undervalued Café de Flore an example of their skill at its most masterful.
There’s no small amount of bravery in this artistic choice, although it’s second nature to Canada’s Vallée, who with films like Dallas Buyers Club, Café de Flore and C.R.A.Z.Y. has always favoured character over incident and the poetic over the literal.
Canadian Jean-Marc Vallée, known for C.R.A.Z.Y and Cafe de Flore got inspired by the extraordinary life of Ron Woodroof – a homophobic, heterosexual Texan, compulsive womanizer and drug enthusiast who, one day, wakes up in a hospital bed and learns that he has HIV and 30 days to live.
Previous Vallée films, all far tamer, include the modest, award-winning coming-of-age drama, the lush British historical epic The Young Victoria , and the problematic but ambitious trans-generational, cross-border love story Café de Flore begins in 1985 as Woodroof, a foul-mouthed Dallas, Texas layabout who occasionally works as an electrician, is first introduced at a dusty rodeo where he rides the animals and acts like one with trashy rodeo groupies.
The job finally went to Vallée, the French-Canadian director of the bright coming-of-age comedy C.R.A.Z.Y., the stately period piece The Young Victoria and, best of all, the swooningly romantic Café de Flore.
Vallée, whose previous credits include the melodrama Café de Flore and the historical romance The Young Victoria, keeps a tight hold on the movie's tone.
Vallée, whose last credit was the ambitious French language time-hopping drama "Café de Flore," directs this scenario with a straightforward approach that may not realize the full dramatic weight of the situation but generally sidesteps potential issues that arise with a heterosexual perspective that downplays its homosexual characters.
The Dallas Buyers Club is directed by Jean-Marc Vallee ( The Young Victoria , Café de Flore ) who gives Matthew McConaughey plenty of room to develop the complicated working-class character who is part scumbag and part whistle-blowing hero who dumps on the FDA approval system that is keeping proven treatments from AIDS patients.
He tilts towards the visual and sonic poetry of his earlier romance Café de Flore and away from the Oscar bait of Dallas Buyers Club and Wild.
Demolition was directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, a filmmaker who specializes in putting us inside the heads of his bewildered protagonists — Reese Witherspoon’s intrepid hiker in Wild, Vanessa Paradis’ harried single mother in Café de Flore.