Director
Mathias Malzieu
Cast
Romane Bohringer, Rossy De Palma, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Tchéky Karyo, Marilyn Lima Lima
Producer
Sébastien Delloye, Grégoire Melin
Cinematographer
Virginie Saint-Martin
Editor
Hague Thibault
contact
KINOLOGY
After the August 27 screening, Join us at 9:00pm for a live Q&A with Director Mathias Malzieu
Gaspard might live in the City of Lights, but little of it brightens his gloomy soul. He’s a cabaret singer in his family’s dingy little Parisian nightclub, but its gaudy colours and shabby approximation of glamour cannot dispel his perennial sense of disappointment, nor his heartbreak and subsequent certainty that love is an impossibility. Perhaps, or maybe it’s as unlikely as coming across an unconscious mermaid one night, beached on a dimly lit quay of the Seine. He takes her to the hospital, but that proves… unsuccessful. The second option is the bathtub in his little apartment, where he tends to the wound he spots on her in. The next morning, Lula, as she calls herself, is awake – and surprised that her thoughtful rescuer is still alive.
France’s Mathias Malzieu is a man of many talents, one music fans will know from through the longstanding, bespoke art-rock band Dionysos, for which he’s the singer, and avid readers will know from his concurrent career as a novelist. Among his books is La Mécanique du cœur, which became the Luc Besson-produced animated feature JACK ET LA MÉCANIQUE DU CŒUR (JACK AND THE CUCKOO-CLOCK HEART, in English), co-directed by Malzieu and presented at Fantasia 2014. Now Malzieu tries his hand at live action, and his hand proves graceful and sure. His film again bears that eminently French blend of magic realism, shameless sentimentality, and a self-aware sense of stylized theatricality, one we’ve come to know and love through vintage French pop-music videos and of course the oeuvre of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. UNE SIRÈNE À PARIS (in English, A MERMAID IN PARIS) reels in a net full of wondrous fantasy, poignant melodrama, frantic farce, and robust romanticism – surely a song whose allure you won’t be able to resist. – Rupert Bottenberg
Showings
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