Welcome to the Friday Film Series for Fall 2009

The English Department, with the support of Dr. David Randall, continues its Friday Film series for the Fall semester in 1303 McCormick Human Services Center. The shows will begin at 7:30 p.m. and are free. The Fall series most of which have French sub-titles, is an electric, but often dramatic. They are recent most coming out in 2007. It is open to the public and people are encouraged to come and spend an enjoyable Friday evening.

Fall Film Schedule

Friday, September 18th: Mr. Foe (2007)

In this rather dark comedy "Hallam Foe (Bell) is a troubled young man whose knack for voyeurism paradoxically reveals his darkest fears, and his most peculiar desires. A 17-year-old misfit, Hallam spends lonely days spying on others at his father's (Ciar Hinds) estate in the Scottish Highlands. Haunted by his mother's sudden death, he begins to suspect that his beautiful step mother (Claire Forlani) may have had a played a hand in it. Confusing matters even more for Hallam, he finds himself attracted and repelled by her in equal measure.

When the tension that has been brewing between the two erupts, Hallam runs away. Out of money and out of friends, he crashes down into reality in Edinburgh. Adept at fading into the background and peering in on the lives of others to escape his own every day life, he continues what he learned at home to the city. He soon becomes obsessed with Kate (Sophia Myles), who bears an uncanny resemblance to his mother. When his world collides with Kate's and the reality of life back home, he is faced with betraying the memory of the mother he longs for or using his one last chance to grow up.

Directed and co-written by David Mackenzie ("Young Adam"), "Mister Foe" stars Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles ("Tristan + Isolde," "Thunderbirds"), Claire Forlani ("Meet Joe Black," "CSI: NY") and Ciar Hinds ("There Will Be Blood," upcoming "Stop Loss"). "Mister Foe" is produced by Gillian Berrie, co-written by Ed Whitmore, based on the novel "Hallam Foe" by Peter Jinks, and executive produced by Matthew Justice. The film was an Official Selection at the Berlin Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival" (http://misterfoemovie.com/). It is the one film of the semester that does not have subtitles.

Friday, October 9th: Tell No One (2006)

"This French adaptation of Harlan Coben’s 2001 best seller is the kind of conspiracy-minded mystery almost no one seems capable of creating anymore. The story, which involves murder and depravity in high places, is so elaborately twisty that about halfway through the movie you stop trying to figure it out and let its polluted waters wash over you, trusting that the denouement will reveal all. It does and it doesn’t. When the truth spills out, and ugly revelations pile onto one another in an extended final confession, the puzzle pieces fit more snugly than those of “The Big Sleep,” the granddaddy of impenetrable noirs. But one of the pleasures of both films is surrendering to a vision of corruption and evil that resists tidy explanations.The protagonist, Alex Beck (François Cluzet), is a kindhearted pediatrician in Paris who goes out of his way to help the poor in the clinic where he works. He is also a spiritual cousin of Scottie Ferguson from “Vertigo” in his obsession with a woman who may or may not be dead" (http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/movies/02tell.html). With French subtitles, it is a film which will engage you because of the amazing characters and the your need to know what finally happens. Don't miss it!

Friday, October 23rd: The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (2007)

Based on the real-life events of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the rakish editor of Elle magazine's French edition, who awoke at age 43 from stroke-induced coma to find himself a rare victim of "locked-in syndrome," an affliction that leaves the mind intact but the body almost completely paralyzed, this movie is an amazing look at how he begins to manage such a complete upheaval of his life. The only movement Bauby could make was to flicker his left eyelid. Yet with the assistance of an ingenious alphabet system devised by his physical therapist, he was able to write the book that gives the movie its intriguing title, and which writer Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) has turned into a screenplay that is by turns deeply affecting and wryly amusing.

The movie is directed by the artist and occasional filmmaker Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), who specializes in stories of unique individuals and who takes an abstract painter's approach to visuals. Working with lensman Janusz Kaminski, Schnabel challenges his audience by presenting the first 40 minutes of the movie mainly from the bewildered, blurred and terrified point of view of Bauby, who is played by French actor Mathieu Amalric with miraculous empathy (Peter Howell of the Toronto Star). Again with French subtitles, the film is an amazing look at how one overcomes unbelievable odds after a completely debilitating event.