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Comme ci, comme ça

FLANDRES: Bruno Dumon returns to the uncommunicative, working-class lowlands.

So, middle-class dramedies — dressed up with harmless sexual confusion — are numerous. Thierry Klifa’s LE HÉROS DE LA FAMILLE|FAMILY HERO (2006; July 15 at 5:15 pm and July 26 at 8 pm) centers on a wacky family’s efforts to save a bankrupt tranny cabaret; Rémi Bezançon’s MA VIE EN L’AIR|LOVE IS IN THE AIR (2005; July 14 at 4 pm and July 19 at 4:10 pm) dallies on the love life of an aviophobic pilot evaluator; Malik Chabane’s VOISINS VOISINES|NEIGHBORS (2005; July 19 at 6:15 pm and July 22 at 5:30 pm) focuses on a rapper bringing life and love to a snobby apartment complex. The rhythms throughout rarely vary from the distinctly French balance between Nora Ephron pandering and art-film restraint — an equilibrium better than what we ordinarily get from Burbank, but by now a tiresome half-measure that demonstrates only a modicum more audience respect. From a different school, Guillaume Nicloux’s LE CONCILE DE PIERRE|THE STONE COUNCIL (2006; July 28 at 6 pm and July 29 at 11 am) is a French-fried neo-gothic-conspiracy-thriller pulp-o-matic, roping in Siberian folklore, murderous international conspiracy, contemporary politics, the once-every-30-years-God-knows-why appearance of a miracle child, and a sniffly Monica Bellucci in a bob. Alternately nutty and sludgy, the film otherwise strives only to be a Sixth Sense/Da Vinci Code wave rider.

• Benoit Jacquot
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• Christophe Honore
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• Monica Bellucci
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Co-presented by the Boston Jewish Film Festival, Christophe Malavoy’s ZONE LIBRE|FREE LAND (2007; July 26 at 2 pm and July 29 at 1 pm) likewise treads on familiar ground — a Nazi-pursued family taking refuge in a Free France barn — but traffics too often in pedestrian dialogue and unimaginative set pieces. (Still, as the drunken slob giving the clan shelter, Jean-Paul Roussillon is delightfully unclichéd and generous.) The smaller, indie-style works are better, but they’re often gummed up with their own sclerotic preconceptions, ideas inherited with little insight from Bresson and Téchiné. Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s AVRIL|APRIL (2006; July 15 at 11:15 am and July 26 at 4 pm) is even centered, somewhat anachronistically, on enclosed Carmelite nuns, who are filmed with a Bressonian disdain for flow and spontaneity. One nun (Sophie Quinton) departs from her order to find her also-orphaned twin brother, who’s a gay research scientist on vacation at the beach. Before you know it, this shy devotionalist is swimming nude and making body paintings on the convent wall — and then Hustache-Mathieu favors us with one of the dreariest and most reckless melodramatic endings of the new century. Jean-Pascal Hattu’s 7 ANS|7 YEARS (2006; July 13 at 6 pm and July 15 at 3:30 pm) is even more anemic; the joyless sexual triangle involving a convict, his wife, and a prison warden exists in a more or less enervating bubble. PAS DOUCE|PARTING SHOT (2006; July 20 at 5:10 pm and July 28 at 1 pm), Jeanne Waltz’s strenuous and unrevealing film about suicide and depression, at least has the toothy, sylphic presence of Isild Le Besco to carry it. Le Besco may be one of the most distinctive faces in modern film — not pretty, but hypnotizing in its effulgent details. Here she’s a careless small-town nurse (and amateur sharpshooter) whose gruff manner is her way of covering up an overwhelming suicidal angst. When she does finally jam the gun barrel under her chin in the woods, she’s interrupted by local teens, and she impulsively (and anonymously) shoots one — only to return to work and have to care for the brat in her ward. The story hardly moves from there, however, and for all of her physical vividness, Le Besco is not quite the actress to make the psychological stew boil.

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