Small Dogs.
March 13th, 2010Obviously the first thing my girlfriend and I did in Paris after checking in was to go to Mamie Gateux for lunch. This was not exactly what I was supposed to do but it is an impossibility even to imagine doing anything else.
A couple of years ago we lived here and did up a flat for a friend and Mamie was the nearest cake shop we could find. It was also easily the best. Half French, half Japanese it is a tiny bit kitsch and I’ll admit that some of the charm lies in a cutesy evocation of a Paris that has passed. However most of the attraction is just the sheer deliciousness of the cake. And nine types of tea.
Once when we were here before there were a pair of japanese girls sat at a table by the window. They didn’t have much to say to each other but one had a her handbag open on her lap and perched inside it was an apricot coloured poodle whose beady black eyes clearly indicated that he was the brains of the group. Watching them sip tea in silence it was hard not to imagine that the handbag concealed levers and dog was using them to control his owner’s movements. Paris is full of little dogs but the thing about little dogs is that they never know they are little. To them, they are just dogs and therefore the most important thing in the street.
I’m not actually in Paris to sample the cake and assess the puppies, I’m here, as promised, for Ecu, the European International Film Festival. I got the chance of a free trip so I jumped at it, even though I have to admit to some confusion about the festival. Living in London it’s not something that has really registered on my filmmaking radar, despite being in its fifth year. Nor could I understand why it was called Ecu. After a night here I’m pleased to say that things are starting to make more sense.
What was always clear was the festival’s commitment to independent filmmaking. Glancing at the website before I came I didn’t recognise many names but I did see that they’ve selected Thomas Browne’s – how shall I put this – difficult film – Spunkbubble, which is, if I’m honest, the most obscene thing I’ve not been an active participant in. I’m interested to see it playing in a cinema, not least because I watched it previously on my laptop, in the dark, with headphones – a disturbing experience as the soundtrack seemed to have been mixed to be directly behind me.
This championing of the fiercely independent voice was clear in tonight’s opening programme which included Konvex-T a darkly realised and distressingly beautiful Swedish film about a man who finds a massive boil on his buttock. Quite how a scene in which a woman in rubber gloves gouges something misshapen and living from his arse with a fork can be beautiful and moving I’ve no idea but Johan Lundh has managed it and if he’s at the festival I will hopefully be able to track him down and ask him how and why.
Other highlights so far include the sexiest birthday card in history in Lost Paradise by Mihal Brezis et Oded Binnum, a german comedy about hitmen at a traffic light called The Package and Curtains by Dan Jemmett and Julian Barratt.
There was also, naturally enough, a great party this evening where I got chatting with festival co-ordinator and general font of all knowledge Rhiannon Hobbins who, like the festival founder and president Scott Hillier, is an ex-pat Aussie. She was raving about how lucky my girlfriend and I were to live in London and have grown up so close to Paris, Berlin, Rome and all the other culturally rich and diverse cities that litter Europe. “I’m from Sydney and for us going to Melbourne is like a big deal”. This rang true with something an American filmmaker had said to me this morning, she’s currently working with the son of a high profile DP who was “just over here for the BAFTAs, I think that’s here isn’t it, it’s either here or London…”
These are people who don’t come from countries, they come from continents. Their scale is very different to ours. Which explains why this is firmly a European Film Festival. 28 Countries are represented here and everything in French has to be translated into English, everything English into French and everything in neither has to be in English. This is not a French Festival of European film but a Festival of European Film that is based in Paris. Which is why it is known as Ecu, apparently Mr.Hillier has one of the original mock-up Ecu coins from when the European Single Currency was first proposed and he founded the festival in the same spirit of cultural union. I guess you have to come from somewhere else to see Europe as a single place, not just a bunch of small dogs.
