Good Trash, Bad Rubbish (Patreon)

Les Coquillettes (Sophie Letourneau, 2013)

Light as a souffle and a pitch right down the middle to a bored cinephile audience needing distraction, Les Coquillettes is essentially a French episode of Sex and the City that takes place at the Locarno Film Festival. Several reviews compared Letourneau's work to that of Lena Dunham, which also makes sense -- as with Girls, the auteur takes center stage here, as a thinly veiled version of herself. And as with Dunham, it's not a completely flattering self-portrait. The character of "Sophie" is primarily defined throughout the film by her embarrassing crush on Louis Garrel, who was apparently nice to her on the street once. Sophie's gal-pals are funny and radiant. Carole (Carole Le Page, Letourneau's editor) is the "Miranda," sensible, level-headed, but seriously DTF. Camille (production assistance Camille Genaud) is a bit more openly neurotic, a willowy blonde with a "Samantha" libido but the nervous tics of a "Charlotte."  What's amazing is that so many people around Locarno seem willing to play along with this froofy nonsense. Mark Peranson (above) seems a bit unsure what to do, and former fest head Olivier Père behaves as if he's not sure whether he's being punk'd. 70 minutes of empty calories; the final shot is Carole dumping macaroni and cheese ("les coquillettes") into the trash.

Matthias & Maxime (Xavier Dolan, 2019)

As it's all but confirmed there will be no Cannes 2020, I dutifully trudge through the remains of the 2019 edition, like a dazed soldier across a smouldering field. What the fuck is this shit? Unlike some folks, I'm not an anti-Dolan absolutist. I've liked a few of his films, and I didn't even think his consensus disaster, It's Only the End of the World, was that bad. (I mean, it was bad. Just not world-historically bad.) But Dolan's latest is... I hate to use the word "unwatchable," because I think that's lazy critical shorthand. 

But clearly Dolan set out to make a "mainstream" film, toning down all of his usual formalist gimmicks. Turns out, the gimmicks are all he has. He isn't a director with core skills, around which he can scaffold unusual ideas and flights of fancy. Dolan is not Francois Ozon. As evidenced by Matthias & Maxime, he's borderline incompetent as a director, and has been shining it on with rank Godardianisms, throwing us off the scent. We never learn anything about our two protagonists, Max (Dolan) or Matt (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas), about their lifelong friendship, or whatever simmering homoeroticism was triggered by a totally random (stupid) event in Act 1. This film fails on the level of storytelling, editing, blocking, lighting, organization, you name it. To give this film a Competition slot at Cannes is like giving Moss and Levine the Glengarry leads. It's just like throwing it away.