Le Havre
CORK CINE CLUB PRESENTS
LE HAVRE
THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER AT 8PM
ST. JOHN’S CENTRAL COLLEGE
Le Havre (France) is a warm-hearted delight which The Guardian calls “seductively funny, offbeat and warm-hearted…a satisfying and distinctively lovable film”. Working in France, the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has conjured a political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and classic cinema.
Marcel Marx is an aging bohemian artist who has retreated to the French port of Le Havre and taken up work as a shoeshine man — a profession with a limited future, as everyone seems to be wearing running shoes. One day, Marcel befriends Idrissa, a young African immigrant hoping to make his way to England in a shipping container with other illegals. Marcel is determined to extend a helping hand to the wide-eyed boy, but the law, in the form of Inspector Monet, is equally determined to stand in his way and an intricate dance of hide-and-seek ensues.
No other contemporary filmmaker manages to blend deadpan, ironic humour with social commentary in quite the same manner as Finnish master Aki Kaurismäki,.
“Few directors have quite so singular a voice as that possessed by Aki Kaurismäki. For 30 years the eccentric Finn has brought his charming retro-sensibility – a bit of Jacques Tati blended with incongruous kitchen sink – to the widest imaginable variety of subjects. All life is here, but not in the form you normally expect to find it.” – Donald Clarke in The Irish Times
Director: Aki Kaurismäki. France, 2011. 93 minutes. Cert: PG. Language: French (subtitled).
See www.corkcineclub.com, Facebook and Twitter for trailers, reviews and more. Tickets, €8.50/€7 (includes Cine Club membership), are sold at the door. Foreign language films are subtitled.
The final two films in Cork Cine Club in Season Seven are Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Band (USA) on 6 Dec and The Kid With a Bike (France) on 13 Dec.
Cork Cine Club is supported by access>CINEMA, a resource organization for regional cultural cinema, and by The Arts Council of Ireland.
Cork Cine Club
