On Set with French Cinema: An Evening with Arnaud Desplechin
November 16, 2005

Now in its third year, On Set with French Cinema, organized by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, invites French filmmakers to conduct a series of master classes at universities across the United States. While in New York, these leading contemporary filmmakers present a special screening at MoMA. On November 16 Arnaud Desplechin, the writer-director of the recent hit Rois et reine (Kings and Queen), presents his breakthrough feature La Sentinelle. Desplechin’s expressionist filmmaking, inspired by the French New Wave, is sensuous and cerebral, with allusions to mythology, literature, cinema, music, and philosophy, and possesses an almost reckless emotional intensity and narrative drive. His characters, like those of Godard, Truffaut, and Rivette, act with tragicomic desperation that calls attention to their own theatrical artifice.

Organized by Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator, Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art; Florence Charmasson, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Unifrance.

Special thanks to Catherine Verret-Vimont, Executive Director, Unifrance/French Film Office, New York; Marie Bonnel, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; Antoine Khalife, Unifrance, Paris; and Marcus Hu, Strand Releasing, for the print loan.

La Sentinelle. 1992. France. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Screenplay by Desplechin, Pascale Ferran, Noemie Lvovsky, Emmanuel Salinger. With Salinger, Marianne Denicourt, Bruno Todeschini. Desplechin’s startling feature debut is a post–cold war conspiracy thriller replete with science, music, existentialism, politics, cultural memory, and the family romance. A forensic pathology student discovers a severed head in his suitcase and becomes obsessed with discovering its identity. 144 min.
Wednesday, November 16, 7:45 (introduced by Desplechin). T1

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