Cinema enthusiasts regularly gather at Félix Faure for cine-café sessions. The Ciné-Café de Nice association, chaired by Daniel Fimbel, will soon celebrate its 10th anniversary.
A few dozen meters from the Opéra Vieille Ville station, and its tram with an incessant flow, it is possible to take a break out of time. Daniel Fimbel and about twenty loyal cinephiles will warmly welcome you for a cine-café. By the time Alain connects his DVD player to the screen and the heavy red velvet curtains close, it’s 7 p.m.: the session is about to begin.
A session that will cost you no more than a soda or a shandy, and that will be worth all the film screenings in the world.
In this decor from another era, the critical spirit of literary television shows from another time is resurrected. Taking the time to truly observe rather than just see, to genuinely exchange rather than simply listen, is the purpose of these meetings among enthusiasts. Here the sounds of popcorn give way to cheerful whispers.
Seeing cinema differently.
A camera skirts a piece of furniture laden with knick-knacks, without taking its eyes off Catherine Deneuve. Welcome to the world of Raul Ruiz, a Chilean filmmaker. Généalogie d’un crime and its theme of predestination will be thoroughly examined. The rich and varied techniques are analyzed. In a short excerpt, the obvious will reveal itself: no special effects are needed to achieve beautiful optical effects.
The recently deceased director receives a well-deserved tribute from André, who meticulously prepared his presentation in a notebook. This shows all the pedagogy of this former literature teacher, already well-practiced, as he used to analyze images with his students, even if it meant going slightly off-curriculum. Subscribed to various journals such as Cahiers du Cinéma, Les Inrocks, Télérama, he distills anecdotes as exquisite as they are unexpected: Salvador Allende had a film advisor in the person of Raul Ruiz.
From Nancy Sinatra to Sheila!
The time for the quiz has come, passion takes over reason. André passes the baton to the lively Daniel, who gets carried away when he speaks, to ask the fateful question: “Which Nancy Sinatra song was the soundtrack of a film?” Up for grabs, numerous DVD choices including The Transporter II, The Day I Saw Your Heart, works by Audiard, or Nailed “the film is audacious but it does have Harvey Keitel.”
Bang Bang, the soundtrack of Kill Bill was the correct answer. It gives Daniel the opportunity to gush about his admiration for the beautiful Nancy, whose strength lay in her “fragility, with that bang bang murmured like a wound to the heart.” He won’t forget to take a jab at Sheila in passing, who in her cover was almost firing real bullets when she went “bang bang” and “didn’t get it.”
From controversies to politics
Then comes a turn for Christophe Honoré’s The Beloved to be put to the test. “Yes, Catherine Deneuve is good… as always.” An understood silence, awkward laughs, “It’s French cinema according to the puppets: there’s Deneuve, but nothing has renewed since the 1980s,” one member will dare to say. “Delpech is not very convincing, I want to slap him every 5 minutes.”
Amateur doesn’t mean incompatible with critique, the sharp opinions fly: “Lars Von Trier with his films whispers a secret to me. Almodovar, on the other hand, makes films because he doesn’t know how to do anything else,” or about Declaration of War “I felt like I was watching a France 3 documentary on hospitals.” “No, I can’t let that be said! You have to see it as a political film, there’s a thank you ‘to the public hospital’ in the end credits.”
It’s already past 10 p.m., the night has long fallen… As in any respectable Asterix and Obelix, it ends in good spirits around a great feast, still at Félix Faure. And given the pertinence of the guests’ opinions on cinema, we are light years away from Veber’s The Dinner Game.
