Film: Café de Flore, by Jean-Marc Vallée (12/21-12/27)

at St Anthony Main Theater, brought to you by the MSP Film Society.

Canada • 120 min • French w/English subtitles • 2011 • Narrative • 35mm • NR

Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée

Café de Flore is a love story about people separated by time and place but connected in profound and mysterious ways. Atmospheric, fantastical, tragic and hopeful, the film chronicles the parallel fates of Jacqueline, a young mother with a disabled son in 1960s Paris, and Antoine, a recently divorced, successful DJ in present day Montreal. What binds the two stories together is love - euphoric, obsessive, tragic, youthful, timeless love.

"This is a gorgeous, flashy, widescreen epic...about the most essential things in life: Family, friends and love. But most of all, love." - Miami Herald

In 1960s Paris, a working class woman gives birth to her first child, Laurent – a Down Syndrome son. Undaunted she embraces the challenge of raising her beloved offspring as normally as one would any other child. Her husband abandons them both. She bravely brushes this additional hiccup aside as Laurent replaces her spouse as the perfect man of her dreams. As Laurent approaches school age Jacqueline’s aplomb becomes obsessive and cloying. Her increasingly self-destructive attachment to her son is raised to a fever pitch when, at the age of seven, he
meets a Down Syndrome girl (Véronique) and experiences his first crush.
His sudden desire for independence, and his attraction to Véra, are the
catalysts that transform Jacqueline from a loving mother into something
resembling a lover scorned. What emerges is a love triangle of
potentially tragic proportions.

In 21st century Montreal, a forty year old divorcee, Carole, is
trying to restart her life after her divorce, two years earlier, from
Antoine, a devastatingly handsome, successful touring DJ.
Soul mates who’ve been a couple since the age of fifteen, their divorce
is a schism that might prove impossible for either of them to put in
the past. Making the transition even more difficult for Carole is the
fact that her two daughters, one teen, one tween, are about to gain a
stepmother, a stunningly beautiful, heartbreaking blonde, a woman about
to “steal” away the perfect man of her dreams. The young girls are being
cruelly pulled in two different directions, Antoine’s father, a
recovering alcoholic, seems to side with his ex-daughter-in-law, and
Carole is succumbing to fits of depression and potentially dangerous
bouts of sleepwalking. What emerges is a love triangle of potentially
tragic proportions.

Showtimes:

Fri, Dec. 21 thru Sun, Dec 23: (4:20), 9:50

Mon, Dec 24: (4:20)

Tue, Dec. 25 thru Thu, Dec 27: (1:20), 7:15

Kudos: Jiewon awarded a William W. Stout Fellowship for 2013-14!

Christophe Wall-Romana: A quick announcement that Jiewon was awarded a William W. Stout Fellowship for the 2013-14 academic year, and was selected for "her excellent academic record and professional promise." Kudos to her adviser, Bruno, and her other recommender Rembert (GSD)!!

The Institut Français d'Amérique fellowships. Deadline: 1/15/2013

Fellowships for Graduate Students and Recent Ph.D. recipients:

The Institut Français d’Amérique announces it annual competition for fellowships to support research in France. Up to four $1500 awards are available for living in France (not travel to France) to conduct research for a period of at least one month in the summer or fall of 2013. The deadline for applications is January 15, 2013.

The application process is now completed on-line, and information can be found here: http://institut.web.unc.edu/application/

The Fellowships include:

Gilbert Chinard Research Fellowships

Harmon Chadbourn Rorison Fellowship

Edouard Morot-Sir Fellowship in Literature

Candidacy: Final stage of dissertation research, or Ph.D. held no longer than three years before the application deadline on January 15, 2013.

Fields: French studies in the areas of art, economics, history, history of science, linguistics, literature and social sciences.

Application: No application form. Applicants write two pages maximum (single spaced), describing the research project and planned trip (location, length of stay, etc.), and include a curriculum vita. A letter of recommendation from the dissertation director is required for Ph.D. candidates and a letter from a specialist in the field for recent recipients of the Ph.D.

Report: Upon return, the awardee will send a brief report to the Institut Français d’Amérique about the research and the work that was completed in France.

Application materials and recommendations (separately and directly from the recommender) should be sent to: IFA@unc.edu

For more information about the IFA (formerly the Institut Français de Washington) and previous fellowship winners, please visit the Institut’s website:

http://institut.web.unc.edu/