Variety Critics’ Choice 2017 / Paris pieds nus / France, Belgium 2016
In this wonderfully inventive outing from burlesque comedians Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, she plays a shy librarian looking all over Paris for her missing Aunt Martha (the final role of Amour star Emmanuelle Riva), while he plays a harmless hobo who pops up practically everywhere she goes.
As anyone who has seen L’Iceberg and The Fairy knows, Abel and Gordon are quite possibly the two funniest clowns working in cinema today. No, really: Dominique Abel is a Belgian-born, burlesque-trained human pretzel and gifted physical comic on par with Chaplin or Keaton, while real-life Australian wife Fiona Gordon is a Tilda Swinton-tall redhead with Olive Oyl elbows and an Easter Island profile. With their latest film, they take audiences to Paris, where she plays a shy librarian desperate to find her missing Aunt Martha (the final role of Amour star Emmanuelle Riva), while he plays a harmless hobo who pops up practically everywhere she goes. Let the comic situations begin, as this duo travels from one corner of the city to another (nearly getting incinerated at Père Lachaise cemetery one moment, dangling from the rafters of the Eiffel Tower the next), creating some of the funniest moments you’ll see on screen all year.
Peter Debruge
82 min / Color, DCP
Director Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
/ Screenplay Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
/ Dir. of Photography Claire Childéric, Jean-Christophe Leforestier
/ Editor Sandrine Deegen
/ Art Director Nicolas Girault
/ Producer Christie Molia
/ Production Moteur S´il Vous Plaît
/ Cast Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, Emmanuelle Riva, Pierre Richard
/ Sales mk2 Films
Dominique Abel (b. 1957, Belgium), actor, screenwriter, and director, and Fiona Gordon (b. 1957, Australia), Canadian actress, screenwriter, and director. This married couple run a small theater company that stages performances influenced by a circus poetic, evident also in their playful and imaginative movie comedies. They started off with short pictures (Merci Cupidon, 1994; Rosita, 2000; and Walking on the Wild Side, 2000) that attracted international attention for their original stylization and sense of visual humor and the grotesque. They developed these characteristics further in the versatile and inventive features Iceberg (2005, Focus on Belgian Film at KVIFF 2010), Rumba (2005), and La fée (2011), which they co-directed and scripted with Bruno Romy; they also appear in the films.
mk2 Films
55, rue Traversière, 75012, Paris
France
Phone: +33 144 673 111
Fax: +33 143 072 963
E-mail: [email protected]
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