French Critics Announce 53rd Annual Awards

The 53rd annual Prix Melies, the honor given to the best French film of the year by the French Union of Film Critics, was awrded to La Maladie de Sachs (Sachs' Disease) on Monday February 7 in Paris. Veteran director Michel Deville's adaptation of a French bestseller recounts a devoted country doctor's efforts to comfort his patients without internalizing their symptoms. Sachs -- which also won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival in October -- marks a critical comeback for Deville after several so-so outings. The director -- perhaps best known beyond France for La Lectrice ('The Reader') -- won the Prix Melies on two prior occasions, for Le Dossier 51 (1978) and Peril en la demeure (1985).

The Prix Moussinac for the best foreign film released in France in 1999 went to Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick's widow sent a note thanking the organization for recongnizing the merit in her late husband's film instead of doing what so many other journalists chose to do: dwell on whether or not their personal standards for voyerism were met.

Oddly enough, the last time the Moussinac ( established in 1967) went to an American director, the award was also posthumous: John Huston for HIS final film, 1987's The Dead.

The 230 members of the Critics Union make their choices from a comprehensive ballot that lists all of the previous year's theatrical releases. Voters had 138 French and 391 foreign films (190 of them American) from 48 countries from which to choose.

The top two French runners-up were Bruno Dumont's Humanity (the object of both derision and acclaim at Cannes, where it won three major prizes), and Patrice Leconte's free-wheeling widescreen black and white romance La Fille sur le pont -- due out soon in the U.S. from Sony Classics as The Girl on the Bridge.

Cannes Golden Palm winner Rosetta from Belgium's Dardenne brothers was first runner-up for the Moussinac, followed by a tie between Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. David Lynch's The Straight Story, Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai and Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich were next in line.

Young director Jean-Luc Perreard's clever short film Les Aveugles (The Blind) won the Prix Novais-Texeira. In 6 minutes Perreard tells the tale of a broke young man who swipes a deaf and blind woman's speare key and moves into her apartment without her knowledge.

Jean-Paul Torok's thoughtful volume on the Hollywood Blacklist, "Pour en finir avec le McCarthysme" ('The Last Word on McCarthyism'), won the literary prize for best French-language film book. Todd McCarthy's massive biography "Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood" -- published in France as just plain "Hawks" -- took top honors as the best film book to appear in French translation. American Bill Krohn's magnificent coffee table tome "Hitchcock au Travail" won the illustrated movie book category. Although he wrote the text in English, in an interesting turn of events Krohn's book appeared first in French, published by Cahiers du Cinema. Phaidon will bring the book out in English this May as 'Hitchcock at Work.'

The French Union of Film Critics programs and administers the International Critics Week at Cannes. Critics Week -- which launched countless now famous directors and their films -- is the Festival's oldest established sidebar. This year will be the 39th lineup.

Prix Emile Couzinet and the Prix Ed Wood

The Year's Worst Movies Released In France

For the third year running, the Prix Emile Couzinet and the Prix Ed Wood were awarded in Paris to the previous year's worst domestic and foreign releases. Named for directors who turned out perfectly awful films that have become classics of sincere but misguided storytelling, the awards seek to recognize films that reach beyond mediocre to the status of potentially classic turkey.

François Ozon's Les Amants Criminels (Criminal Lovers), a pretentious overblown mish-mosh of lovers-on-the-run and twisted fairy tale won the Couzinet and Peter Hyams' ludicrous romp about the Devil's mission to impregnante an unsuspecting New Yorker between 11 p.m. and midnight on December 31, 1999, won the Ed Wood, with an honorable mention to Peter Greenaway's tediously artsy 8 and a half Women.

FilmFestivals.com reporter
Lisa Nesselson