backwash: considering french cinema

One of the retrospectives featured this year at the festival is "Backwash: The Cutting Edge of French Cinema". It features French films from the past decade and seems to aspire to attain an understanding of where French cinema currently resides. The Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave...Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer...) still influences cinema today, and the festival organizers have employed a surfing metaphor to structure dialogue--the official site says Backwash will look "at the currents inherited from the undertow of the Nouvelle Vague in the 60s...a creative drift currently gaining strength and encompassing a wide spectrum of genres."

The list of films included is eclectic, to say the least. From horror to realism, hardly a genre is missing. What is missing is in fact the most interesting part of the list. Amelie? I mean, I know we've all seen it, but as a piece of this decade's French cinema, I would say it's pretty significant. What about The Diving Bell and The Butterfly? I'm not sure what exactly informed the selection of films, but the gaping holes are a bit curious.

The concept, however, is fascinating, if perhaps a bit broad. Will a retrospective whose focus includes the cinematic output of an entire country really succeed in showing us something of value? Maybe not. Maybe all we will get is a lovely collection of slow-moving, philosophical French films. Not too shabby. But maybe it will. Maybe in those tiny bars, with the clinking of coffee cups and yelling waiters, some of us will be able to make sense of the shifting tides of the creators of cinema. Maybe it will clear a space for a discussion harking back to the days of Cahiers du Cinéma, where collaboration and the mixing of ideas created a deeper understanding of what movies were, and what they could be.