My Life with James Dean
Description
Still pining for his ex-boyfriend, Géraud has come to a French seaside town to present his new experimental film, but the only person keen on seeing it is the cinema’s underage projectionist who becomes smitten with the handsome director. With sexy charm and a fondness for slapstick humor, My Life with James Dean offers several protagonists going to ridiculous extremes in the name of passion, but with great reserves of optimism and hope that keep them chasing that feeling.
Brimming with a palpable joy and love for cinema, My Life with James Dean offers a unique spin on an old French staple: a “film about film.” In utilizing the adventures of the handsome, somewhat aloof Géraud in his travels to the north coast of France, writer/director Dominique Choisy utilizes a sophisticated, sexy blend of quirkiness and whimsy, with a dash of Eric Rohmer, as he orchestrates his band of charming characters — each person fully immersed in both their own rigid romantic endeavors and the enchanting folly of everyone else — through hotel rooms and nearly empty movie theatres across Normandy. With a uniformly exquisite cast, Choisy finds the stand-out in his muse Nathalie Richard (Caché, Never Let Me Go), as a hysterically neurotic film programmer whose own amorous mishaps prevent her from even attending Geraud’s first screening.
Born in 1959, Dominique Choisy has worked as an editor for French television, in addition to teaching at the Université d’Amiens in the north of France. After helming a number of short films, Choisy directed his first feature, Modern Comforts in 2000. Also starring Nathalie Richard, Modern Comforts won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Mar del Plata Film Festival. He returned to the director’s chair in 2011 with Les fraises des bois. My Life with James Dean is his third feature.
Film Details
Language French
Year 2017
Premiere North American
Runtime 108
Country France
Director Dominique Choisy
Producer Nathalie Algazi, François Drouot, Marie Sonne-Jensen
Writer Dominique Choisy
Editor Dominique Choisy, Isabelle Debraye, Léo Ségala
Cinematographer Laurent Coltelloni
Music Bertrand Belin
Cast Johnny Rasse, Mickaël Pelissier, Nathalie Richard