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SFFILM Festival

My Life with James Dean

Directed by Dominique Choisy

France | 108

8 Apr
Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 8:30 pm PT

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 (CachéNever Let Me Go), as a hysterically neurotic film programmer whose own amorous mishaps prevent her from even attending Geraud’s first screening.

Director Dominique Choisy

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 boisMy 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