Allez au Cinema! Avec "The French Project"

Quand on tombe amoureux, il est toujours quelque chose d’étonnant, comme si l’on demandait un Coca, est ils ont remporté un éléphant enfantin.  

Non, ja’i dit “Coca!” vous criez, mais le petit animal se balance déjà sur un bal. Qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire mais le donner un cacahuète? Après avoir vu Le Projet français hier soir, je suis un fou d’amour à six. Six. Je n’ai pas des chaussures pour ça. Je suis un homme simple, franc, d’une taille bourgeoise.

C’était comme une coupe de champagne envahissait le nez de mon coeur. Irréstistible! Je me suis trouvé dan la rue, dansant sous la pluie, plein de bisous. Je n’écrit pas maintenant hors de l’esprit de l’escalier mais de l’ascenseur rompu qui sursaute entre des etages. En plus, l’ascenseur peut être rempli de singes–les bonobos, en effet–qui portent les lunettes de soleil et ont en train de prendre un bain moussant.

It’s probably useless to try to explain The French Project (tonight and tomorrow at the Film Forum). Michael Upchurch calls their show “The New New Wave” “sublimely silly, and sometimes simply sublime.” The Stranger‘s French intern says they are “conceptuel,” and “I enjoyed it so much that I would return there every single night if I could.”

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I will say this. If you are the sort of person who listens to “Awesome,” drops in at On the Boards, and sees films at the Northwest Film Forum…then you have your tickets already in hand, and can’t wait. And let me make it clear: While this isn’t in many ways a demanding show, requiring undue rigor–there are songs from Popeye and Pete’s Dragon–it’s mostly in French and German, which is why I annoyed you with all that French at the outset. It’s true the accents and pronunciation are variable.

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I can also tell you that The French Project is the winsome but clarion-piped Sara Edwards, the raffish bassist Basil Harris, tattooed marimbaist Erin Jorgensen, and the reincarnation-of-Serge-Gainsbourg and autoharpist Charles Smith. Here, appearing as part of the Northwest Film Forum’s “Live at the Film Forum” series, they’re backed by “Awesome”-component Kirk Anderson and Circus Contraptionist and trumpeteer Sari Breznau.

In between French takes on Dire Straits and the Moody Blues, there are short films by Tania Kupczak, Karn Junkinsmith, and Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson. In one dreamlike black-and-white short, a woman travels from her bathroom to the upper reaches of a tree on a bicycle, pursued by two hirsute Vandals, also on bicycles. In another, there’s elusive photography on a beach, while Wahlund and Anderson’s contribution is to MST3K-ize a ’50s film clip once in French and once in German.

All three shorts could apply to The French Project’s appeal: The show is dreamlike and elusive, and there’s a constant micro-distance between what you’re seeing and hearing, and complete non sequitur. It’s not mockingly camp, but it’s not a sentimental tribute. Vulnerability and genuine artistry (Breznau’s trumpet chops are startling) mix with wearily blasé belting. You giggle and guffaw not because it’s all funny haha, but because it’s funny morphologically–minute by minute, it keeps changing shape and tone.

When they close with Plastic Bertand’s “Ça plane pour moi”–Jorgensen a spitfire revelation–you have to clap, you’re helpless to, but it’s insufficient. You want to hug them all, while maintaining a discrete distance.