French cinema

Cinema is very descriptive in the way it resembles the society in which, and for whomever the film is made.
We see a surfeit of Hollywood with its churn of unending trauma, of a turbulent and makeshift society. From the gangsters to the glamour it seems that to make a movie they reach for a format that is as far way from the balanced society a nation should strive for.
We in our grubby way seek to emulate Hollywood by producing movies to shock, with story lines made up from the dregs that fester in many of our cities. We either portray the drug and the brutality associated with people off their heads, or we go for the kitsch and the vulgar.


Two French films come to mind which are as far removed from this sort of base depiction as it is possible to get. 
Amour was the first. It depicts the moving story of two people, a man and his wife growing old in an apartment in Paris and revealed with great simplicity the tragedy of old age.
The story line was simplicity it's self, there was no attempt to embellish the unfurling and ever so moving descent of two people into a situation where he ends her pain wracked life by smothering her with a pillow. This description of what happened does no justice to the pace and the simplicity of the acting. Here the actors simply enmeshed themselves in their respective characters and the story became real, very moving and very memorable.
The other film I came across by chance was the "Mr Morgans last love". The principle actor was someone I generally dislike since he always seems to play himself regardless of the script. Michael Cane played the part of an 80 year old retired philosopher living in Paris having lost his wife three years previously he is marking time waiting for his turn. On the bus he engages the eye of a young women, a simple flash of acknowledgement leads after disembarking at the same stop into a conversation. What she sees in him is a father she never had and a need to feel a belonging. On his part no doubt enchanted that he has been seen and not discounted it awakens in him the flame of not desire but of love, somewhere between paternal and the full blown effect (so wasted on the young).
The film has not quite the beautiful timing of Amour but it gets close. A look says more than a hundred words and old world charm of a lovely French apartment with views across the city with its opening and closing of doors, the courtesy, the faded elegance of another more leisured era. The image of deep compatibility based on respect and admiration was demolished when the Philosophers grown up children burst in on the scene, fresh from the plane and America. Their take on the situation was what you would expect from a money crazed society, they labelled her a gold digger. The daughter was here in Paris to shop the son was hurting from a marriage recently broken and he couldn't conceive of his fathers savour faire.
His demeanour, his assumption that life owed him something and that he had been wronged was trumped by his youth and good looks and the young woman falls into his arm in a fever of desire. The wrong man got the gal' and nature had its way but never the less a beautifully made film.