London Film Festival Day 1
To be the son of a famous filmmaking duo is challenging, especially if you want to survive in the same industry. But Mathieu Demy does it, and he does it with style. After a major screen presence as an actor, his filmmaking debut Americano is a refreshing example of the French cinema after the Cachiers. Rather then rejecting his parents’ legacy, Demy literally inserts the excerpts from Agnes Varda’s 1981 film Documenteur in his new fim. The result is a brutally honest and moving exploration of the mother-son relationship, but also cinema’s past and present. Not surprisingly most of the story takes place in LA: French cinema and the Hollywood, but also the mother and the son - the duallity that makes Americano stand out amongst other examples of the new French cinema. The language is different too and so is the story; The story of coming of age of a man, while reassessing his relationship with his mother after her death. Mathieu’s futile attempts to persuade himself that his depressed mother did not love him and hence sent him off to France end with a beautiful quest of an exhausted man on the Mexican border, who telephones to say that he is coming home. That is, to his girlfriend in Paris of course.
