LONDON: ‘Father of My Children,’ ‘Bellamy’

It’s been a busy weekend at the festival, but aside from “Up in the Air” — which I finally encountered this morning and will offers some thoughts on in due course — it’s also been a rather low-key one. Several films I had seen in pre-screenings made their London debut; I’ll round them up with some brief capsule reviews later.

The best film of the weekend would have been Jessica Hausner’s critical darling “Lourdes,” if I hadn’t already seen it in Venice. Happily, a pair of different French-language titles made for a most enjoyable Saturday, even if I can only make significant claims for one of them.

Viewed in succession, Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Father of My Children” and Claude Chabrol’s “Bellamy” made for a fascinating transition between two guards of French cinema: the former, low in star wattage, is the sophomore effort of 28 year-old director, while the latter marks the first collaboration between two industry titans, 79 year-old Chabrol and 60 year-old Gérard Depardieu. One, I think, has the potential to be a major arthouse hit — it might not be the one you think.

“Father of My Children” (***1/2)

One of the great joys of festivals is that it affords one the chance to see films before press and marketing have conspired to reveal all their trump cards in advance. So when a film takes a genuinely untelegraphed plot turn, as Hansen-Løve’s richly satisfying meditation on the dual pressures of family and film production, “Father of My Children,” does at its midpoint, the collective emotional swing of the gathered audience is thrillingly palpable.

Taking inspiration from the life of the late French producer Humbert Balsan, the film initially centers on a similar figure, a Parisian indie-film boss whose external cheeriness masks a black hole of economic and emotional turmoil, before placing its gaze on his adoring but equally conflicted family. Predicated on artful shifts in tone and character focus, “Children” recalls the loose, jazzy flow of such recent family-oriented ensemble pieces as “A Christmas Tale” and “Summer Hours,” but simultaneously, and rather more unexpectedly, distinguishes itself as one the great film-industry studies of recent years. (The director used to be a Cahiers du Cinéma critic, so she knows whereof she speaks.)

Hansen-Løve’s canvas is ambitiously broad, melding intimate domestic drama with larger, more academic questions of art and finance, but there’s nary a stylistic misstep in this warm, compassionate work, while Chiara Caselli, as the producer’s sweetly defiant wife, is the pick of the film’s beautifully integrated ensemble. “Father of My Children” won a special award in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes this year; following “Dogtooth” and “Police, Adjective,” it’s looking like an increasingly impressive class.

“Bellamy” (**1/2)

It’s hard to believe that it’s taken this long for Claude Chabrol and Gérard Depardieu to work together, so there’s an unavoidably thrilling sense of occasion to “Bellamy” that unfortunately dwarfs the gentle pleasures this amusing but disposable daylit noir has to offer. Conceived as a tongue-in-cheek homage to the literature of Georges Simenon, the film abounds with witty nudges to Chabrol’s own oeuvre, but the references do tend to highlight what thin story material he has to work with on this occasion.

Happily, he has Depardieu in roaring form as the title character, an ageing Maigret-type police detective distracted from his holiday by a routine murder mystery and a visiting black-sheep brother. The leisurely film devolves into little more than a personality vehicle for the star, but he drives it with shuffling brute charm and flashes of his old fury; on this evidence (and taking the title as a hint), it’s easy to imagine this as the first in a series of Bellamy films. If so, we’ll hopefully get Chabrol in sharper form on the next go-round.