When the Cheshire emerges...

Audrey Tautou is not the only young French actress around. This is Virginie Ledoyen. So I saw three films of hers this week unexpectedly and as she has been at the forefront of well, everything, I've found out that she's one classy actress.

Oddly enough, not one of these three films was 'The Beach' (yes, the one with Leo DiCaprio). I will watch that one day though, if only for the reason of seeing how All Saints' 'Pure Shores' is used in it...

Tuesday: went to the media screening of My Friends, My Loves for CPR and didn't realise who she was until she popped up on screen. The frustration of her character was good, but I also saw a hint of a comedic side.

Thursday: saw Shall We Kiss? because I had free tickets (boo-yah! Thanks AFI!)... it's a screwball comedy, but she played it so straight! So so cool was she, seems to have a down-to-earth elegance about her, even if her hair is sometimes not that great.

Thursday night/Friday: 8 Femmes happened to be on SBS, figured 'why not make it a hat-trick?'. Now, this film has a stellar cast including Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert, and is a very kooky musical-mystery, but Ledoyen just pulled it off, no dramas. She does serious in strange environments very well and comes off differently each time. Plus her singing turn is the highlight of the solos. Not necessarily voice-wise, but fun nonetheless.

Don't get me wrong. I love Audrey Tautou. And I can say now, having seen a decent amount of French cinema, that I enjoy their films for all its love-focused stories. But it's good to discover more, and Ledoyen is great. I don't like to use the word 'classy' too much, but she really is. Think I said in one of my reviews that she typifies the strong-yet-fragile Frenchwoman. Still stand by that.

The French will probably think I'm stupid for not knowing this already, but hey, to Australia it's foreign cinema and we don't get too much of it -but we do get more French films than any other non-English countries...

I'm all Frenched out for this week. Major movie swampage indeed. But I can never stay away for too long.