by SARAH ROWLAND

A Europa, Europa in reverse, Live and Become is the story of a boy pretending to be Jewish in order to avoid certain death. Along with thousands of Ethiopian Jews, a starving nine-year-old Christian is rescued from a Sudanese refugee camp, and brought to Israel. Though his adoptive family has more love and clean water than he could ever dream of, the combination of living a lie, missing his birth mother and dealing with racial discrimination in the Holy Land makes his new life anything but paradise. It’s the kind of epic tale that sticks with you days after watching it, making it the perfect film to open this year’s Cinemania festival, where 21 other French movies subtitled in English will screen at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Other highlights at the 10-day event include Claude Chabrol’s The Bridesmaid, a cinematic experience that might serve as a cautionary tale for men who treat weddings like open season for lonely women. This anti-Wedding Crashers is the dark and chilling story of an obsessive love affair between hard-up salesman Philippe and reclusive fuck-bomb Senta. The two meet at a wedding, and after several sessions of carnivorous sex, Philippe discovers that Senta is in the habit of proving her love by killing people. The twist here is that unlike most fatal attraction flicks, it’s hard to tell who’s crazier: the knife-wielding stalker or her victim—in this case a man who sleeps, and occasionally makes out, with a garden statue.

In Antony Cordier’s Cold Showers, a high school judo champ starts a starvation diet in order to meet the weight requirements for an upcoming inter-city competition. At the same time, he starts sharing his girlfriend with his best friend. It’s not long before hunger pangs and three-way tensions threaten to ruin his chances of winning the tournament. Think The Karate Kid, only sexually explicit.

And if you’re looking for a swashbuckling good time, Jean-Paul Salomé’s Arsène Lupin is your best bet. Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) Eva Green (The Dreamers) and Kristin Scott Thomas star in what looks like France’s answer to Zorro, Robin Hood and Casanova all mixed in together.

The Ring Finger, an erotically charged psycho drama directed by Diane Bertrand, features Ukrainian supermodel-turned-French actress Olga Kurylenko as a lab assistant caught up in a sexually submissive relationship with her boss. Expect to sit through the kind of macabre and pretzel-shaped lovemaking that is only physically possible in French cinema.

And just as in previous years, the 11th edition of Cinemania will also unreel several North American premieres. One of which is Cavalcade, the true (and no doubt life-affirming) story of French rock star Bruno de Stabenrath. After a paralyzing car accident, the lady-killer musician goes from depending on groupies to unload his wad to depending on nurses to empty his bed pan.

Cinemania screens Thursday, Nov. 3–Sunday, Nov. 13. For more info, call 878-0082 or visit www.cinemaniafilmfestival.com

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