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FESTIVALS Belgium

Benchetrit's burlesque gem

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French director Samuel Benchetrit’s second feature after Janis and John, I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster [+see also:
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(see news ), was selected this summer at the Locarno Film Festival and yesterday evening closed the 22nd Namur International Francophone Film Festival, where it screened out-of-competition. Which is fortunate for the competition titles because I Always Wanted… would have given them a serious run for their money.

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With its narrative and musical audacity, the choreography of its characters, its constant rhythm and its hand-sewn script, the feature – directed in a very attractive black-and-white – is proof that Benchetrit is not only a writer, director and playwright but also a highly talented filmmaker. I Always Wanted… is composed of four sketches, each linked by an isolated cafeteria on an equally deserted highway.

Using a host of crazy and clueless characters that cross paths at the cafeteria, Benchetrit, clearly passionate about cinema, has made a gem of burlesque cinema, tender and nostalgic, funny and enjoyable, a cross between a gangster film, western, road movie and slapstick comedy.

The film features an amorous duel (Anna Mougladis and Edouard Baer), a duel à la Jarmusch without the cigarettes (Arno and Alain Bashung), a broken-arm duo (Belgians Bouli Lanners and Serge Larivière), as well as a group of decrepit Tontons Flingueurs (Jean Rochefort, Laurent Terzieff, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Roger Dumas and Venantino Venantini). Its story centres on various hold-ups, each as fruitless as the other, and is about bumbling, wannabe crooks who invent stories, big kids with big dreams.

Produced by Fidélité Films in association with Wild Bunch, who holds international rights, the film received financing from Canal + and TPS.

It is slated for French release through Pan Européenne Edition in early 2008 and will be brought to Belgian screens by Les Films de L'Elysée.

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(Translated from French)

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