1999 Madeleine (1999)
1999 Madeleine is the first step in an ambitious project by the French filmmaker Laurent Bouhnik to make one film per year between 1999-2009, recounting the turn of the century in an interweaving narrative pattern. Episode one is about Madeline, a lonely woman obsessed by religion and cleanliness. Her solitary existence leads her to place an advertisement for a man willing to share his life with a 'single, working 35-year-old.' She is a woman of our times who is caught between the paradoxes of modern life and individual needs for communication. The world offers her opportunities to satisfy material needs but, unfortunately, this is to the detriment of her spiritual needs.
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Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Contrary to the other opinion, this was probably the best movie I saw at the IFF that year. I've seen a few American movies over the years dealing with the struggles of single people looking for love, but this was a fresh European view. It was like looking at a live-action version of the Carpenters' "Goodbye to Love". The color composition is really quite good, the director filling the screen with muted and stark fluorescent lighting, as the protagonist lives half her life in empty metro stations and phone booths. Her dates are viewed through alienating extreme closeups, denoting the hopeless conversations with men who are looking for "someone else".
I saw this film at the International Film Festival a few years ago. It made little sense. It was directionless. It had desire but no romance. And instead of comedy it had pathos. This film has the distinction of being one of the two worst films I've ever seen.