France's Public Enemy No 1 headlines 2010 film festival

Vincent Cassel as France's most notorious criminal, Jacques Mesrine

The French Film Festival in February next year features several different genres and a variety of French settings, including Paris, Cannes and Bordeaux.

One of the major films is the two-part (close to four hours) film Mesrine (Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy No 1) which is a dramatised account of the real life story of France's Public Enemy No 1, Jacques Mesrine.

Over a couple of decades, Mesrine slowly worked his way up the criminal ladder with a string of daring bank robberies. Along the way up he managed to kill several people – a couple of policemen but mainly other criminals.

He was imprisoned in France and Canada, escaping four times and gaining a cult following with the media and the public – a French version of the Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs or our own George Wider.

Mesrine even wrote an autobiography, which according to the film he started writing because one of his daring exploits was knocked of the front pages of the papers by news about Chile's General Pinochet.

The film opens and closes with the events leading up his never fully explained execution style killing by law enforcements agents on one of the main Paris thoroughfares.

He mainly concerned himself with bank robberies but also held up a casino and went in for a spot of kidnapping. The high profile kidnapping in Canada was viewed by many as a politically motivated act and earned him a prison term in a notorious Canadian jail from which he escaped.

Unlike most prisoners who escape from prison, however, he didn’t just keep running, he returned with a fellow escapee and shoots up the prison allowing other inmates to escape.

Later he and an accomplice eluded police and army in one of France's biggest manhunts across central France.

Mesrine, played brilliantly by Vincent Cassel, comes across as a bit schizophrenic, a mixture of brutal, amoral killer and honest gangster, who really only robs banks because that’s where they keep the money.

The film shows his initial involvement with killing during the Algerian War where as a soldier he was ordered to shoot the sister of an Algerian man being questioned.

He shows his human side by not shooting the woman, displays his ruthless side by shooting the male suspect and his disregard for authority by not following orders.

The film traces his drift into crime, his attempts at going straight, getting married and having children but always being drawn back to the life of crime which gave him a sense of importance and self worth.

We witness his bravado in a scene where having successfully robbed one bank quicker than expected he races across the street and robs another.

Exploits such as this and taking a judge hostage during one of his court appearances gained him notoriety and made him a public figure as well as being named Public Enemy No 1.

While it has all the elements of an action packed cops and robbers film it also attempts to provide an insight into his character.

Apparently the makers of the film did lots of research on his friends, family and colleagues to try to comprehend his personality.

So the film explores his attempts to go straight, his relationship with his colleagues, parents, his wife and children.

It manages to convey something of his ambiguous character, the likeable rogue, the loner craving notoriety and the self-obsessed psychotic.

It is an impressive and fascinating film which manages to get inside the mind of a criminal without resorting to the clichés of American gangster movies.

At the other end of the spectrum is the digital animated kidult film, The True Story of Puss 'N Boots.

This new version of the story tells of a miller’s son who inherits a strange cat, which talks and wears boots that have magical powers.

With the use magic spells and cunning, the cat helps the boy get the Princess despite her other suitors and the boys gaucheness.

Combining a brilliant fairy tale world along with a crackling dialogue, it is a film that will appeal to children for the simple story and fabulous characters.

Adults will delight in the sophisticated dialogue and subtle characters such as the footman at the castle who greets all guests with a burst of opera arias.

The French Film Festival 2010
Sponsored by Tefal

Auckland, Rialto Cinema, February 10 – 18
Wellington, Embassy Theatre, February 17 – 25
Christchurch, Rialto Cinema, February 23 – 28