Festival du Film Français au Japon 2011

The 19th French Film Festival in Japan gets off to an inauspicious start with Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds, a charmless digital animation that went straight to DVD in the US (despite being in English). Things improve slightly with a selection of recent commercial hits, including romantic comedies Heartbreaker (L'arnacoeur) and Romantics Anonymous (Les émotifs anonymes), kid-friendly animation A Cat in Paris (Une vie de chat), thriller Lights Out (Simon Werner a disparu...) and Gerard Depardieu vehicle Mammuth. However, the most intriguing flicks are saved for the late screenings at Toho Cinemas Nichigeki, which will be showing Céline Sciamma's gender-bending drama Tomboy, Rebecca Zlotowski's sensitively depicted teen-angst tale Dear Prudence (Belle Épine) and Fred Cavayé's thriller Point Blank (À bout portant). Note that films are subtitled in Japanese only.