DREAM RUN: Veronica Tharmalingam

French cultural diversity at Deauville

These are interesting times in France, which is about to elect a new president to succeed Jacques Chirac, with the first round of voting on April 22 and the possible final run off on May 6.

There is something endearingly familiar, chaotically West Bengal-like even, about the proliferation of candidates from Leftist parties, including the Revolutionary Communist League, French Communist Party, Workers’ Party and Workers’ Struggle.

The Socialist Party’s Segolène Royal is the most glamorous candidate of the lot but Nicolas Sarkozy, of the Union for a Popular Movement, who pledged “zero tolerance” of Algerian-origin youth when they rioted in Paris in 2005, appears the favourite.

How to absorb alienated Muslim youth into the mainstream of French life is one of the big issues confronting France. But at Deauville, a sleepy Normandy town on the east coast, I came across an altogether more attractive example of French cultural diversity.

It is not every day that beauty queens introduce themselves to me but Miss Asia France 2006 did so.

“I’m Indian, you know — from Madras,” confided Veronica Tharmanlingam, 24, a biology student at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.

She had appeared on stage with the local mayor and the president and artistic director of the 9th Asian Film Festival at Deauville to lend the opening ceremony a touch of glamour.

Veronica arrived in France 10 years ago, could speak French within six months, had found the country welcoming and that its people “love India and things Indian”.

“I completely want to finish my studies,” she smiled, in case her ultra mini skirt implied she was not an intellectual, a breed venerated in France.

Brand value

No country has as many internationally acclaimed brand names, ranging from Chanel to Christian Dior, as France. For silk scarves, the name is Hermes.

It was among the exclusive garments at the Deauville branch of Hermes that the post ceremony champagne party was held. Here, there was another pleasant introduction.

“I am Yamani Kumar,” said an elegant French lady, who turned out to be the Paris-based director of communications for Hermes.

The daughter of a French mother and an Indian father (who runs an art gallery in Delhi), Yamani volunteered how upset she had been by the French hostility to Lakshmi Mittal’s bid last year for Arcelor: “It was shocking.”

Despite this instance of alleged racism, Yamini, who told me she had given her two daughters Indian middle names (Sonali was one), explained how she felt inside in a way that spoke well for France: “I feel 100 per cent French and 100 per cent Indian.”

A still from Shinobi

Early Krrishmas

Although Amitabh Bachchan has been to Deauville in the past, as has Nandita Das, this year there was only one Indian film at the festival — Krrish. For a midnight screening in a 1,500-seat theatre, about 300 —quite a respectable turnout — enjoyed the antics of Hrithik Roshan.

The problem is that Deauville does not have much of a profile yet in India. But after Cannes, it is France’s biggest film festival. Deauville’s American film festival is in its 33 rd year (entire corridors at the plush Royal Hotel, where the stars stay, are taken up with portraits of the entire Hollywood pantheon).

A Chinese director, Yuxin Zhuang, saw the start of Krrish with me. He had come to Deauville with Yan Bingyan, his leading lady from his debut film, Teeth of Love, which was in competition.

“The action director (in Krrish) is from Hong Kong,” he said, excitedly referring to the Hong Kong-based Tony Ching Siu-tung (credits include The House Of Flying Daggers and The Hero).

While Krrish represents a welcome departure for India, Bollywood still has much to learn from the kind of movies screened at Deauville in the “Action Asia” category.

Shinobi, a stirring Japanese tale of star-crossed lovers, recalled both Romeo & Juliet and R. D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone.

Such movies should serve as models for the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Moving pictures

This year, there were 47 films at Deauville, including 34 not shown before. The French are true lovers of cinema for they are keen to experience not easily accessible movies from unfamiliar cultures. The festival paid homage to the South Korean director Park Chan-Wook by screening all his films, including his latest, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK.

The festival opened with the Chinese film that won the Golden Bear at Berlin. Tuya’s Marriage is about a woman in the bleak steppes of Inner Mongolia who is forced to take a second husband so that he can look after the ailing first one.

This time, the two top prizes went to a Thai film, Syndromes and a Century, and King and the Clown from South Korea.

A press jury, of which Gautaman Bhaskaran of The Hindu was a member, picked Ad Lib Night, a thoughtful South Korean film about a young woman hired by a dying man’s family to impersonate his estranged daughter during his last moments.

I managed to see all but one of the films in the main competition. I was much taken by a Thai offering, Dorm, about a haunted boys’ boarding school (St Xavier’s in Patna was never like this). I was also intrigued by Route 225, from Malaysia, which was about two children who returned home to find their parents had vanished — either the children or the parents had suddenly died and become ghosts.

China’s growing confidence is reflected in its films. Getting Home, directed by Zhang Yang, is an entertaining story about a man’s adventures as he carries his best friend’s body across a vast country back to his home village for burial.

Certainly, such movies should be seen, dubbed probably rather than only sub-titled, by the general cinema going audience in India.

Tittle tattle

Vikas Swarup has certainly come a long way since I knew him as a diplomat in London. Not far from a lamp post decorated with the Indian tricolour was the only bookshop in town with a window display of French translations of a couple of books by Indian authors, Vikas Swarup’s Les fabuleuses aventures d’un Indien malchanceux qui devint milliardaire and Thrity Umrigar’s Tous ces silences entre nous.