Sunday, January 24, 2016

Auteur Watch - Rachid Djaidani

Damn, a long one.  Well, the IMDb's a great resource and all, but they still don't have everything yet.  For highly detailed information about someone like Rachid Djaidani, you of course have to go to French Wikipedia... I think the dude's French or something.  He started out as an actor, but it's a hard life, and the ungodly hours and inevitable illegal drug use takes its toll.  Take William Hickey, for example.  Why, it seems like only yesterday he looked half-ass human in the likes of Little Big Man before becoming a caricature of an old man, in addition to being an actual old man... is the cultural bias showing or what?
And so, when the looks left him, it was clearly time to become a director... oh, but fiction scripts.  So boring.  His own life's, like, way more interesting than that!  Why not just turn the camera on, and record a brief glimpse into it?  ...okay, okay, one fiction film.  It's called Hold Back or Refrain, according to this Variety review.  Man, everyone's a critic.  Hold Back is the story of a French-Algerian woman who wants to marry a black man... autobiograph much?  There's one problem... well, 40 of them, actually.  Her 40 brothers stand in the way of the marriage... really?  All of them?  Oh well.  It's a journey, not a destination.  They want to get him in a good old fashioned rugby game and knock out a couple of his teeth.  Bring him down to their level a little bit.  Ah, in-laws.
As with all these celluloid types, there's always something in the can, waiting to be shown up on that digital screen.  In Rachid's case, his latest is called Tour de France.  Well, I gotta hand it to him, as he scored a big casting coup: 68 year old Gérard Depardieu... what does he play?  Lance Armstrong?

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