AUGUSTIN Movie Review

Anne Fontaine's hour-long film is precisely the kind of picture that could have been made in the U.S. only as a film school project, unlikely to ever be seen by paying audiences. In France, however, this remarkable little comedy was actually a success, thanks mainly to the unprepossessing charm of the film's lead, the gangly and rubber-faced Jean-Chretien Sibertin-Blanc (a name that wouldn't even fit on a multiplex marquee). Sibertin-Blanc, real life brother of writer/director Fontaine, portrays Augustin,a geeky but oddly ingratiating insurance clerk who processes death claims for a living, but dreams of fame as an actor. As Augustin ambles amiably along, Sibertin-Blanc uses his natural ease in front of the camera to pull off a neat trick, namely suggesting his character's unease whenever he's in front of a camera. This is a shaggy-dog, star-is-born story with a kicker at the close, suggesting at the fade-out that Augustin's spaced-out qualities may be symptoms of a slightly more serious disorder than we had imagined. And keep your eye on Augustin when he's doing research as a hotel room-service waiter; Sibertin-Blanc would reprise the part nearly identically later the same year in director Benoit Jacquot's A Single Girl.

NEXT STOP … Son of Gascogne, When the Cat's Away, Irma Vep

1995 61m/C FR Jean-Chretien Sibertin-Blanc, Thierry Lhermitte, Stephanie Zhang, Nora Habib, Guy Casabonne; D: Anne Fontaine; W: Anne Fontaine; C: Jean-Marie Dreujou. VHS KIV