Monday, May. 12, 2003

Crossing Borders

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 48
Film Director
The box office success of his Alien IV: Resurrection proved French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet could prevail in Hollywood on the American film industry's own bottom-line terms. But last year Jeunet worked far greater magic — and, some say, a small cinematic miracle — by putting moviemaking pleasure before business, and enchanting audiences with his Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain.

Set in Jeunet's Montmartre neighborhood and shot to provide an idealized Parisian backdrop, the fable of Amélie's efforts to engineer happiness for those around her has delighted nearly 25 million viewers worldwide, made star Audrey Tautou iconic of la petite française, and given defenders of France's exception culturelle a compelling argument. "Amélie was designed to be a small French film using my favorite French actors and sites, and demanding a total freedom I couldn't have gotten anywhere but France," says Jeunet. "Though 20th Century Fox turned the movie down, executives there have since told me it was lucky it wound up as a 100% French production — it would have lost something essential otherwise. Part of its magic is its French flavor, color and attitude that, by definition, Hollywood cannot produce."

At least not intentionally. Two long, pressure-packed years in Los Angeles working on Alien IV left Jeunet longing to make "a very personal movie" — one fusing an embrace of the simple, lyrical pleasures of life with Jeunet's ode to the colorful places and people of the Montmartre the native of Nancy adopted as an aspiring filmmaker in 1974. "Audiences appreciate that Amélie comes from the heart, and is utterly faithful to the way I'd first conceived it in my head," Jeunet remarks. "It's a most un-Hollywood movie." Still, Jeunet is no Americanophobe — proudly calling the five Oscar nominations Amélie won the "shiny cherry on the cake" of the movie's box-office success. And despite Amélie's distinctly French feel, Jeunet is not turning his back on U.S. cinema — he's negotiating with Warner Bros. on an enigmatic project "adapting a French novel to cinema." Whatever that subject is, audiences can be certain to get the same visually distinct, semi-surreal Jeunet touches apparent in Amélie and his earlier movies, Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children. His studio, meanwhile, can count on another Jeunet signature: liberté absolue. BRUCE CRUMLEY

Djibril Cisse, 20
Footballer
With his platinum-dyed goatee, DayGlo zoot suits and eye wear worthy of a 1970s rock star, Djibril Cissé cuts a decidedly flamboyant figure in the otherwise reserved Burgundy city of Auxerre. But Cissé is turning even more heads on the pitches of France's professional football league, where his blazing speed, thundering goals and offensive acrobatics have made him one of the most lethal scoring threats in French soccer. Though injuries left the native of Arles sidelined for two full months this season, the prolific Cissé is still in the race for the league's goal-scoring title — and a spot on the French national squad that will defend its World Cup title this summer in Asia. Last year Cissé took France's under-20 team to the quarterfinals in the age group's World Championship — finishing second in scoring behind Argentine phenomenon and Barcelona striker, Javier Saviola. A month later he started his French pro play — and gained the attention of big-name, deep-pocketed teams from foreign leagues — with a four-goal game. The ensuing scoring binge was halted only when a savage tackle left Cissé injured, though he's now resumed his potent ways. His talent — and the interest abroad it has generated — has inflated Cissé's estimated transfer value from $2.7 million in 2001 to over $13 million today. That price tag will inflate further if Cissé can secure a spot with les Bleus this summer — and presumably provide the flashy dresser with even more eye-popping off-field threads BRUCE CRUMLEY

Jamel Debbouze, 26
Comic Actor
Jamel Debbouze will never be accused of producing the performing arts' version of elevator music. A master of rapid-fire improvisation and artful use of French banlieue slang, Jamel (as France's hottest pop icon is universally known) mines his staccato repartee with intentional mispronunciations, truncations and the risible neologisms of an overexcited speaker. (His trademark tick of mangling soccer hero Zinedine Zidane's name as "Zimadime Zimdame" has entered the popular French lexicon.) Since his 1995 launch as an improv act on radio and stage, Jamel has taken his talents to television (including the hit Canal Plus sitcom H) and film (he's the beset grocer's assistant Lucien in Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, and the show-stealing Egyptian architect Numérobis in Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra). While those comic-book heroes represent France's Gallic past, Jamel reflects the nation's modern multicultural face. Born in Paris to Moroccan parents and raised in the disaffected suburb of Trappes, Jamel playfully incarnates the ethnic Arab-French citizen that the nation — and the media — once preferred to ignore. "If my work helps French people everywhere understand and embrace the humor and language of the banlieues, that's a small step toward closing the huge gap," he says. "My success is also a sign that humor and talent are universal, and capable of crossing social divisions — and international borders." BRUCE CRUMLEY

Loana Petrucciani, 24
Singer-Model
Loana Petrucciani is taking time out from promoting the follow-up to her hit single Comme Je T'Aime at the bar of a posh Paris hotel. A year ago, she was sharing a tiny one-room flat with her mother in Nice. Then she saw an ad on TV seeking single youngsters aged 18 to 24 for a game show, and her life changed. "I wasn't chosen because I was particularly gifted but just because I was myself," she says. "It's probably the first time that's happened in France." The ad was for Loft Story, the French version of Big Brother, which outraged the nation's establishment when it was broadcast last May. Despite drawing fire from the TV regulator — which ruled that it failed to respect human rights — Loft Story was watched by 94% of French 15- to 24-year-olds, and turned Loana into a national icon. "The cast ranged from immigrants to the upper classes, so all young people could identify with it," says Loana. In a country where youth culture is still often viewed as a contradiction in terms, that was an innovation. "France is a hard place for a young person to make it," says Loana. "There are a lot of them aiming for a very small number of places." With her own production company and a burgeoning career as a singer and model, Loana has claimed one of those places for herself. It's proof that today's French kids are determined to get their own 15 minutes of fame. NICHOLAS LE QUESNE

Virginie Despentes, 32
Writer-Director
Virginie Despentes didn't set out to be a writer. "I always thought the classy thing to be was a singer or a guitarist," she says. Indeed, having dropped out of school at 16, she hardly seemed destined for success in the pompous world of French letters. But Despentes got her education elsewhere. "Between the ages of 12 and 22, my training came from punk rock," she recalls. "It was a school of disobedience." And she graduated with honors. With three successful novels and one notorious feature film under her belt, the 32-year-old publishes her fourth novel — Teen Spirit — this month. Stylistically, Despentes' key innovation has been to write French the way young urban losers talk it. In tradition-bound France, that has provoked howls of disapproval. "There are lots of things we like when they come from the U.S., but not when they come from here," Despentes explains. "France is a very élitist place. The assumption is that uneducated people don't have the right to speak." That sort of talk goes against the grain, but Despentes will go on speaking out. She's wasn't a punk for nothing NICHOLAS LE QUESNE