FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL: Films concerned with rock & roll normally require a severe, almost transformational, framework if they’re going to break out of the clichés that permeate the genre; Todd Haynes had to virtually remake Citizen Kane amidst seventies glam for 1998’s Velvet Goldmine to take flight. The problem is that the easy fallacies are, to a degree, based in truth. Musicians do take drugs, they can be morally irresponsible, and tours can turn into a sequence of similar shots that makes a month feel like it’s been edited into 90 seconds of montage.
Christopher Thompson’s Bus Palladium – named for a popular Parisian music venue from the 1970s and '80s – does a good job of inhabiting that world and fleshing out the clichés . It feels like a minor film because it moves at the speed of the musicians and their career – nothing, nothing, and then abruptly flat out – but it slowly imposes a viewpoint on what is an initially carefree existence. It takes care with these young male and female protagonists, not because they’re special, but because the film knows they have all the wisdom of youth: i.e. none. It has the requisite raucous gig excerpts, but there’s also a tender sense of contemplation.
Looking back is essential to the movie. It’s set in 1985, although the period design and musical accoutrements could just as easily be the early years of this century. Given their fondness for repeating lines from classic Rolling Stones documentaries such as Gimme Shelter, young Parisian four-piece Lust are plainly a rock & roll band. Back at it after their guitarist Lucas (Marc-Andre Grondin) has returned from an internship with a London architect, they play shows and chase success with the sort of naïve ease that’s sweetly authentic.
Their selling point is frontman Manu (Arthur Dupont), a swaggering, square-jawed singer who has the vocalist’s ease of casually pretending that people aren’t watching him even as he turns on the charm for them. Manu and Lucas are childhood best friends, but they’re slowly drawn apart by differences in personality that are exacerbated by the arrival of Laura (Elisa Sednaoui), an Argentinean-born student with a leather jacket and a diffident cigarette pose who attracts both young men not simply because she can, but because nothing quite satisfies her and she’s always tinkering with her life.
Christopher Thompson has previously written with his filmmaker mother, Danielle, on the likes of Jet Lag and Orchestra Seats, and he digs a little deeper into his protagonists while surrounding them with everything from a regional tour to the demanding record company scout who alternately charms and berates them. The work may well be autobiographical to a degree, because he knows the lot of a young musician well and he doesn’t overtly romanticise the recording sessions that end at dawn or the communal writing of songs. Thompson, and his picture, understands that the innocuous can become pressing and that events can feel brand new to a young act even though they’re beyond familiar for others. He also knows that if you need a punch-up, being late for soundcheck is excellent cause.
