French film festival has a feminine touch

The 13th “City of Lights, City of Angels” French film festival, which opens this evening at the Directors Guild of America, includes the drama “Seraphine,” which won seven Cesar Awards, including best film; the gangster epic “Mesrine: A Film in Two Parts,” which won Cesars, including director and actor; and the latest film from veteran filmmaker Costa-Gavras (“Z”), “Eden Is West.”

But the weeklong celebration of French cinema has a distinctly feminine flavor this year. Six of the offerings were written and directed by women, including the opening-night presentation from Zabou Breitman, “Someone I Loved,” about a married man (Daniel Auteuil) who tells his daughter-in-law about a lost love.

Festival director and programmer Francois Truffart says it’s merely a coincidence that so many of the films come from women.

“What we try to do every year is to have a program that reflects the production in France, what people are doing with cinema,” he says. “I don’t think there were more films [in France] directed by women, but more films that would be universal enough [for the festival] that were directed by women.”

Breitman, participating in a Q&A; tonight, also stars in “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life,” which is screening at the festival Wednesday.

Truffart says he admires the fact that female directors approach subjects differently than their male counterparts. “Someone I Loved” may tell the age-old story of a man cheating on his wife, he notes, but “the point of view is of a woman. I don’t think any male director would be able to do it.”

Ditto Josiane Balasko, a Cesar screenplay winner for co-writing “French Twist.” Her latest film, “A French Gigolo,” which is having its West Coast premiere Saturday, certainly wouldn’t have been written and directed by a man. It concerns a successful fiftysomething woman (Nathalie Baye) who pays young men for sex, including Marco, a shy married man who does such work to help his wife keep her hair salon afloat. Balasko, who plays Baye’s earthy sister, peppers the movie with a lot of frank sexual talk between the women.

Balasko, who also appears in the Saturday festival offering “A Day at the Museum,” couldn’t get anyone interested in producing “Gigolo” a few years ago because of the frankness of the subject matter. Only after she wrote it as a novel did she find financial backing.

“They were not interested; they were disgusted,” she says of the initial reception, laughing. “Every time I heard something like that, I think it’s a good subject because their reaction is an overaction.”

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‘City of Lights, City of Angels’

Where: Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Today through Sunday

Price: $10 general, $7 seniors, $5 students

Info: www.colcoa.org