35 Shots of Rum (35 rhums - 2008)

Recognizing the title from my awards list, I was excited to see this French movie about a train engineer named Lionel (which is funny to Americans of a certain age) who lives with his adult daughter Joséphine in Paris, where their middle-class world is mostly non-white, like them. Upstairs lives Gabrielle, who is in love with Lionel, and Noé, who is in love with Jo. And nothing really happens for the first 60 of its 100 minutes, and then only a little happens, and then it jumps and we wondered, "What just happened?" I thought I knew of the director, Claire Denis, but it turns out I haven't seen a single one of her 20 credited works. Alex Descas (Lionel) and Grégoire Colin (Noé) also have many credits, but I wasn't familiar with their faces. Critics have raved about this movie (beware of spoilers ahead): Roger Ebert, A.O. Scott in The New York Times, Kevin Thomas in The Los Angeles Times, and Variety, summed up to 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. But Jack and I felt it was more slow than languid, plus it breaks my #2 Rule in movies. The music, by the British band Tindersticks, is good, but they are not planning to release the soundtrack. The old saying is 50 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, so we are the odd ones out. Perhaps you will agree with all those non-French critics, and perhaps you won't.