Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #91. Agnès Jaoui’s Place Publique

Place Publique

The multi-faceted Agnès Jaoui is a highly decorated director/writer/actress with a commendable resume. Of her four Cesar wins, three have been for Best Screenplay (including for Alain Resnais’ 1993 Smoking/No Smoking, Cedric Klapisch’s 1996 Family Resemblances, and her own directorial debut, 2000’s The Taste of Others, which also won Best Film (she also snagged a Best Actress win for Resnais’ Same Old Song in 1997, which she also co-wrote with her usual collaborator Jean-Pierre Bacri). For the past two decades, she’s freely migrated in front of and behind the camera, and will be ready next year with her fifth directorial effort, Place Publique, in which she also stars alongside Bacri, Lea Drucker (The Blue Room; Custody) and Kevin Azais (Souvenir; Love at First Fight). Said Ben Said produces the title, which features Bacri as a successful television host who attends a party frequented by his ex-wife and a host of old acquaintances who are about to discover just how deeply success has warped him.

Release Date/Prediction: Jaoui, who was a member of the Cannes jury in 2017, nabbed a Cannes comp slot in 2004 for her sophomore film Look at Me, which took home a Best Screenplay award. Her next two features, 2008’s Let it Rain and 2013’s Under the Rainbow opened domestically and traveled Europe before settling into international festival circuits. With SBS Films behind it, we’re wondering if Place Publique, which filmed over the summer, might be courting Cannes.