I started this year’s festival much like last year’s festival, with a French film starring Guillaume Gouix. Only this year, the film was The Connection, and it was not very funny nor whimsical. The main stars are Jean Dujardin as a magistrate fighting the heroin trade in 1970s Marseille, and Gilles Lellouche as the heroin trader. It is loosely based on a true story. Other than the pleasant surprise that Benoît Magimel played one of the gangsters, the story of the film was fairly predictable. I like Dujardin, but unfortunately, or maybe this was on purpose, he and Lellouche are very similar in appearance. I wasn’t the only one in the theatre who at times asked myself, “now which one is that?”

This year, I will be applying the Bechdel Test to all the films I see in the festival. To pass the test, a film  must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. Someone is keeping a list here.

The Connection‘s Bechdel Rating: FAIL. Not surprising for a film set in the disco era, in France, there are hardly any women in it, much less talking to each other, or talking at all.