Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s tough to tell who a movie like Suite Française is for. It’s a World War II romantic drama about a French woman who falls in love with a German soldier during the Nazi occupation of France. The French woman is played by American actress Michelle Williams, her domineering French mother-in-law played by the British actress Kristen Scott-Thomas, and the German soldier is played by Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts. The truth of the matter is that a movie like this is for prestige and honors. A term like “Oscar bait” is so often misapplied to disregard any movie without mass commercial appeal, but The Weinstein Company was clearly hoping that frequent Oscar nominee Michelle Williams would find favor with the Academy once again within one of their favorite genres: the World War II movie.
It’s not like a movie like this couldn’t work. Somber World War II reflections like The Pianist and The Reader were both Best Picture nominees. In fact, Ronald Harwood, who won the Oscar for adapting the screenplay for The Pianist, was originally set to adapt the same-named novel that Suite Française is based on. Director Saul Dibb’s previous film The Duchess was nominated for two Oscars, winning one for costumes. Here’s the thing: the movie is actually pretty good! It’s restrained and poignant in the ways WWII movies are expected to be. But, focused on the women in an occupied French village, it’s a look at the war from a human and largely female perspective, which is indeed a rarity. There are some great performances by Williams, Schoenaerts, and Ruth Wilson, and the production values are high. (It also co-stars Margot Robbie in one of her earliest roles, filmed a few months before the release of her breakout in The Wolf of Wall Street.) It currently sits with a 75% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it largely impressed critics. But it didn’t impress the one man who mattered: executive producer Harvey Weinstein.
Where to stream Suite Francaise
Currently, Suite Française is streaming on Netflix, where it finally has the chance to find its audience. But it was a long road getting there. Though Suite Française filmed in the summer of 2013, and a trailer for the film was released in 2014, the film sat on a shelf at the Weinstein Company for years, generating speculation as to when it would ever get released. It was released in the UK in 2015, though not through the Weinstein Company (Entertainment One had distribution rights in England, Spain, and Canada). Instead, Harvey kept his thumb pressed tightly down on the film, ultimately keeping it from a U.S. theatrical release entirely, ultimately dumping it onto Lifetime television on May 22nd of this year.
If this release pattern sounds at all familiar, it was similar to the fate suffered by the Nicole Kidman-starring Grace of Monaco, which filmed in 2012, played out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2014, and after getting roasted by the critics, it premiered on Lifetime in 2015.
This is not a rare occurrence when it comes to Harvey Weinstein-produced movies. He’s garnered a reputation for acquiring films — especially foreign films — then attempting to cut them to his own satisfaction (the nickname “Harvey Scissorhands” stuck to him in the 1990s), and then if he’s still not satisfied, he’ll sit them on a shelf, perhaps indefinitely. Of course, if you do that today, with internet film coverage following pretty much every film production, you can’t just quietly shelve a movie. People notice. And so Weinstein has amassed a reputation as a notorious film-shelver. It certainly does no favors to the filmmakers nor the actors in those films, but in a backhanded way it gives the films a kind of sought-after cachet that they might not normally have had.
Here’s a quick look at the most notoriously shelved Harvey Weinstein productions and where they can now be enjoyed on streaming:
Dead Man, the Johnny Depp-starring, Jim Jarmusch-directed art film was an early Miramax title, and after Weinstein and Jarmusch clashed, the film was given a rather perfunctory release. In the years since, it’s garnered a reputation as a challenging but fascinating cult film.
Hero, from acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou. This film wasn’t shelved as much as it was long-delayed. Its Chinese premiere in 2002 meant it was eligible for the Foreign Language Film Oscar that year (it was nominated but didn’t win), but not released in America until 2004. That said, its 2004 American release was an uncommonly major one for a Chinese historical martial arts epic.
Prozac Nation, the Christina Ricci-starring adaptation of the Elizabeth Wurtzel memoir was subject to terrible reviews and was probably shelved for good reasons, but there was a lot of attention on the film, so when it was finally dumped onto TV via Starz, it was a huge curiosity. At which point people realized it was a very bad film.
Snowpiercer, which The Weinstein Company acquired in 2012 and then released into only nine theaters in 2014 after Weinstein clashed with director Bong Joon-Ho over reportedly 20 minutes that Weinstein wanted cut from the film. The clash got some media attention, and of course critics and rubberneckers lined up behind Bong. In the rare success story for an attempted Weinstein shelving victim, Snowpiercer was eventually given a wider release and was one of the best-received films of its year.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a horror film from director Jonathan Levine (who would go on to direct decidedly non-horror films like 50/50, The Night Before, and Snatched), which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2006 and wouldn’t make it to U.S. theaters for seven years, after The Weinstein Company got cold feet and sold the rights to the film, essentially putting it into distribution limbo.
Where to stream All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Grace of Monaco, as mentioned, starred Nicole Kidman as the legendary Grace Kelly, in a much-anticipated biopic that could not have gone more wrong.
Where to stream Grace of Monaco
The Immigrant, from director James Gray (The Lost City of Z), starring Joaquin Phoenix, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Renner. Gray and Weinstein had clashed once during the production of The Yards, and this time Gray held firm about not making the cuts Weinstein wanted. As a result, the film sat for over a year after its Cannes 2013 debut, before a perfunctory release and an Oscar campaign for Cotillard that could best be described as “begrudging,” spurred on mostly by several critics groups giving her Best Actress honors.
