‘FAMILY BUSINESS’ TO OPEN AFI’S EUROPEAN FILM FEST

The American Film Institute’s weeklong, 12-program European Community Film Festival, which begins Friday at the Monica 4-Plex in Santa Monica, gets off to a smashing start with France’s entry, Costa-Gavras’ first comedy, “Family Business.” Remarkably, most of the films that follow it are equally impressive, a rare and welcome instance of a film festival stressing quality over quantity.

Adapted by Costa-Gavras from Francis Ryck’s novel, the warm, brisk and witty “Family Business” suggests initially that the domestic life of a criminal is like that of any other successful professional. Doing time is just an occupational hazard, explains Fanny Ardant with disturbing offhandedness to her small son, whose safecracker father (Johnny Hallyday) and his partner (Guy Marchand) are serving a five-year stretch. Ever so gradually, however, the light tone of “Family Business” darkens as Hallyday and Ardant’s son and daughter grow older--and Hallyday and Marchand’s ambitions flower. “Family Business” has a novel’s richness and scope; that its people are all such attractive charmers insures its poignancy. “Family Business” screens at 3 and at 9, with Costa-Gavras present.

An added attraction--alas, detraction is more like it--the West German film “The Wild Clown” will screen at 12:30 and 6:30 Friday. An allegory of crushing ponderousness, it tells of a homely chauffeur (Sigi Zimmerschied) to a gross Bavarian capitalist (Peter Kern) who drops out with Kern’s blond secretary (Sunnyi Melles) to live in the picturesque ruins of his ancestral village, which happens to be right smack in the middle of a U.S. Army firing range. Writer-director Josef Roedl proceeds as if no film maker had ever criticized West German materialism or explored the contradictory feelings of West Germans toward America: resenting our military presence though fantasizing the United States as the land of promise, both familiar themes handled infinitely better by many others.

Bruce Robinson’s “Withnail and I,” which was not available for preview--and which opens locally July 1--has been described as “an original look at the precarious ‘60s from today’s perspective.” This British production screens Saturday at 1 p.m. and again at 7.

Ireland is represented by three shorts: Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s “The Woman Who Married Clark Gable,” based on a Sean O’Faolain story; Kieran Hickey’s documentary “Short Story: Irish Cinema, 1945-1958” and Fergus Tighe’s “Clash of the Ash.” The first is a lovely period piece in which Bob Hoskins plays a Dublin factory worker who grows a mustache, which leads his pious Catholic wife (Brenda Fricker) to confuse him in her fantasies with her screen idol, Clark Gable. The second is a heartfelt account of the dashed hopes of creating an Irish cinema after World War II. The sad irony is that it is hard to see the thwarted promise Hickey discovers in various film makers largely restricted to turning out “audio visual aid”-type instructional films; happily, Ireland is now producing some fine features. The third is a warm but unflinching vignette about a high school student (William Heffernan), a natural athlete who gradually rebels against the secure future his parents and his coach have mapped out for him. This trio screens Saturday at 3:30 and 9.

Jos Stelling’s “The Pointsman” (Sunday at 1 and 7) is a taut, high-style stunner, a psychological study of the uneasy relationship that develops between the ungainly operator (Jim van der Woude) of a remote Dutch switching station and an elegant French-speaking blonde (Stephane Excoffier) who mistakenly alights from a train there. It’s a kind of variation on William Wyler’s “The Collector.” Stelling will be present.

Like “Family Business,” Manfred Stelzer’s “The Chinese Are Coming” has a wide appeal. It’s a gemuetlich comedy about the impact of a contingent of Chinese who come to a Bavarian town to purchase the machinery of an obsolete textile factory. It inevitably brings to mind Ron Howard’s “Gung Ho,” but happily in tone it’s closer to Bill Forsyth’s “Local Hero.” Stelzer will appear at the screenings.

The remainder of the festival will be covered in next week’s Special Screenings.

Information: (213) 856-7707.