Flanked by dozens of volunteers, festival maestro Roger Durling introduced the final film of the 31st Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Xavier Giannoli’s French dramedy Marguerite, by thanking the “700 volunteers that have made this possible.”
SBIFF organizers chose to close the festival with a foreign film. The near-packed house had time to ponder this curative choice when the film’s subtitles were cut off, prompting the crew to restart Marguerite four times before finally getting it right. During the delay, it became clear that the vast majority of the audience did not speak French; a linguistic reality that was loudly proclaimed by the few dozen folks who left the Arlington during this period of technical difficulties. (I’m sure this was instructive for the poor folks manning the projector, who apparently needed to be reminded that Santa Barbara is not, in fact, a French territory.)
Interestingly, Marguerite is a film about a woman’s relationship with her (often similarly disgruntled) audience. The movie is based loosely on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins, an American socialite who pursued a career as an opera singer despite having a voice that was more “dying chicken” than “Maria Callas.”