As a noted U.S. distributor of contemporary French cinema (Tell No One, Il Divo, Séraphine, Monsieur Lazhar, Mesrine, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies), Music Box Films has a pretty good grasp of what’s going on in la Republique Francaise, which makes this fourth annual installment of the Chicago French Film Festival, Friday through Tuesday at the Music Box Theatre, an important event on the city’s filmgoing calendar. Only four titles from the festival were available for preview, but check out musicboxtheatre.com for a roundup of the other six, including Belle and Sebastien, an adaptation of the Cécile Aubry novel, and Jealousy, the latest from director Philippe Garrel (Regular Lovers). —J.R. Jones
A vain, washed-up actor (François Damiens) finds his second calling as a detective when he agrees to pose as a murder victim for a crime scene reenactment. The jokes may be corny and the plotting a little obvious, but this French comic mystery (2013) is so ingratiating that these shortcomings are easy to overlook. The filmmakers seem to enjoy the company of their characters; as in many of Claude Chabrol’s later films, the mystery premise serves mainly as an excuse to savor niceties of behavior and detective work. Unfortunately, director Jean-Paul Salomé (who wrote the script with Cécile Telerman and Jérôme Tonnerre) lacks Chabrol’s finesse; some handsome Alpine locations notwithstanding, this looks like a generic TV sitcom. In French with subtitles. —Ben Sachs 104 min. Sat 8/2, 9:20 PM.
Fri 8/1-Tue 8/5Music Box3733 N. Southport773-871-6604musicboxtheatre.com$12, five-film pass $45
