France

Time Out wrote:
Bernard (Depardieu) is a wealthy businessman, happily married to beautiful, elegant Florence (Bouquet). Much to his astonishment, he falls in love with his comparatively dowdy secretary, Colette (Balasko). It’s no office fling but the real thing, and – to Bernard – completely incomprehensible. Once again charting the outrageous repercussions of an obsessive love, Blier proceeds to explore the situation from every conceivable angle, merrily constructing and deconstructing alternative stories for all he’s worth. Although the film fails to sustain itself over 90 minutes, much of the first half is very funny and occasionally sharp; Buñuelian motifs are mischievously resurrected, and Blier’s parodies and fantasy sequences are brilliantly dovetailed in a series of waltzing, switchback camera movements that are a joy to behold. Blier is a classy, amusing film maker, but one suspects he is too fundamentally bourgeois to truly shock or surprise; and this movie ends dispiritingly with the most banal of all its potential options.Read More »

PLOT: In a small village in the south of France, Dog and Mirales live a conflicting friendship. The duo is upeneded when Elsa arrives in their village, a young woman with whom Dog will fall in love.Read More »

Quote:
Noémie and Priscilla, two teenage girls from working class backgrounds, cultivate the same violence, the same contempt of the world. They are a source of serious concern for family and friends, who sense them capable of going to extremes. Noémie (Lhomeau) has already tried to kill herself once when with the work of German Romanic writer Kleist ringing true to her, convinces equally unhappy best friend Priscilla (Tissier) to make a suicide pact. The two of them can see no reason to go on living but the practicalities and opportunity to go through with that plan is harder than they envisage.Read More »

In 1932, Michel Simon plays in “Boudu sauvé des eaux” under the direction of Jean Renoir.
Three years later, he was again invited to don the clothes of the famous tramp on the sets of Boulogne.
But it’s to shoot a film for advertising …Read More »

PLOT: A woman is suspected of her husband’s murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the main witness.Read More »

Colour, form, area this is the formula of the greatest pioneer of abstract painting. Kandinsky came to art late in life, but his impact through Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and Bauhaus paved the way for modern art. In 1913, he created one of the first abstract pictures, the theoretical basis of which was inspired by his essay Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art). Accompanied by Mussorgsky’s Pictures From An Exhibition, Labarthe goes on a sensual journey which makes the soul resound with colours and forms.Read More »

Nicolas is seduced by Violette, and invites her to celebrate her birthday with him.Read More »

After her brother was killed by a notorious all-female pirate gang, Morag dedicates her life to bringing the murderers to justice. Soon, she has become an important member of the pirate gang and has begun acquiring the loyalty of key members. Eventually, she makes her move and challenges the leader, a demi-god (literally), known as “The Daughter of the Sun.” The story of Noroit is based on an early 17th-century tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, and, though it is only the third one filmed, the movie is the concluding episode in a four-part series by director Jacques Rivette.Read More »

Gérard Depardieu has at last returned to his true form in THE SINGER, which was a huge hit in France. Xavier Giannoli has created a genuinely touching love story which displays humour and a sense of compassion for its characters.

Depardieu plays the part of Alain Moreau, a nightclub crooner in Clermont-Ferrand described by one critic as: “much lower in the food chain than Charles Aznavour, but cut from the same cloth.”Read More »