France

Summary
This tender, muscular, fatalistic film rematches Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan (after Le quai des brumes) in an anguished love triangle with Madeleine Renaud, Grémillon’s favorite actress. Love, obligation and desire play out against the backdrop of the merciless ocean and the seductive escape of sea-going.

Laurent (Gabin) is a tugboat owner who rescues a merchant vessel from a violent sea. Besides its unscrupulous captain, the rescued ship’s most dangerous cargo is his restless and seductive wife (Morgan). Meanwhile, Gabin’s devoted but ailing wife (Renaud) waits impatiently for him at home…

As dbdumonteil notes, the plot is banal… but Gabin, Prévert and Armand Thirard’s luminous lighting paint it in forty shades of grey.
(filmnutz)Read More »

The Architect of Saint-Gaudens is a musical and choreographic film.
An architect sings, while he strolls about, about the buildings he constructed in a small village in the Pyrénées. He is accompanied by the inhabitants, who sing and dance in their homes, workplaces, and places of study.
A dialog takes shape between the architect and the population about his work, its paradoxes and its rules.Read More »

Quote:
As we all often learn in life, it’s the little, simple things that can have a big impact. Bénazéraf doesn’t go for complexity here, and his plot is pretty simple for the most part. Yet Sexus does leave it’s mark on the mind, and sometimes a director can communicate things without even realising it. With it’s odd framing device, throbbing score and luminous imagery, Bénazéraf lets us in on his obsessions, and if you are in the right frame of mind, you can dive right in with him into the whirlpool. I look forward to covering more of his films in these pages. Though not quite in the realm of some of the more obvious Sinema covered here, the blood pumping under the filmic flesh would appear to be the same. It’s a hip, jazzy feast for the senses, if you can track it down.Read More »

Quote:
By Louise Narboni

Elodie is a Parisian Baroque singer, and Ahmad is an Afghan refugee; Chanson Triste tells the story of their impossible love. Through a unique mix of documentary and fiction, music and poetry, re-enactment and reality, the viewer learns how Elodie became Ahmad’s tutor and how he, in turn, became her muse.

But they both have painful pasts. Elodie is haunted by her ex-boyfriend’s suicide, while Ahmad deals with the reality of being a refugee from Afghanistan, and a Muslim in Europe. Chanson Triste is a story of songs and introspection, hope and disappointment, but mostly, it’s a story of love.Read More »

Synopsis :
Some episodes in Pasteur’s life: the selflessness of the researcher when war is declared, Pastor rejected by members of the Academy of Medicine, Pasteur treats a child with rabies, Pasteur as a patient receives his doctor who asks him to stop his research, Pasteur celebrated at the Sorbonne by luminaries from around the world …Read More »

Three French prostitutes, finding the harbor docks too chilly for their scanty outfits, recess to a nearby arcade. One of them (Michelle Villers) manages to attract the attention of a male there (John Oury), and the two head off to the French equivalent of a Japanese ‘love hotel’. The other two hookers (Laura May & Marianne Aubert) catch the eye of Gabriel Pontello while playing foosball. He leaves his pinball machine to instruct them on playing tips. Marianne is plucked from the scene by a male (Richard Lemieuvre) who just won some money playing horseshoes. Off they go to the same hotel but the only room available for them is the same room which is occupied by the first couple. They have finished and are dressing, but it is still a dilemma when the hotel clerk opens the door for Richard and Marianne.Read More »

In 1988, Louis Skorecki realized a film in two parts, ” The Cinema enthusiasts “; his meeting with Frédéric Beigbeder gives him the envy to shoot the third shutter.Read More »

Kidnappings, murders and gang war for the control of a drug traffic…

There’s really a unique touch in those early Bénazéraf movies. You’re a bit somewhere between thriller, exploitation and Nouvelle Vague…Read More »

A group of aspiring young thugs from Marseilles move in on established gangsters. They spend the time torturing, killing and intimidating the gangsters until they either pay up or die. One punk with a sexual attraction for his sister is turned in by the girl after a degrading sex scene. The newcomers shake down bars and bistros in their efforts to become part of the violent and brutal criminal underworld. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie GuideRead More »