France

IMDB:
Each person makes a sex-related word on a scrabble board and then some of the participants enact it. Finally Marilyn Jess makes the word ‘partouze’ and there is an orgy.Read More »

A Schatzberg film that is probably too little known. Its theme reminds faintly of Reunion, but different and in the other direction.

rottentomatoes summary:
A young Frenchman’s search for his American father provides the thematic center of this drama by septuagenarian director Jerry Schatzberg. Daniel (Guillaume Canet) repairs brass instruments for a living, and when he journeys to New York to work on some French horns for Paul (Tony Lo Bianco), a business friend, he brings with him a scrap of paper bearing the identity of his father, whom he has never met. Upon his arrival in New York, Daniel is introduced to Paul’s family, which includes his daughter Tilly (Monica Trombetta) and Joey (Nick Sandow), her abusive lout of a husband. Read More »

Review
“In French cinema, the simplest subjects often make the most striking films, and Marion Vernoux’s charming but touching romantic drama Rien à faire bears that out. Although the plot is admittedly anodyne stuff, its treatment is pure auteur and the result is a captivating film showing the brutal fragility of an ephemeral romance. The inventive cinematography vividly conveys the mood of the lead characters – frequent moments of euphoria piercing a sense of suppressed melancholia as Marie and Pierre discover a shared relief from their monotonous and unfulfilled lives. Compelling naturalistic performances from Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Patrick Dell’Isola make this a satisfying and moving minimalist drama about those eternal themes of love, loneliness and desire. “Read More »

PLOT: Story of the rise and the fall of a young man in Paris who dreamed to be a writer and became a journalist

A 2021 French drama film directed by Xavier Giannoli, based upon Illusions perdues by Honoré de Balzac. It stars Benjamin Voisin, Xavier Dolan, Vincent Lacoste, Cécile de France, Gérard Depardieu and Jeanne Balibar.Read More »

A documentary shot by Moullet in 16mm, about two remote, underdeveloped villages, one in the Alps and one in the Pyrenees. It is Moullet’s version of Buñuel’s Las Hurdes (Land without Bread, 1932) which was not released until 1966.Read More »

In a single static shot a man is threatened with death at another’s gunpointRead More »

Synopsis
Colinot is a young, happy man, until the day three highway robbers abduct his fiancee. The search for her leads him to meet so many young, pretty, sexy girls – that when he finally encounters his fiancee, he is no longer sure he loves her.
(imdb)Read More »

The actress Isabelle Huppert has chosen twenty film extracts to compose this mosaic (self) portrait, interwoven with archives and commented by herself.Read More »

Pascale (Isabelle Huppert) lives with her adult twin sons, aimless François (Yannick Renier) and headstrong Thierry (Jérémie Renier, star of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s L’ENFANT and LA PROMESSE), in a renovated Belgian farmhouse. Each is still reeling from the divorce that divided the family some years earlier. Both boys pursue their respective interests, but neither seems compelled to embrace adulthood or the responsibilities that come with it. However, all that is about to change. Pascale has fallen in love again and dreams of a new life for herself and her lover a countryside B&B that they aspire to own together. But what would seem to be a happy time in her life takes a turn for the worse as she finds herself unable to rise from the shadow of her ex-husband and selfish children. In a bid for survival, Pascale leaves the house in the hands of Thierry and François, never suspecting that in her absence, long-buried resentment and rivalry will boil over, igniting a war between the brothers. (DVD Backcover)Read More »