France

January 2016. The love story that brought me to this village in Alsace where I live ended six months ago. At 45, I am now alone, without a car, a job or any real prospects, surrounded by luxuriant nature, the proximity of which is not enough to calm the deep distress into which I am plunged. France, still in shock from the November terror attacks, is in a state of emergency. I feel helpless, I suffocate with contained rage. I am lost and I watch four to five films a day. I decide to record this stagnation, not by picking up a camera but by editing shots from the stream of films I watch.

—Frank BeauvaisRead More »

Charlotte is better known by its original French title, La Jeune Fille Assassinee. The film combines Roger Vadim’s overriding twin fascinations: eroticism and death. Charlotte (Sirpa Lane) dreams of dying violently while in the throes of an orgasm. This curious desire is the principal motivation for her entering into a life of crime. In addition to directing Charlotte, Vadim also produced, scripted, and played a major on-screen role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
The man responsible for some of the funniest contemporary French films of the past thirty years (a few of which have been remade in the U.S.) releases one of his most creative and sweet-natured comedies about Francois, a dull accountant (Daniel Auteuil) who, after being forced out of the large group photo at his work for “space reasons” overhears that he is about to be fired.Read More »

Synopsis:
It’s the late nineteenth century Austria. The Emperor Franz-Joseph and his son, the Crown Prince, Archduke Rudolf, have never seen eye to eye. While the Emperor retains the traditions of the empire in the rapidly changing world keeping it a police state, Rudolf is liberal, wanting to see the people have a say in what happens in their lives. Rudolf even rejected the Emperor’s choice of a Spanish wife for him, he instead choosing Belgian Stephanie as his wife, that marriage which he himself never saw and will never see as anything more than a political alliance, Stephanie who he considers a shrew. Read More »

Having lost a battle against the Prince of Beaulieu, Marechal d’Allenberg returns to his castle with his few remaining followers. As famine takes its toll, one of d’Allenberg’s men, Joli Coeur, sets off to look for food. The latter not only finds some pork, but he also saves the honour of a beautiful girl who was being attacked by some lustful brutes. On his return to the castle, Joli Coeur is surprised to see both the man who gave him the pork and the girl he rescued. The girl turns out to be d’Allenberg’s daughter, Hélène. Knowing that Joli Coeur would do everything for her, Hélène asks him to leave for a secret and dangerous mission. He must go back behind the enemy lines to look for Frédéric, the Prince of Beaulieu’s son, and ask him to stop the war…Read More »

“Robert Guédiguian is well-known for his idiosyncratic slices of life set
in his beloved Marseille, in films such as Marius et Jeannette (1997)
and À la place du coeur (1998). Whilst most of Guédiguian’s films are set in this historic
French port they span a remarkable range of genres and encompass a
dizzying assortment of themes, including noir-style thriller intrigue,
classic romance and pressing social issues. Ki lo sa?, Guédiguian’s
third feature, is one of his more unusual films in this series, a
surprisingly dark and mystical work which explores various
existentialist concerns through the interlocking prisms of black comedy
and social realism.Read More »

NYFF wrote:
The Dardenne Brothers won this year’s Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this brave new work, another intimate portrayal-in-furious-motion of a protagonist in crisis. The filmmakers’ radical empathy alights on a Muslim teenager (extraordinary first-time actor Idir Ben Addi) in a small Belgian town who is being gradually radicalized into extremism despite the desperate protestations of his single mother (Claire Bodson), and who winds up hatching a murderous plot targeting his beloved teacher (Myriem Akheddiou). Taking a serious view of a difficult issue—the effect of fanaticism on the body and soul—the Dardennes here remind viewers why they continue to be at the center of 21st-century cinema.Read More »

A couple of young skaters dream to work in Chicago but travel is too much expensive. A shady photographer want to help them…

Un couple de jeunes patineurs rêve de se produire à Chicago mais le voyage n’est pas à la portée de leur bourse. Un photographe, personnage louche, propose son aide…Read More »

Debut director Mia Hansen-Love turns seemingly random slices from the life of a disintegrating family unit into a remarkably graceful, natural film about what it is to be human. Perhaps the most persuasive aspect of this hopeful parable of failure is the way casting, acting, script, and camerawork conspire to usher us into an immediately believable world which is observed with a painterly eye yet never seems staged.Read More »