France

I’m the marquis de Lafayette !
..or La Fayette ,the French spelling.The first thing to bear in mind is that ,at the time,it was the biggest budget France had ever spent for a movie:hence the cast which includes Orson Welles as Franklin -a part he had already played in Sacha Guitry’s “si Versailles m’était conté”-,Vittorio DeSica ,Jack Hawkins ,Edmund Purdom ,Liselotte Pulver;on the other hand,the French stars are not big names: Pascale Audret and Michel LeRoyer were far from being very famous compared with Bardot,Delon,Belmondo,Ventura or Moreau.Other assets were Claude Renoir’s peerless cinematography and a lilting tuneful score .Read More »

Synopsis:
‘While doing his job as a delivery driver, Paul stumbles into a violent domestic argument. Just as the well-to-do couple are coming to blows, he intervenes to prevent the violence from going further. The two turn to him to judge the merit of their disagreements and invite him to dinner. What follows becomes a small adventure in understanding for everyone.’
– Clarke FountainRead More »

In one of the oddest personifications of Death found in the cinema or elsewhere, first-time director (Rene Manzor) creates a Grim Reaper with his own control room, replete with high-tech wizardry in this sci-fi drama. Jean Diaz (Alain Delon) is a filmmaker working on an animated feature that would speak out against violence, when he is suddenly killed in an accident. Diaz comes around after death only to face Death personified, who wants to strike a bargain with him. Diaz can return to life if he agrees to make his film according to Death’s plan for the annihilation of the human race. If Diaz does not agree to these terms, then his young son — now in a coma from the accident — will also die.Read More »

In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the episode of the madeleine. Running to nearly 1.5 million words, it is one of the longest novels in world literature. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material, and edited one volume after another for publication. Read More »

Synopsis:
They recount their impressions to the Interviewer. They met through a magazine ad, She and He. They corresponded through the Internet. He responded to her ad seeking someone to fulfil her fantasy for “a pornographic affair”. This is their first meeting in a Paris café. He’s a little reticent. She wants to know whether or not he’s hairy. (He is; he’s Spanish.) They retire to a nearby hotel room. The door of the room closes. Unseen, the affair is consummated… They continue to see one another regularly each week. They find they get along well together. Soon she suggests that they try normal sex the next time…Read More »

Quote:

Aesthetically, Agnès Varda’s two 1988 features, Jane B. par Agnes V. and Kung-Fu Master!, are diametrically opposed, but they’re linked by the showcase opportunities that they provide actress, singer, and model Jane Birkin. Kung-Fu Master! is, on its surface at least, a straightforward drama, one that concerns a middle-aged single mother, Mary-Jane (Birkin), finding herself smitten by her adolescent daughter’s classmate, Julien (Mathieu Demy). But like any story about this kind of subject matter, the simplicity of the setup belies the moral and emotional quandary it underpins. Even the midlife crisis suggested by Mary-Jane’s infatuation must be viewed within the context of the pressure that society, not internal doubt, places on women who turn 40.Read More »

Synopsis:
Two elderly women, who have led remarkable lives, live deep in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. One, born in Russia, fell in love with a Kurdish student and set off to his native village here, where she spent the rest of her life filled with pain, turbulence and violence sparked by war. The other, a matron in the true sense of the word has witnessed numerous deaths and unexplained disappearances of the members of her large family. Their movements are calm, full of determination and wisdom that only old age can bring.
Simple lives that at the same time possess poetic dreamlike qualities, transparent, yet full of profound mystery are an ode to the joy of the ordinary life.Read More »

the AMG clerk wrote :
“Auguste (Georges Wod) goes to a remote Swiss village for a meeting in the course of doing some research. Instead of meeting his informant there, he comes across a girl who has been thrown out of the house by her writer boyfriend; she is too distracting and he can’t work with her around…”Read More »

here are the two IMDB comments :

“Themroc ” ,what a colossal demagogy! a monumental spate of clichés of the post-68 era.

Deux lions au soleil ” is a different matter ,because there are two actors whose chemistry is perfect.Jean-François Stevenin ( he was a Truffaut’s favorite :”day for night” and mainly the wonderful schoolteacher in “l’argent de poche” ) and Jean-Pierre Sentier ( whom I did not really know) give wonderful performances.Forget the class struggle (as Faraldo finally forgets it during the story) and you have two human beings .Faraldo jettisoned all his post 68 clichés (Why do we work? Why are there wealthy people? Why are we working for peanuts?) which were present at the beginning of the movie but slowly disappear as the story progresses.Read More »