France

A man returns to the place he once lived a passionate love affair with a woman who is now dead.  So powerful are the emotions that seize him that he imagines she is still alive, and begins to live as if this were the case…

INTRODUCTION BY MARGUERITE DURAS
“Woman of the Ganges” is in a way two films. Parallel to the film is played out a purely vocal film, unaccompanied by images.
To avoid any contempt, we would like to let the spectator know that the two Voices Off of women do not belong at all to the characters which appear in the images.
We can add that the characters seen in the images are entirely unaware of the existence of the two women in the story who manifest themselves only in the dialogue which they hold.Read More »

A ten year old girl is received by her aunt because of her mother’s confinement to a mental hospital. But the aunt lives with a man, Jean-Pierre, who seems to be a little too nice with the girl.

“My name is Mimi. My mom took a lot of drugs last night and now she’s all pale and in the hospital. Aunt Solange took me to her apartment. My bed is in a very little closet. At night, I hear a man hurting Solange. His name is Jean-Pierre.

There’s nothing to do at my aunt’s apartment. The apartment is really hot. Jean-Pierre messes with me.nI’m scared he’s going to hurt me like he hurts my aunt at night.

Drugs have many, many colors, there are many to choose from… Maybe if I take them, I can go be with my mom again.”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…
As I understood, the version released in the US already on the site is severely cut and suffers from a ludicrous English dubbing. The movie certainly deserves better than that…Read More »

A man and a woman, secretly in love, alone in a room. They desire each other, want each other, and even bite each other. In the afterglow, they share a few sweet nothings. At least the man seemed to believe they were nothing. Now under investigation by the police and the courts, what is he accused of? Read More »

Unfortunately, the world of erotic cinema is quite often left behind as the bastardized stepchild of pornography. As long as they’ve been making films, they’ve been making erotic films. Films intended to stimulate or excite the viewer but at the same time, films that are a very important part of cinematic history, and are not to be discounted. They’re not all winners, but there certainly are some diamonds in the rough to be found. Real films with real characters and real stories to be told… not just sex for the sake of sex and more often than not little to no hardcore elements. One of the true classics of erotic cinema has finally surfaced on domestic DVD, The Story of O… let’s take a look.Read More »

Synopsis
Undeniably a work of enormous scope, Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoires du cinéma eludes easy definition. An extended essay on cinema by means of cinema. A history of the cinema, and history interpreted by the cinema. An hommage and a critique. An anecdotal autobiography, illuminated by Godard’s encyclopedic wit, extending the idiom established by JLG par JLG. An epic – and non-linear – poem. A freely associative essay. A vast multi-layered musical composition. Histoires du cinéma is all of these. It is above all, a work made by a man who loves and is fascinated by the world of film.Read More »

Quote:
Roman Polanski’s penchant for psychosexual mind games conducted in claustrophobic spaces is deliciously revisited in Venus in Fur (La Venus a la fourrure), adapted in French and yet mostly faithful to American playwright David Ives’ Broadway hit of the same name. A teasing dialectic of subjugation and power, female objectification and emasculating rebuke, the film should titillate European audiences with its mischievous combination of think and kink, while seducing a more limited niche in the U.S.
The play premiered Off Broadway in 2010 and transferred uptown the following season, making an overnight New York stage star and eventual Tony Award winner out of Nina Arianda, the female half of Ives’ table-turning cat-and-mousecapade. Read More »

Synopsis:

‘Jean, who is the artistic director of a fashion magazine, is married to a very pretty cover girl, Sylvie. They both work for André Reverdy, a very cynical man, who openly covets Sylvie. Jean, awfully jealous, can’t put up with the situation. Persuaded that his young wife has given herself to his rival he goes and waits for Reverdy outside his bachelor flat. When the hated man goes out, he kills him…’
– Guy BellingerRead More »

Synopsis
In a routine look at what it means to finally leave adolescence behind — even in one’s mature years — this series of mood swings and sequences focuses on two grown men. Francois (Jean Francois Stevenin, the director) and Leo (Yves Alonso) are old friends, and at one point they decide to go out and search for one of their childhood buddies, the brunt of several of their practical jokes. In true form, the men opt for playing yet another practical joke on their friend, but their plans backfire when his wife Helene (Carole Bouquet) comes into the picture instead. Her presence forces them to reconsider their shenanigans in a new light.Read More »