France

synopsis
In this fascinating and unconventional examination of the creative process, an artist near the end of his career finds new inspiration in a young model. Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) is a famous and well-respected artist who lives in a comfortable estate in the French countryside. At the age of 60, Frenhofer considers his career as a painter to be over; he says he no longer feels any inspiration to create, and his last attempt at a major work, a nude study of his wife Liz (Jane Birkin) called “La Belle Noiseuse” (The Beautiful Nuisance), has sat unfinished for ten years. Just as Frenhofer has lost his enthusiasm for his art, he has also lost his passion for Liz; their relationship is polite and friendly, but without enthusiasm. When Frenhofer tells Nicolas (David Bursztein), his young protégé, that he no longer feels the desire to paint, Nicolas suggests that he needs a more inspiring subject, and he offers his girlfriend Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart) as a model. Frenhofer is taken with Marianne’s beauty, and, with Liz’s cool approval, he and Marianne spend several arduous sessions together, exchanging ideas and opinions as Frenhofer methodically attempts to create a final masterpiece. While La Belle Noiseuse runs 240 minutes, director Jacques Rivette also prepared an alternate version, La Belle Noiseuse – Divertimento, which runs 120 minutes, features a different framing sequence, and incorporates takes unused in the original cut.Read More »

Le Streghe, Femmes entre elles (The Witches, Women among Themselves).2008. France/Italy. Written and directed by Jean-Marie Straub. Based on Dialogues with Leucò, by Cesare Pavese. With Giovanna Giuliani, Giovanna Daddi. 35mm. In Italian. 21 min.

The enchantress Circe recounts to Leucò her attempts to bewitch and bed Odysseus. She talks about men and women, the human and the divine, and the brave hero who chooses to become neither pig nor God. In her adamantine repose, Circe also hints at the monotony of her own immortal fate, and contrasts it with the vibrating currents of life she so dearly craves and envies in Odysseus, with his longing for home, childhood, and love. These women-demigods are frank and sensitive at the same time, like the men of Raoul Walsh’s films, where the communities of male and female are deathly separate, and massive to each other. Walsh made a western, The Tall Men, in 1955. This 2008 Straub-film is its reverse shot. (Joshua Siegel – MoMA)Read More »

Text from Diagonal Thoughts

“Before being a conflict of classes or parties, politics is a conflict concerning the configuration of the sensible world in which the actors and the objects of these conflicts may appear. Politics is then this exceptional practice, which makes visible that which cannot be seen, which makes audible that which cannot be heard, which counts that which cannot be counted.”Read More »

Remember childhood holidays frolicking in the countryside? When time is gone, or when grown-ups are gone, will there be no more rolling meadows with fields of poppies, trees to climb and hide in or playful butterflies? What is this secret life all about? At the center of the film, made by the directors of Microcosmos, is a pond, where two lonely children are silently prowling around this small kingdom, seeing, dreaming and playing. Through cameras and microscopes, the filmmakers depict their passion for nature by closely observing plant and animal life and then adding a charming story with human characters. Subtle sound effects and music add a dramatic dimension to their humorous and fantastic observations which are sure to stimulate the imagination of young and old.Read More »

Linda Loves her work, and her work is LOVE…

Linda comes to the big city in search of fun and excitement. What she finds is exploitation and abuse at the hands of a succession of sleazy guys. Searching for love, she enters into a lesbian relationship with a beautiful countess, discovers drugs and swingers’ parties and starts acting in porno movies. She also begins to write a secret diary… With a cast of some of the most stunning Euro actresses of the period, wall-to-wall sex and nudity, pot parties, porno shoots and a psychedelic soundtrack, this is a gem of 1970s exploitation cinema from Jess Franco. Street scenes shot in Benidorm (Alicante, Spain) and Las Palmas (Gran Canaria, Spain).Read More »

Female Vampire

Countess Irina Karlstein (Lina Romay) is the last in a line of vampires. Compelled to suck the life force from her victims during sex, her activities attract the attentions of Dr Roberts, who comes to realise that the spate of bizarre deaths currently plaguing Madeira have a supernatural source. Meanwhile a poet, Baron Von Rathony (Jack Taylor) has become infatuated with Irina. She wants to reciprocate his love, but knows that to do so will surely mean the man’s death.

This 1973 Jesus Franco entry is of great significance in the director’s 150+ film output for being the film that gave Lina Romay, soon to becomes his long-term partner, collaborator and muse, her first starring role.Read More »

Plot / Synopsis

A cash strapped college student goes to work as an escort in order to make ends meet, only to realize that her education has taken a back seat to her budding career in the pleasure industry. In her struggle to stay financially stable during her first year at the university, 19 year old Laura discovers that a part-time job just won’t pay the bills. Then, just when Laura is at her most desperate, she sees an internet ad from a man who’s willing to pay £100 an hour to spend an intimate evening with a willing student. Compelled by the lure of some easy money, Laura answers the ad. Later, despite a promise to herself that this will be a once time occurrence, Laura finds herself falling into a new bed every night, and making more money than she ever thought possible. By the time Laura realizes she has stumbled into the downward spiral of prostitution, she begins to doubt her ability to break free from temptation, and finish her education. ~ Jason Buchanan, Allrovi
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REVIEWS
Strictly Film School, by Acquarello
[…]They are kindred spirits, bound together by personal shame and guilt of survival, and an overwhelming sense that they can never go home again (as in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s White. It is through their affair that the memory of her beloved is reawakened. In essence, the architect is the catalyst: the receptive soul who guides her through the painful, introspective path that leads to closure.Read More »

Plot (from Allmovie):
La Nuit du Carrefour (A Night at the Crossroads) may well be the least known of Jean Renoir’s sound films. Adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, the story concentrates on a gang of thieves who utilize a cross-road garage as the hideaway. During their last caper, the gang has accidentally murdered a jewel thief, and the heat is on. Winna Winifred, the beautiful ringleader of the gang, makes the fatal mistake of falling in love with Pierre Renoir (the director’s brother), the detective who’s been assigned to bring her in. The only one of Renoir’s productions to thoroughly qualify as a “crime picture,” La Nuit du Carrefour was often dismissed by the director, who felt that he was so successful in creating a “mysterious atmosphere” that no one understood what was going on (He did, however, enjoy working with Georges Simenon, who became a lifelong friend).-Read More »