Quote:
Acclaimed French filmmaker Olivier Assayas follows up on the international success of Fin Août, Début Septembre and Irma Vep with this sweeping adaptation of the sprawling three-volume tome by Jacques Chardonne. Set in three chapters spanning from the beginning of the 1900s to after WWI, the first section takes place in the fictional village of Barbazac, located in the Cognac region. Protestant pastor Jean Barnery (Charles Berling) learns of his wife Nathalie’s (Isabelle Huppert) infidelity from the village grapevine and sends his daughter away. At the same time, 20-year-old Pauline (Emmanuelle Beart) returns to the village after the death of her father. Pauline and Jean are almost immediately attracted to each other when they first meet at a ball. Soon Jean installs Nathalie and their daughter in an apartment, files for divorce, and resigns as minister. The second chapter opens with Pauline visiting Jean, who is bedridden in a Parisian hotel from tuberculosis. Upon his recovery, they marry and live for a spell in Switzerland, until Jean’s family entreat him to return to Limoges and take over the floundering family porcelain business. The final chapter opens with bombs of WWI: Jean is sent to the front, while Pauline works as a nurse. When the war finally draws to a close, Jean struggles to keep the business afloat. He raises the ire of his workers and stockholders alike by freezing wages and slashing dividends, but his fastidious attention to detail soon makes his company the finest producer of porcelain in Europe. Yet as the economic climate of the continent slowly worsens, so does his business — and his health. This film was first screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. — Jonathan Crow

This languid, sprawling period drama represents a change of pace from director Olivier Assayas’ usual, ultra-contemporary subject matter, but retains the auteur’s emphasis on long-suffering romance presented in a uniquely modern, resolutely unsentimental style. For much of its first hour, Destinees shunts from character to character before finding its momentum with the central relationship between priggish heir Jean (Charles Berling) and his luminous new bride, Pauline (Emmanuelle Béart). While the passion quotient is understandably low, Béart manages to suggest a reserve of hope and understanding; frustrated by her husband at every turn, she remains true to him, even as Assayas’ interpretation slyly insinuates that Jean is not worth her time. In this respect, Assayas’ strengths as a “woman’s director” work against Destinees’ complex rise-and-fall-of-the-family-business subplot, which never engages on an emotional level. Much like Jean himself, the film seems to peter out in its last third, but throughout, Assayas seems determined to keep the material relevant, incorporating raw bursts of emotion and even some cinéma vérité stylization into what is by and large a sumptuous costume drama. — Michael Hastings

Olivier Assayas - (2000) Sentimental Destinies.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 52 min
Size: 	1.70 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	704x376 ~> 827x376
Aspect ratio:  	2.2:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 214 kb/s
BPP: 	0.191
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/5A9D02BA8930AF4/Olivier_Assayas_-_(2000)_Sentimental_Destinies.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Olivier Assayas – Les destinées sentimentales AKA Sentimental Destinies (2000) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Olivier Assayas is about as protean as today’s great filmmakers come, but the last thing I expected from the mad genius behind the globe-trotting, gorgeously kinetic Boarding Gate is a Chekhovian chamber drama whose mantra could be essentially reduced to: posterity cares. If Boarding Gate convincingly documented a 21st century where human beings can be bought, sold, and shipped from New York to Paris to Hong Kong like shares on the NASDAQ, Summer Hours is the sobering requiem for the safety of objects, for the shape and weight of everything we leave behind when we give in to perpetual flux. Together the two films offer a deeply affecting inquiry into the meaning (and market necessity) of attachment in an age of unfettered globalization.

In Summer Hours, a group of adult siblings inherit a French country estate and their great uncle’s collection of 19th-century art when their mother dies, and weigh their pragmatic interests against a family legacy. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) lives in New York, can rarely visit, and would rather sell the heirloom. Jeremie (Jérémie Renier) is preparing a move to China to help manufacture Puma shoes with cheap labor, and could definitely use another financial boost. It’s left to Frederic (Charles Berling) to be the standard bearer. He’s a university professor pushing an awkward dictum that “the economy is the opposite of a science”; perhaps as a result, he sees the peculiar aesthetic value in the pieces of a broken Degas plaster his mother kept in a plastic bag.

In stark contrast to the hyperbolic monsters of Arnaud Desplechin’s chaotic reunion epic A Christmas Tale, the family members here treat each other with a credible civility. When the skeletons are eventually unearthed, the siblings are inquisitive but hardly get worked up. It’s a testament to Assayas’s empathy that he is able to build the entirety of his drama in the distance between his principals’ forgivable self-interest and their quiet kindness. Yes, on one level Jeremie is getting ready to turn a profit from sweatshop labor, but he’s also seeking a safety net for his children, so that they too can one day puzzle over their inheritance. Adrienne seems egocentric and frazzled, but Binoche’s gestures suggest that she’d rather serve as her art’s purveyor than as its guardian.

In his thrilling Irma Vep, Assayas depicted an artist maddeningly fraying all human bonds in the hot pursuit of an epiphany. The world of Summer Hours is a couple generations removed from the madness of creation; it offers the idea that any “finished product”—artistic or otherwise—is subject to decay, or at least a perpetual adaptation. The broken Degas plaster may have lost its market value, but it might also serve as a vivid reminder of the time the siblings ran a bit too quickly down the hallway. As such, the drunken teenage house party that closes Summer Hours, seemingly pitched as a didactic lament for the future, eventually about-faces into something rare and beautiful and surprising. The past may be decomposing, but the kids are all right.

Olivier Assayas - (2008) Summer Hours.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 43mn
Size: 	2.16 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x560 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 746 Kbps
BPP: 	0.200
Audio
#1:  	French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 256 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/BCC01AD60767F39/Olivier_Assayas_-_(2008)_Summer_Hours.mkv

Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:English

The post Olivier Assayas – L’heure d’été AKA Summer Hours (2008) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

To get royal backing on a needed drainage project, a poor French lord must learn to play the delicate games of wit at court at Versailles.

Ridicule.1996.576p.BluRay.x264.AC3.5.1-dps.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 38 min
Size: 	2.42 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x438 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 081 kb/s
BPP: 	0.275
Audio
#1:  	French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/780180559A32B5C/Ridicule.1996.576p.BluRay.x264.AC3.5.1-dps.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, French

The post Patrice Leconte – Ridicule (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Engrossing, erotic and sometimes comic, L’ENNUI tells the story of restless philosophy professor Martin (Charles Berling), tired of teaching and troubled by the happiness of his ex-wife (Arielle Dombasle).

His mid-life crisis takes a turn when he meets the young, enigmatic and far from intellectual Cecilia (Sophie Guillemin), with whom he embarks upon a sexually-charged affair.

Enlisting his ex-wife as a reluctant confidante, Martin claims that he is bored by Cecilia, yet continues to see her, fascinated by her uncomplicated attitude toward love, life and sex. But, upon learnng that Cecilia is also seeing a much younger man, Martin’s desire becomes tainted with jealousy and eventually becomes an uncontrollable obsession that threatens to consume him.

L’ENNUI is adapted from the novel ‘La Noia’ by Alberto Moravia (published in the UK by Secker and Warburg under the title of ‘The Empty Canvas’).

Ripped from Artificial Eye R2 DVD.

720 x 384 (1.875:1)
25 fps
1444 kbps
01:56:58
Xvid
QPEL = No; GMC = No; BVOP = Yes; NVOP = No
AC3 48000Hz 224 kb/s (2 channels) CBR

https://nitro.download/view/7772A7AE631A3B4/L’ennui_(Kahn,_1998).avi
https://nitro.download/view/910A83A2140F3C7/L’ennui_(Kahn,_1998).eng.srt
https://nitro.download/view/042ACAD312D3501/L’ennui_(Kahn,_1998).idx
https://nitro.download/view/8C3F94A4F8FA50E/L’ennui_(Kahn,_1998).sub

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English vobsubs,English .srt

The post Cédric Kahn – L’Ennui (1998) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In the twilight of his life, Jean-Baptiste, a painter who has always lived in Paris, says he wants to be buried in Limoges: “Those who love me can take the train”. So begins a sad, wild and marvellous journey which unites all the people that he had touched during his lifetime – his lovers, lovers’ lovers, ex-lover’s new wives, old friends, casual acqaintances, and relatives. But their shared mourning cannot conceal the heartbrakes, rivalries, jealousies and passions wich all simmer to the surface and will – over the course of the journey, funeral and wake, reach some kind of resolution.

1.71GB | 1h 57m | 1015×432 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/84EBDBAEE38C7B2/Patrice_Chereau_-_(1998)_Those_Who_Love_Me_Can_Take_the_Train.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/3775DADEC3E80C1/Ceux.qui.m.aiment.1998.EN.srt
or
https://tezfiles.com/file/4834e6d153b0b/Patrice_Chereau_-_%281998%29_Those_Who_Love_Me_Can_Take_the_Train.mkv
https://tezfiles.com/file/ba0664692fb20/Ceux.qui.m.aiment.1998.EN.srt

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Patrice Chéreau – Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train AKA Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

From Stephen Holden review: “La Nuit des Temps, a mildly racy nightclub in the center of the sleepy French town of Belfort, is the equivalent of Pandora’s box in Anne Fontaine’s haunting erotic fable “Dry Cleaning.” Here is where Jean-Marie Kunstler (Charles Berling) and his wife, Nicole (Miou-Miou), a proper, buttoned-up French couple who have been married for 15 years, find themselves one evening watching a slithery gold-lamé-clad brother-sister drag act called the Queens of the Night lip-synch to Sylvie Vartan records.

Jean-Marie and Nicole run a dry-cleaning establishment; what better metaphor for the starchy petit bourgeois life? And when Loïc (Stanislas Merhar), the male member of the duo, shows up at their laundry one day to have his gown cleaned, a casual friendship is struck up that leads the Kunstlers back to the club, where they dance and flirt shyly with Loïc and his sister, Marylin (Mathile Seigner). One thing leads to another, and the two couples adjourn to the apartment above the Kunstlers’ shop where Loïc and his sister offer to have sex with them for money. Although Nicole is eager to play, Jean-Marie gets cold feet and abruptly calls off the swinging session.(…) “Dry Cleaning” presents the Kunstlers as a representative strait-laced couple whose impulse to dabble in dangerous erotic games lands them in deep trouble. Loïc and his “sister” (it’s left unclear what their biological relationship really is, but we get a strong sense that they have been casual lovers since their days together in an orphanage) grew up without any normal sense of boundaries. To people like the Kunstlers, who seem to embody the Gallic equivalent of family values, the brother and sister are temptation incarnate.

The film reminds you of the power and universality of the erotic imagination. Just because some people don’t radiate overt sexuality doesn’t mean that somewhere in the back of their minds they can’t imagine themselves wantonly kicking over the traces and surrendering to passion. A glimpse of the possibility is there inside all of us. “

1.36GB | 1h 33m | 706×441 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/3FE560139AB5D58/Dry.Cleaning.1997.DVDRip.x264.mkv
or
https://nitroflare.com/view/4F865E4DE3D8D93/Dry.Cleaning.1997.DVDRip.x264.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/763E620B43F6272/Dry.Cleaning.1997.DVDRip.x264.part2.rar

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English hardsubbed

The post Anne Fontaine – Nettoyage à sec AKA Dry Cleaning (1997) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:

After Calderón and Proust, Comédie de l’innocence is another literary adaptation, this time from the little-known Italian surrealist Massimo Bontempelli. Updated from the last fin de siècle to this more recent time of uncertainty, Comédie de l’innocence’s plot is small but perfectly formed. With Aristotelian rigour it moves from the opening conundrum (a child torn between two mothers), through the complication (the confrontation between the mothers and Ariane’s brother Serge), to a satisfying conclusion. Ruiz, who takes a co-credit as scriptwriter with Françoise Dumas, keeps up the tension, however, with laconic and enigmatic dialogue. When Ariane visits the empty flat of Isabella, a nosy neighbour remarks: ‘I really don’t want to know.’ Ariane replies: ‘There is nothing to know.’

Likewise Ruiz challenges the viewer to find out if there is a hidden secret at all. So the film is full of allegories that are just too tempting. Ariane’s house, which has been in the family for generations, has a basement where the old furniture is locked away, the very image of the unconscious. Her name is clearly symbolic: like the mythological Ariadne, she holds the threads that demystify the labyrinth (Serge remarks as much). An 18th-century print of The Judgement of Solomon hangs on the wall. When the camera lingers on it we feel cheated; the allusion to a divided child and maternal rivalry is obvious. But then Serge voices his own discomfort with the picture: it is just ‘too pertinent’ to the family’s own story of a boy torn between two mothers.
(…)

Beyond its formality and sobriety, then, Comédie de l’innocence poses some awkward questions. If the child – who seems wise beyond his years – is an adult (the only film-maker in the film), then the adults are children (both Ariane and Serge react violently when their childhood toys are touched). And as the title has a specific resonance in French (where faire la comédie means to play a part), then a problem remains at the end. Just who is acting and who is innocent: the disturbed child or the (possibly) deranged mothers? If Comédie de l’innocence lacks both the bracing difficulty of Ruiz’s experimental works and the lush pleasures of his Proust adaptation, it is still to his credit that, through the brilliant performances he elicits from his two lead actresses, he leaves such questions fully open.

1.27GB | 1h 38mn | 785×476 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/2CE4B3CDCDF7458/Raoul_Ruiz_-_(2000)_Comedy_of_Innocence.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Raoul Ruiz – Comédie de l’innocence AKA Comedy of Innocence (2000) first appeared on Cinema of the World.