French

Michele, a divorced aerobics instructor with a gambling addiction, loses her job and seeks refuge with a childhood friend, Janine, who lives in a seemingly comfortable middle-class suburban neighborhood. Michele’s rebellious teenage daughter, Marguerite, and Janine’s shy and reserved daughter, Gabrielle, become friends, leading to unforeseen tensions that force both generations to reassess their values. Familia explores the question of how value systems are passed on from mother to daughter and asks: Is it possible to avoid passing on to our children those traits that we despise in our parents?Read More »

Judy Bloch, Pacific Film Archive wrote:
Aubignac, a village situated high upon a crag in Provence, suffers the common fate of such enclaves, reduced and abandoned over time. Only three people remain: an old blacksmith, a withered crone, and a middle-aged poacher, Panturle (Gabriel Gabrio). And finally, it is Panturle, alone. Enter Arsule (Orane Demazis), a down-at-the-heels cabaret singer, and Gédémus (Fernandel), an itinerant knife-grinder who has picked her up; now she pulls his cart, like something out of La Strada. Arsule and Panturle team up to revitalize her existence and his land, the welcoming soil of Aubignac. Harvest, based on Jean Giono’s novel, is at once Pagnol’s crudest and clearest statement about humans and the earth: both will decay if left alone. But there is darkness, too—like the grinder whose comic ruses are edged with threat—against which the simple humanity of Arsule and Panturle becomes rather more complex.Read More »

In this comedy-drama from Claude Chabrol, Magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman (Isabelle Huppert) doggedly investigates CEO Michel Humeau (François Berléand), who is accused of participating in massive corporate malfeasance. As her investigation leads her into the upper echelons of government, Jeanne becomes intoxicated by the power she is amassing. Though she faces threats by those whom she would see brought low and by the dissolution of her personal life and marriage, she will not relent.Read More »

Un film poème en 18 vagues, comme autant de scènes pour décrire Paris et ses paysages urbains traversés par un “jeune mineur étranger isolé”, les attentats, les roses blanches, l’état d’urgence, le bleu-blanc-rouge, l’océan atlantique et ses traversées, les volcans, la beat-box, la révolte, la colère, la violence d’Etat, un chant révolutionnaire, le silence, et la joie…, rien que la joie.Read More »

Sur le pont d’Avignon, Franju shortest film apart from the prewar Le Metro, was shot as something of an afterthought to Le Theatre national populaire, during the fortnight in July 1956 when Franju and his crew had to wait between the two Avignon theatrical performances that were to feature in the longer film.Read More »

Quote:
An old castle in Sweden inhabited by a family of 18th-century-costumed eccentrics holds secrets, deception, and rumors of murder.Read More »

In the middle of a performance at la Comédie-Française, an actor dies on stage, poisoned. Martin, member of the troupe and friend of the victim, becomes the center of everyone’s attention. Suspected by the police, he’s also chased by a mysterious organization, Le Parfum vert, that seems to have ordered the murder.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘After an unsuccessful robbery, Eric Lambrecht is arrested and sent to prison for twenty years. The head warden Isnar offers to allow Eric to escape if he is willing to undertake a small task for him. He must break into the safe in the director’s office, a safe that is thought to contain a huge sum of money…’
– James TraversRead More »

The lives of three Parisians – a color-blind painter, a radio show host and a perverted photographer – intertwine and go hilariously out of control. A classic cult comedy from the 80’s.Read More »