French

Quote:
In the early 1950s, in a seaside town, Isabelle, a girl in her late teens,is about to spend an apparently eventless summer between her mother, her friends and a small job for a photographer whose business is lagging. But Isabelle is not the mentally balanced young lady she seems to be. In fact she is doubly traumatized, firstly by the rape she suffered eight years before from a Nazi officer and secondly by the suicide of her father shortly after. What she wants deep inside herself is to find a man, young or less young, who will bring her tenderness and happiness. Will Luc, a young German, or Monsieur Vaudois, her married boss, give her what she lacks?Read More »

Plot: Set at the time of the Crusades, it tells the story of love and tragedy, intermingled with mysticism. Jacques is betrothed to marry Violane, a beautiful and gentle woman. When she discovers that she has leprosy, however, the marriage is off, and she retires to a life of prayer at an isolated hermitage. Instead, Jacques marries her sister Mara. When Jacques and Mara’s child dies shortly after birth, Mara implores her saintly sister to come out of isolation to bring her child back to life.Read More »

One of the most controversial figures in current French cinema, Bruno Dumont made a dazzling debut with his 1997 film The Life of Jesus (which won the Sutherland Trophy at that year’s Festival) and divided audiences with his metaphysically charged Humanity. Following his American road nightmare Twentynine Palms, Flanders goes back to his roots: it’s at once a return to the introspective register of Jesus… and, like it, a contemplation of his home territory. The characters are a group of young men and women from the Northern French countryside, including farmer Demester (Boidin) and his none-too-exclusive girlfriend Barbe (Leroux). Read More »

In a social context deteriorated by a countrywide economic crisis, the life of several people will be turned upside down after they meet Cecile, a character who symbolizes desire.Read More »

In 2009, in a small theater in Geneva, Switzerland, the film directors Marcel Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard met for an unusual, surprisngly intimate and sometimes contentious dialogue with each other in front of a live audience. Luckily for us, it was filmedRead More »

Synopsis
Today the North Pole is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The Arctic ice cap is less than half the size it was 50 years ago. This radical climate change has thus begun to open the ice-packed Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia, and some scientists predict that the transoceanic maritime route will soon be permanently ice free during its ever-longer summers.Read More »

On a huge farm in the Vendee, the death of the patriarch leaves behind 3 brothers and a sister. The eldest brother refuses to consider dividing the property. In order to cement his hold on the family, he uses his authority to keep his siblings from marrying… La Ferme du pendu is a well-built, intense rural drama portraying the relentless determination of a man whose attachment to the land becomes a destructive obsession. It also serves as a near-documentary depiction of peasant life between the wars. Dréville keeps a certain distance from his characters and avoids all overblown drama. The cast is remarkable: Charles Vanel brings great intensity to the ensemble, but all the roles are perfectly portrayed. La Ferme du pendu was also the first credited film role for Bourvil, playing a small role as a shopkeeper which still allows him to sing his famous song, “Les Crayons” during the wedding scene.Read More »

Quote:
You cannot help but think of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre during a shot in The Ordeal where the camera spins across the leering, giggling faces of a twisted inbred family and their blood-covered, shrieking victim, and you really cannot help but think of it when they cut to an extreme close-up of the victim’s eye darting nervously back and forth. We’ve seen this movie before, where an innocent (played here by Laurent Lucas) has his car break down in the middle of nowhere. He is taken in by an eccentric innkeeper (Jackie Berroyer), and for a while The Ordeal is an intriguingly freakish character study of an older man falling in love with a younger man, believing him to be his dead wife. But their insinuating dialogue eventually gives way to a sadistic (and familiar) torture tale. Read More »

Synopsis:
In the middle of a harsh winter, Ursus, a colorful carnival boss, rescues two orphans lost in a storm: Gwynplaine, a young boy whose face is deformed by a scar that makes him look as though he’s constantly laughing, and Déa, a blind girl. A few years later, they travel throughout the land, performing a show of which Gwynplaine is the star.
People come everywhere to see The Man Who Laughs; he makes people laugh and enthralls the crowd. Success opens doors to the young man, he becomes famous and rich, thus distancing himself from the only two people in the world who love him for what he is.Read More »