French

Lawrence Garcia, Cinemascope wrote:
In the seven years since P’tit Quinquin, it has become impossible to continue tagging Bruno Dumont with the longstanding clichés of Bresson criticism. Epithets like “ascetic,” “severe,” “punishing”—already limited descriptors of his first two works, La vie de Jésus (1997) and L’humanité (1999)—have only become more obviously incapable of describing Dumont’s recent films, from the carnivalesque contortions of Ma Loute (2016) to the musical extremes of his Jeanne d’Arc movies. Still, as Dumont’s methods (particularly his increasingly frequent use of professionals alongside non-actors) have ostensibly moved away from those of Bresson, the deeper affinities between the two filmmakers have only become clearer. Read More »

In May 1978, the mining town of Kolwezi in Katanga, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Belgian Congo) is under attack from a group of communist guerillas coming from nearby Angola. The Europeans who work for the Belgian mining company and the Blacks who live in the town are taken as hostages by the invaders, who start a blood bath, shooting Europeans as well as Africans. Many of the Europeans being French, the French decide to organize a counter-attack, and to send a Regiment of Paratroopers from the Foreign Legion. The movie follows the stories of Delbart, a former non-commissioned officer, who was about to go back to France with his African wife and his child, Damrémont, who was Delbart’s replacement, Bia, a Zairian doctor, and Annie, an American married to a Belgian engineer as well as Non com Legion officer Federico and the French Ambassador and the Military Attaché.Read More »

Parallel lives of two couples destined to suicide, one, and unhappiness, the other.Read More »

The new teacher at a severely administered boys’ boarding school works to positively effect the students’ lives through music.Read More »

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French director Jean Delannoy has made 40 feature films in his long as well as illustrious career. He is best known for his film “La Symphonie Pastorale” based on the book by famous French writer André Gide. However,”The little rebels” is one of his important films which deserves a wider audience.

This film is about some juvenile delinquents whose boring lives change for good when they come into contact with a kind yet practical judge. Superstar of French cinema, Jean Gabin plays the judge’s role with firm conviction.Read More »

IMDB:
Two journalists from different papers are looking for the same story. They want to know, who a group of gangsters getting young women from Europe to South America, where they are forced to work in brothels. But the gangsters have their own battels against each over, so the journalists can escape the danger, in which they’ve brought themselves.Read More »

Quote:
A living chronicle of the residents of Béguinage neighbourhood – so named because it is situated on the site of former Béguinage. Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film comprises around thirty chapters, each imbricated with the other, like so many pieces of a puzzle, or resembling a termite mound with many intersecting galleries. It takes place within the space and interstices of a day, starting at dawn and ending at night. (Boris Lehman)Read More »

Quote:
This absorbing and intimate portrait of an ordinary town doctor is characteristic of Michel Deville’s cinema: sombre, slow moving, filled with humanity, and unashamedly naturalistic.

Albert Dupontel is captivating as the film’s central character, Dr Sachs, conveying not just the sense of ennui of a man who is locked into a life he no longer appreciates, but also his yearning for some kind of release, for the fulfilment that has so far eluded him. It is an underplayed, introspective, spiritual kind of film, focused exclusively on Sachs’ daily routine and his matter-of-fact interactions with his patients. The repetitive nature of the consultations, the drab colour scheme and the dreary locations do weigh the film down by they emphasise the sense of aching emptiness that is apparently pushing Sachs towards self-destruction.Read More »

The young monarch of a kingdom situated in eastern Europe is sent to France because of his poor health status. There, he meets again with his mother who had been exiled from the kingdom.Read More »