French

Follows a handful of characters living in Algiers in the wake of a civil war that lasted throughout the 1990s.Read More »

Quote:
Simon secretly loves Camille. Camille, due to a misunderstanding, falls for Marc Duveyrier. Marc, a handsome realtor, who’s also Simon’s boss, is trying to sell an apartment to Odile Lalande, Camille’s sister. Odile really wants this apartment, despite the silent disapproval of her husband, Claude. Claude, somewhat wan in character, finds it hard to stomach the reappearance, after many years, of Nicolas. Nicolas, an old friend of Odile’s becomes the confidant of Simon… The dialogue is in part made up of extracts of French hit songs, sung in situation by the actors.Read More »

Synopsis
The Private Life of an Actor was the English-language title bestowed upon Sacha Guitry’s first postwar feature, Le Comédien. The film recounts the life and loves of Guitry’s actor/father Lucien, with Guitry playing both himself and his dad. Most of the story takes place either on-stage or in the dressing room, satirically emphasizing the wide schism between an actor’s public and private life. Adding to the Pirandellian ambience of the project is Guitry’s wife, Catherine (Lana Marconi), cast as one of Lucien’s various mistresses.Read More »

“I dreamed of a new encyclopedia … “. Sacha Guitry attended, “according to his tastes” the greatest personalities of his time. He filmed “in their attitudes the most familiar, whenever that was possible.” We see André Antoine, Sarah Bernhardt, Edgar Degas, Anatole France, Lucien Guitry, Octave Mirbeau, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir at his side with his young son Claude Renoir, Henri-Robert, Auguste Rodin, Edmond Rostand, Camille Saint-Saëns . The silent version of 1915 lasted 22 minutes. This finall version redesigned in 1952, lasts 44 minutes, with plans Guitry in his office, and that this comment, shot by Frederic Rossif.Read More »

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Vain clothing buyer Hugo meets beautiful Myriam on the subway and pursues her, discovering to his delight that she’s a prostitute. The crafty Myriam, of course, has more in mind for their encounter than smug Hugo bargained for. Love Rites turns the sexual tables with perverse exactitude.Read More »

It’s firstly the portrait of an area, France’s north coast between Dunkirk and Calais, where Olivier Derousseau lives and works: ransacked landscapes, port installations, plumes of smoke from the chimneys of petrochemical facilities, blown by the wind… It’s also a musical suite in five parts, a kind of minimalist blues lovingly composed in memory of time and people that have disappeared: the constant bass of juggernauts on the motorway, the percussion of the wind in the microphones, all the world’s sounds blending into a repetitive guitar thread. And it’s a melancholy meditation on the stuff of days, the flesh of the future, on irretrievable erasure and the traces waiting and hoping to be saved.Read More »

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Four wedding anniversaries serve to chronicle the beginning and end of a thirty-year marriage, in this tragicomic French film by director Claude Lelouche, best known to U.S. filmgoers for his Oscar-winning film A Man and A Woman. Henri (Rufus) and Janne (Bulle Ogier) are first seen on their wedding night as they hesitantly enter their new country house which faces a concrete bunker. They would really have preferred something in the city, but this is what they can afford. A resistance group overruns the house in order to take out the Germans in the bunker, and as a result of this raid Henri becomes forever associated with the resistance. Read More »

Courgette (Zucchini) is an intriguing nickname for a 9-year-old boy. Although his unique story is surprisingly universal. After his mother’s disappearance, Courgette is befriended by a police officer Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home filled with other orphans his age. At first he struggles to find his place in this strange, at times, hostile environment. Yet with Raymond’s help and his new-found friends, Courgette eventually learns to trust and might find true love.Read More »

One of the rare Western films to take advantage of the spectacular setting of the temples at Angkor in Cambodia, L’Oiseau de Paradis is directed by Marcel Camus. The tale itself is relatively simple. A beautiful dancer has two admirers – one is a young worker whom she has only met by accident, and the other is an unscrupulous businessman. The worker had been training as a Buddhist monk and as his interest in the dancer and the businessman’s pursuit of the woman develop, the dancer and the former monk end up at the archaeological site of Angkor. There, Buddhists still worship in the temples and it is in this setting that the businessman kills them both. Reincarnation being accepted as truth in Cambodia, the story implies that the ill-fated young couple would be joined together in the future.Read More »