French

Synopsis:
The Bear and the Fox, or What Friends Are for:

‘The bear, played by Philippe Noiret, is the conductor of a music hall orchestra, a kind hearted soul, always ready to help the next person if need arises. The fox, played by Jean Rochefort, is a trumpeter in the bear’s orchestra and his friend since childhood. After an evening’s performance a young woman enters their common dressing room, draws a revolver and starts shooting at the fox. She cries out that he has ruined her sister but is far too nervous to aim straight and causes no real harm. After she has run away, the fox gets into hiding, asking the bear to find the woman he swears he has never seen before. He makes a list of all his lovers, and it is a very long list indeed.
The (strictly monogamous) bear travels through all of France in the quest of the woman whose life the fox has ruined, in the hope that the murderous sister can be captured and the fox can go on with his life. He meets all kind of womenfolk and learns a lot about his friend who is a far more dubious and amoral person than he had thought previously. Read More »

This is a highly experimental French film consisting of no more than 23 camera shots, total. It resembles nothing so much as one of Warhol’s earlier films, except that it is more episodic. Nico of the Velvet Underground portrays a different woman in each of the episodes. The first three concern her “rescues” from Death Valley, Egypt and Iceland by a young man to whom she eventually says “stay away from me.” Following that, she recites from various texts in German, French and English, makes various gnomic observations and encounters various men in various guises. All the men are played either by director Philippe Garrel or Pierre Clementi.Read More »

In 1995 a then well known Québec theatre director named Robert Lepage made his first feature film, Le Confessional which, to my mind, remains one of the most impressive debut Canadian films ever. An intellectual and polyglot, Lepage carried his theatrical self-assurance over to the sphere of cinema without compromising cinematic language, and in fact expresses his ideas through formal means in the manner of an assured auteur. Thematically the film is not much of a stretch for a Québec film, centering on one of the constant themes in Québec cinema: sibling-parent tension. In this case, as in many other important Québec films, the tension revolves around an estranged father-son relationship [to name just a few Québec films dealing with troubled mother/father and daughter/son relationships, Les Bons Débarras (Francis Mankiewicz, 1980), Un Zoo la Nuit (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1987), Les Invasions Barbares (Denys Arcand, 2003), and La Vie avec mon Père (Sébastien Rose, 2005)]. What makes the film impressive is not the story but its formal treatment across two time frames, weaving the past and the present and the personal and the historical.Read More »

Quote:
Night after night a watchman hunts for a man who has been repainting the town in the color red.Read More »

Quote:
When the young Jeanne finds out that she could have mistakenly been exchanged from her cradle with another newborn (the son of a famous piano player), she decides to contact this family. All this will lead to the discovery of dark family secrets and the unveiling of the misdeeds and the hypocrisy of the French upper class members.Read More »

Salomé is 69-year-old and doesn’t want to grow old in a society that pays little attention to elderly people; thus, she has organized her disappearance. She plans her last evening in detail, as she thinks about the last time she will have sexual intercourse. With the held of Sandra, a filmmaker, Salomé organizes a casting to choose the person with whom she will make love for the last time. But, as she abandons herself to pleasures, she discovers something new: her last time will also be a first time, just like every end is also a new beginning.Read More »

Quote:
Guiraudie’s first film concerns two young men engaged in a favorite pastime: hanging out and talking. Specifically, they wait in the square of a small town for a third: the potential funder of their proposed magazine.Read More »

Synopsis (possible spoilers):
‘Vincent, a stunt pilot, is acquitted of murdering his wife and her lover. However, a few years later, L’Elegant, the Judge in the case, comes to blackmail him. The Judge’s nephew, Paul, is having trouble with his wife and they demand that Vincent kill her. The Judge, a confirmed bachelor, takes Paul and Vincent on the road to search for Paul’s wife Marie. The three men get on well together, and spend their time discussing their relationship with women.’
– Will Gilbert (IMDb)Read More »

Les Inrockuptibles wrote:
A 4-year-old child loses her mother. From this violent and irremediable situation, Jacques Doillon builds with Ponette a relentless film on pain and confinement. Contrary to the usual creamy imagery, he recreates with force and truth the magical and cruel world of childhood, a secret universe where adults have no place.Read More »