French

Quote:
In cinematic enfant terrible Jean-Claude Brisseau’s latest outing, “A l’aventure,” the explicit eroticism of his recent oeuvre topples over into outright porn — not because of graphic sex scenes, but rather due to a plot of unalloyed ludicrousness. Granted, levitating 14th-century Flemish nuns rep an inventive step up from randy milkmen, but Brisseau’s humorless intellectual pretentions founder in very shallow waters. Skedded for an April 1 release in France, pic was pre-bought by IFC Stateside, where its Playboy-ish presentation of elegantly writhing naked women brought to ultimate orgasm, combined with disquisitions on the more cosmological Big Bang Theory, might attract horny eggheads.Read More »

All Movie.com Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
With Mon Oncle Antoine, actor Jean Duceppe established himself as Canada’s principle purveyor of eccentric relatives. Playing the uncle of 15-year-old Jacques Ganon, Duceppe acts as the lad’s confidante through the difficult coming-of-age process. The Canadian backwoods and the mining-town milieu of the 1940s are displayed to excellent nostalgic advantage in this retrospective piece from writer/director Claude Jutra (who also plays a supporting role). Though relatively unknown in the states (and often dismissed as unremarkable by below-the-border critics), Mon Oncle Antoine is regarded as a classic of the Canadian Cinema. The film won an unprecedented eight statuettes at the 1972 Canadian Film Institute Awards, including best picture and best director.Read More »

Quote:
Truffaut and Godard gave a bad name to the “quality” French cinema that preceded them. This film was one of their pet examples of what they saw as staid, boring, unadventurous cinéma de papa. Without an axe to grind, it is actually a breathtakingly bold modernization of the Faust legend, ravishing to look at with its highly stylized sets (Trauner on LSD) and containing multi-layered undercurrents, including a message on the unthinking destructiveness of youth which seems almost like a prescient reply to its New Wave critics.Read More »

FilmLinc wrote:
The late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman brings us an intellectual comedy about a mother and daughter who find themselves living together for the first time in decades. Charlotte, a freelance writer, invites her recently widowed mother, Catherine, to live in her apartment, and the ensuing clutter becomes a source of irritation and strife. When Catherine decides to revitalize her career as a piano teacher, the claustrophobia reaches new and absurd levels. Charlotte continues to pursue her desperate quest for peace as Tomorrow We Move develops into a slyly Jewish tale of rootlessness and familial burdens.Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
Two very violent men have conspired to steal a valuable solid gold image of an African deity from the museum in Mali where it is being kept. They had it smuggled out with a number of well-made but very cheap replicas. The plan was to give each of the replicas to the members of a new squash club as a diversion, and profit from the original (worth $1 million) themselves. There is a slip-up, however, and the real statue goes to one of the players. The deliveryman now has to track down all the statues, and in this antic caper comedy, that’s easier said than done. – AllmovieRead More »

Francis Vanverberghe, aka “Francis le Belge”, was shot to death in September 2000 in a bar on the Champs Elysées. An old relic of the French Connection, his death sealed the faith of the french organized crime. He was a pimp, a drug smuggler and a multifaceted man risking his life and those of others every day, until the last day. Through his daugther’s eyes, this film reveals the man behind the myth. A female look into a world where women don’t belong…Read More »

The film centres on Clara, who is happily married to a promising lawyer and lives in Paris. After their mother’s sudden death, Clara has to assume responsibility for her younger sister, Lily, whose extreme sensitivity makes her vulnerable to the outside world and prevents her from being autonomous. Living in the family home in the countryside, in the provinces, Lily has created her own unique world, which she finds difficult to leave as she has found a certain sense of balance there. But she needs protection. Clara, whose life has taken shape away from her sister, has to make some choices and learns that normality is a very subjective idea.Read More »

The story takes place in Germany at the beginning of the last century. Edouard, the wealthy baron and Charlotte, who had loved each other since their youth, could only marry after both became widowed. Edouard invites his childhood friend, Captain Otto to manage the reconstruction work of the castle.Read More »

A film about the early part of the French Revolution, shown from the eyes of the citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course, the king Louis XVI, each showing their own small problems.Read More »