Claire Simon portrays an important time for any individual, from 16 to 18 years of age.
Set in the Paris suburbs in high school (for those lucky enough to go), teenagers chat after and even during class, sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench, looking at the city below them.
Claire Simon sets up a cinematic dialog with the teens, speaking about their personal history, their family, but also passions and loneliness.Read More »
summary from filmsdefrance.com :
“For a year, they have let themselves be seen and filmed – a filmmaker and an actor, the president and his first minister: Alain Cavalier and Vincent Lindon. Now you can see them, both in real life and in the fiction which they have created together… “
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“Mimi isn’t a star, she’s just someone. I wanted to make a film about her life. That is, about the life of… someone. I wanted to follow as closely as possible the singularity of a real life in order to encounter its own particular romance, fantasy. Things that I’d discover when filming. In Nice, her hometown, or in the mountains, drifting between familiar and unfamiliar places where I filmed her, I waited for this story as yet unknown to me to come back to Mimi and for her to recount the scenes that make up her personal novel.”
Claire SimonRead More »
Autour de Jacques Baratier & Sweet and Sour
By Elliott Stein – Tuesday, April 14th 2009 – Village Voice
(Jacques Baratier, 1963). This fascinating nearly plot-less feature from eccentric Baratier, a director hardly known in America, is a quirky riff on cinema verite, with guest appearances from a dazzling array of European luminaries from the 60s including Simone Signoret, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Monica Vitti, and Roger Vadim. It was shot by the great Henri Decae, cinematographer of The Four Hundred Blows, Plein Soleil and La Ronde.Read More »
Alice is a successful barrister who lives with her stay-at-home boyfriend Nicholas. When their mutual friend Juliette splits up with her partner Michel, Nicholas takes solace in the fact that his relationship with Alice is a stable one. He does not realise that Alice has been seeing another man, a handsome sports photographer, Gaspard, for the past few months. When he discovers the truth, Nicholas goes to extreme lengths to gain Gaspard’s confidence, with the intention of sabotaging the affair…Read More »
Synopsis:
Fed-up with the inefficiency of the Marseille police, Paris sends drug-enforcement specialist Philippe Jordan to Marseille. He’s supposed to assist the local law enforcement dismantle the drug networks, especially mobster Sauveur Mecacci’s network. So far, Mecacci has managed to elude capture or successful prosecution by local authorities. However, Inspector Philippe Jordan’s unorthodox law enforcement style may prove efficient against Mecacci if Jordan receives a free-hand green-light from the Marseille police bosses and if he survives the frequent attempts against his life, of course. Once at work, Inspector Philippe Jordan’s rough style creates mayhem in the city of Marseille and triggers numerous complaints from the Mayor’s Office, from outraged citizens and from the lawyers of a scared Mecacci who wants to see Jordan dead. These things, in turn, tell Jordan he’s on the right track.Read More »
Birds’ Island? A small veterinary centre specialized in ornithology. Social services have assigned Antonin this job with the aim of re-inserting him into the work-force after illness and isolation, leaving him both unskilled and lacking motivation. He’ll be taking over for Paul, who will soon be leaving for retirement after years of raising mice to be fed to the centre’s predatory birds. Sandrine and Emily are both veterinarians; they take care of birds, in particular one traumatized owl who has to learn how to live again.Read More »
Plot: Based on a novel by Frederic Dard who also co-scripted with director Jean-Pierre Mocky, this satire on French politics is centered around an official whose earlier rise to power had some sordid aspects that are about to be uncovered by the death of his uncle. While he is trying to contain any potential scandal, the man becomes enamored of the daughter of his uncle’s maid. This new romance inspires him to forget worries about a public image and focus on a new life — not any easy objective when unsavory friends and foes have their own agendas in mind.Read More »
With Les Trottoirs De Saturne, Hugo Santiago returns to Aquileia, the fiction city of his classic debut Invasion, but here explores the fate of its exiles in Paris. Drawing extensivly from his own experience in Paris where he relocated from Argentina to make films (first as assistant to Robert Bresson then to produce his own films) and then became an exile, unable to return, as Argentina was overtaken by a miliarty dictatorship during his abscence.Read More »