French

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Trial of Joan of Arc opens to the austere, fragmented image of the hurried footsteps of an indistinguishable figure dressed in a black robe. Carrying a parchment into the vestibule of a chapel, an unidentified woman delivers a personal statement on her daughter’s religious upbringing and death at the hands of the church, visibly supported by two sympathetic advocates. The somber and official tone of the grieving mother’s testament is subsequently reflected in the demeanor of the accused, Jeanne d’Arc (Florence Delay), who is first introduced through a shot of her manacled hands as she places them on an opened Bible before beginning her sworn testimony in front of the presiding judge, Bishop Cauchon (Jean-Claude Fourneau). Read More »

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In Paris of the not-too-distant future, a mysterious new disease named STBO is killing young people who make love without emotional involvement. A serum has been developed, but it is locked away in an office block, out of the reach of those who need it most. An American woman blackmails two aging crooks, Marc and Hans, into stealing the STBO serum. Marc recruits Alex, a rebellious teenager whose father worked for him before getting himself killed. Although Alex has a girlfriend, Lise, he ends up falling for Marc’s young lover, Anna…Read More »

Synopsis
Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José’s studies easier…
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Based on the fantastic book by Michel Houellebecq :

OUR hero in this gloriously dark piece is a depressed, cynical, sexually obsessed systems engineer moping through life perked up only by the fun he has putting others into a similarly suicidal state. When he is sent on a work trip to train up clients to use his company’s software he is forced to travel with the slimy Raphael, an unreconstruted male bursting with such sheer desperation that he is destined never to have success with the women he chases…Read More »

Five and the Skin (French: Cinq et la peau) is a 1982 French drama film directed by Pierre Rissient. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.

A man, Ivan, returns to Manila, apparently without specific purpose. At the discretion of his wandering and its meetings, the writer ambulate in the fascinating mega city in search of its past and of the meaning of his existence.Read More »

AMG :
“French director Alain Cavalier ventures into pseudo-documentary territory with his 2002 film René. Purportedly concocted as a means for Cavalier to help actor Joël Lefrançois lose weight while not making a straight documentary about Lefrançois’ ordeal, René instead focuses on fictional children’s theater actor René (Lefrançois) from provincial France who is undergoing a bit of a personal crisis. Having just been abandoned by his girlfriend, René decides dieting is the only way to win back her love.Read More »

Before Le Pont du Nord Rivette films Paris s’en va, a short film of approximately 25 minutes. He works with the same actors and the same technical team on both films. Henry Chapier who produced the short: “At the beginning of the ’80s nobody was interested in Rivette’s highly imaginative project Le Pont du Nord. Therefore Rivette came up with a kind of ‘transposition’ of the themes of Le Pont du Nord in the shape of Paris s’en va. Just like a painter in the Renaissance who does a sketch for a future project.”Read More »

Antoine Chapelot, a bachelor in his forties, works in a hardware shop and lives with his mother. Everything changes when he meets Caroline, a teenaged charmer who unwittingly helps him to organize a lucrative real estate scam. While he is on a roll, Antoine decides to pursue the career of a swindler a bit further by persuading a rich family that they had a long-lost American uncle who has just died a millionaire.

Like Deville’s best films, this has an eccentric relationship at the heart of the plot, vertiginous cutting and a dance-like fluidity of texture.Read More »

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A young woman visiting Paris, misses the last bus home, finds herself stranded on the outskirts of Paris. Entering a local club, she meets a troubled drug addict.Read More »