French

Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
Coup Pour Coup is a film about a worker’s strike at a textile plant, and is written and enacted by the actual striking workers. This film was a collaborative and collective effort. Videotapes of upcoming scenes were discussed by the workers, and camera angles as well as dramatic refinements were agreed on before any film was exposed. Given that the film presents the worker’s point of view and is a largely amateur effort, reviewers found it surprisingly effective as a dramatic piece. One interesting feature of the film, and of the strike itself, is that it was organized and led by women. While there had been male union leaders, they were bypassed or ousted for their lack of leadership, understanding, or negotiating skills.Read More »

A few days of a dandyish French intellectual in his late 20s named Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who’s living with and supported by his lover, Marie (Bernadette Lafont); she’s in her mid-30s and runs a small boutique. In the first scene he borrows a neighbor’s car and tracks down a former girlfriend, Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), who’s just started a new semester at the Sorbonne, and tries to persuade her to marry him, only to discover that she’s just agreed to marry someone else. (We and Alexandre briefly glimpse Gilberte with her husband, played by Eustache, toward the end of the film, in the liquor section of a department store.) After hanging out with an equally idle friend (Jacques Renard) at the Deux Magots cafe, Alexandre follows a young woman after she leaves a nearby table, asks for her phone number, and scores; the remainder of the film is devoted to his courting of her.Read More »

Quote:
Mostly talking heads interviewed about the state violence they witnessed or endured during the month of May and June 68 in Paris. Nurses, students in medicine or else, passers-by, journalists, a psychiatrist, etc…Read More »

Synopsis
A seminal Quebec erotic film about a curious girl who leaves her convent to explore the Montréal hippy scene, becomes a prostitute and meets her true love who doesn’t know she’s a hooker, that started erotic film genre in Canada.Read More »

Synopsis
He can knock out an amazing speech on the American soul to dumbfounded schoolchildren, meddle in his fellow citizens’ lives, or make his 18-year-old daughter swear that never would she leave the family home. This is Simon Wolberg, mayor of a small provincial town, madly in love with his wife, an overwhelming father and provocative son! This man bears his family’s obsession, which drives him to put these ties to the test, verify their strength and fragility…Read More »

The Woods is a deep investigation of both people and place. Whether it’s Gay men crossings for sex in the rain, out a hermit who makes his home deep in a remote section of the park, everywhere humans are busily going about their businessRead More »

Devastating essay on exile, Là-bas (2006) is a crucial moment of Akerman’s life when she herself was confined to a rental apartment in Tel Aviv unable to bridge the threshold to the outside world, overwhelmed by the flooding of traumatic thoughts, fears and vulnerabilities awakened by her family’s history with the death camps. Impossible not to think of her last work and of the reasons why she left when watching Là-bas today, which was also shot in video and similarly takes the shape of a personal, cloistered chamber piece.
(Based on Andréa Picard’s article)Read More »

Synopsis:
Brigitte lives with her boyfriend, Daniel, who is on the run having escaped from prison for a series of armed robbery offences. Brigitte is a few months’ from giving birth when the couple’s home is raided by the police. At the time, Daniel is involved in a violent robbery which goes wrong – a policeman is killed and he is arrested. Both Daniel and Brigitte end up in prison, although Brigitte’s sentence is reduced to a few months. Daniel however must remain in prison for 18 years. Realising that this will destroy her husband, Brigitte resolves to rescue him in a daring prison escape involving a helicopter…Read More »

Mr. Pezzella (Toto) owns and operates a luxury clothing store very well established. By its nature, but does not like and does not consider it right to pay taxes and therefore uses a tax consultant (Louis de Funès) to be able to evade more calmly. Unfortunately for the cavalier Pezzella the Guardia di Finanza decides to send an inspection, in the person of Marshal Topponi (Aldo Fabrizi) and Brigadier Bardi. They start attempts Pezzella (guided by the advice of dishonest and ineffective tax advisor) to get into dell’inossidabile marshal to try to bribe him, and sometimes openly declaring with excessive dose of servility.Read More »