It’s early summer and Agathe is back in France, at home in Montreuil. She has to get over her husband’s death and return to her work as a film director. The unexpected arrival at her house of a couple of Icelanders, a sea lion and a neighbour that she has always desired yet never vanquished will give Agathe the strength to get her life back on track…Read More »
In the streets of Paris, men and women walk, meet, discuss, avoid each other in the midst of eager traffic.
A film composed with the rushes of Joli Mai unused today destroyed.Read More »
Voice Over :
Féodor Atkine
Slide show on Raphael’s drawings, produced for the Grand Palais.
A film that begins with: “The Madonnas of the Comberian period still have a very Peruginesque layout” can only belong on this blog, and so much the worse if it is an improbable film without credits and practically without trace. An order that didn’t come through? Notes for a future film? A personal exercise? We don’t really know. In any case, here is our Rohmer in ecstasy in front of Raphael’s sketches, filming them head-on in an attempt to bring out their construction, evolution and beauty. A Jesus on his stomach, then standing up, and our guy is as excited as a flea, which translates into a sepulchral tone of voice (ah this Limousin accent!) and an array of learned words and old-fashioned expressions.Read More »
Synopsis:
‘Mario di Donati, a deserter from the Italian army, lives in Paris under a false name with Germaine, his French lover. When the latter learns about his hidden past, she feels hurt by Mario’s lack of trust in her and she distances herself from him. In despair, Mario surrenders to the law but, at the time of trial, he runs away to join the woman he loves…’
– Guy BellingerRead More »
Synopsis
Erich von Stroheim portrays a world-class charlatan who, freshly back from a 1938 one million dollar New York scam, (straightening, in blackface under the name of Carter, the hair of Harlem residents), resurfaces in Paris under the name of Korlick to sell shares in a development of the seaside of a yet to be created sea in the Sahara.Read More »
Plot (imdb) : Jean-Gaspard Deburau is a very successful mime, the most famous in his category. One day, he falls head over heels in love with Marie Duplessis, a courtesan better known as “La Dame aux Camélias”. But he soon realizes that he is but a number in her long list of lovers. He will find comfort in devoting his time teaching his art to his son Charles. Written by Guy BellingerRead More »
“An ecological parable about the pleasures of storytelling,
capitalist greed and our relationship with nature…”
Synopsis:
Éléonore’s car breaks down somewhere in Brittany and she ends up stranded at a lakeside campsite. Legend has it that a giant fish has lived there since biblical times, and that it once fed Saint Corentin. With stoic curiosity and a parabolic microphone, Éléonore investigates the secret lives of the lake and the long-term campers. Her personal diary becomes a portrait of her new eccentric neighbours – the single mother with the chicken farm and the ageing cowboy from Ohio who records unrequited messages for his daughter every day.Read More »
Quote:
Donkey Skin takes its story from the fairy tale of the same name, as told by 17th-century French writer Charles Perrault. A variant of Cinderella, the tale begins with a king (Jean Marais), who is well-loved and very happy, as he has a beautiful wife (Catherine Deneuve) and a beautiful daughter (Deneuve again), not to mention a literal moneymaker in a donkey that doesn’t excrete the usual fertilizer, but instead gold and jewels. The king’s fortunes take a turn for the worse when he loses his wife to a sudden illness. Before she dies, he makes the unwise promise to only marry a woman more beautiful than she. When the king’s ministers force him to undertake another marriage to produce a male heir, the only woman who surpasses the dead queen in beauty is…his daughter. Being that this is a fairy tale, things work a bit differently, and the usual opposition to incest is brushed over fairly easily. The most amusing bit comes when the king asks his wise man whether the marriage would be wrong, and the wise man responds that all little girls want to marry their father, and that if the wise man had a daughter, he’d want to marry her. So there!Read More »
“Niki de Saint Phalle’s take on the fairy tale is a visionary exploration of female desire
that unfurls according to the logic of dreams and poetry…” ~Lincoln Film Center
Synopsis:
Camélia drifts off to sleep wondering what it would be like to be grown-up.She awakens in a colourful dream-world run by a dragon, and now,she must open the Seven Doors of Mystery to find love.Read More »