French

A dispassionate and bedraggled middle-aged actor named Paul (Lou Castel) bids a polite farewell to the lady of the house, Hélène (Dominique Reymond) before setting out into the street, accompanied by his solemn and equally impassive host Markus (Jean-Pierre Léaud) to the local convenience store to purchase a pack of cigarettes before saying goodbye to his old friend for the evening. Seeking to break the pensive silence of their evening walk, Paul steers their idle conversation into a conduit for personal reflection on Markus’ seemingly life-altering moment when he first met Hélène, a question that Markus – perhaps betraying an insecurity over the tenuous state of his relationship with her – responds to the question with initial, guarded skepticism, before proceeding to tell the genial anecdote of Hélène’s forwardness in her suggestive, inviting remark that had serve to validate their coy, thinly veiled pursuit of mutual seduction during their second encounter. However, a succeeding conversation between the couple reveals Hélène’s increasing apathy towards the cultivation of their relationship as Markus attempts to elicit a validation of her love for him to no avail, disguising their failed, awkward intimacy through the mundane rituals of the kitchen and random comments about the war.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
Amidst the impersonal hubbub of Paris’ Orly Airport, strangers meet, secrets are revealed, and sudden intimacies develop in this beautifully observed mosaic of lives in transit.

REVIEW
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Loosely-linked scenes in the hall of Paris’ Orly airport. A man and a woman, both French but living abroad, meet each other by chance. He has just decided to move back to Paris and she longs to return there. A mother and her almost adult son are going to the funeral of her ex-husband, his father. A young couple is embarking on its first big trip. And a woman reads a letter from the man she has recently left. They are all waiting for their flight.Read More »

from AMG
After laboring in obscurity for several years, French filmmaker Claude Sautet finally struck a responsive chord with moviegoers in Les Choses de la Vie. The plot isn’t much: the hero, businessman Michel Piccoli, must choose between his wife and his mistress, two women whom he loves with equal fervor. It is what Sautet does with the material that lifts the film above the ordinary. The director puts the central character’s plight in context with his ongoing concerns over his job, his income, and his relationship with his family. In Choses de la Vie Sautet has nothing but the warmest feelings for his characters, which results in more three-dimensionality that might normally be expected in so banal a plotline.Read More »

Do you still remember how, long ago, we trained our thoughts? Most often we’d start from a dream. We wondered how, in total darkness, colours of such intensity could emerge within us. In a soft, low voice. Saying great things. Surprising, deep and accurate matters. Image and words. Like a bad dream written on a stormy night. Under western eyes. The lost paradises. War is here.Read More »

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Set in central France, the film follows French resistance fighters who press the battle on the Germans. Along the way, they break into a prison and release some German prisoners, but discover there may be a spy deliberately planted to flush them all out.Read More »

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Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organized in part by the royal cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…Read More »

By 1993, cinema had become a language unto itself; it was a language that was made up of not only words, but also sounds and images. As cinema history continues, the language has expanded time after time due to the talents and experiments of master filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard. All throughout his vast, decade spanning career, Godard has made film upon film, and with each decade of Godard that passes by, the more radical his style becomes. If ever there was a filmmaker that I could say took the cinematic language to Joycean heights, that filmmaker is, without question, Godard. With “Oh, Woe Is Me”, Godard practically makes the cinematic equivalent of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” by crafting a masterpiece that works as a perplexing jigsaw puzzle, one injected with all kinds of clever jokes as well as sections of poetic beauty. (From IMDb)Read More »

Julie, a young coloured women from Rose Hill on the Island of Mauritius, arrives in Switzerland to marry Marcel whom she has only seen on a photograph. But the marriage is a failure. Julie who feels totally lost is looked after by Jean who has fallen in love with her. From now on she lives in the home of Jean’s grand-mother, who is called Jeanne. She is an old, handicapped lady and Julie waits on her. Julie becomes pregnant…Read More »

Documentary on post-Nouvelle Vague directors with Benoît Jacquot, André Téchiné, Jacques Doillon, Chantal Akerman, Werner Schroeter, Juliette Berto, Leos Carax and footage of Jean Eustache.
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