French

From the Film Reference Library:
One of the most controversial films in Canadian history, On est au coton is an examination of the exploitation and repression of textile workers in Quebec. This National Film Board production, more social inquiry than documentary, contrasts the lives of textile workers and their bosses and places their situation in an historical context by employing footage from old films about the industry. (The title is a pun which literally means “we are in cotton,” but it also connotes “we are fed up.”)Read More »

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Claire (Virginie Vitry) is a chic young Parisian woman married to a somewhat older husband, Jean (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze). As this 28-minute trifle opens, she leaves her husband playing baroque music at the piano, telling him she is off to see her sister, Solange. In reality she meets her lover, Claude (Jean-Claude Brialy) at his apartment; after some idle chatter and love-making he tells her a story of the shriveled heads that the Jivaro indians used to give their lovers as tokens of affection but as she shivers in disgust, he gives her a mink instead. How will they hide it from her husband though?Read More »

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CANNES — Dishing out another slew of colorfully anarchistic sight gags, Belgium-based trio Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy are back with their latest Keystone-style romp, The Fairy (La Fee). Firmly grounded in the work of Chaplin, Keaton and especially Jacques Tati, to which they add a few welcome socio-political twists, these talented writers-directors-actors should have their wish granted with further arthouse exposure following an opening bow in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
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Set in the gloomy port city of Le Havre, the film kicks off with its most successfully extended number when we’re introduced to a hotel night clerk, Dom (Abel), who’s pleasant soiree in front of the TV is interrupted with the arrival of an English tourist (Philippe Martz), and then of a svelte, shoeless woman (Gordon), who claims she’s a fairy and grants Dom three wishes. Like any self-respecting Frenchman living outside of Paris, Dom asks for a scooter and an endless supply of gas, and though he gets his wish, what he really wants is the love of the fairy herself.Read More »

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A girl who is a body artist fall in love with a director. But the man had a traffic accident and dead. This film express the feeling of love and lose.Read More »

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On the centenary of Auguste Rodin’s death, Jacques Doillon delivers a useful educational tool for the armchair traveler too lazy to go to a museum. Or read a book. “Rodin” could also be watched as prep work before going to the Musée Rodin, a partner in the film’s production. What it’s not so good for is a cinema audience expecting more than a plodding two-hour lesson in the artist’s life. Given Doillon’s recent films (“Love Battles”), one could have imagined this would have more flesh pounding than clay kneading, but no, his “Rodin” is a meticulously reverential, handsomely lit and very dull biopic about the 19th century’s most revolutionary sculptor. Given the artist’s cachet among culture vultures, it’s likely some art houses will book a limited run, but reviews won’t be positive.Read More »

The McBee family has erected a government over a future ‘colony’, that looks like a run-down Paris divided into sectors by the Berlin Wall. All male family members suffer from a mysterious disease and are in urgent need of organ transplants. The perfect donor, Tykho Moon, probably has been killed in a fire, but according to rumours he’s still alive. Although assassins stalk the family members, the McBees start a hunt for Tykho. Trying to escape the dragnet, Alex, a sculptor, meets Lena, a killer posing as a whore. (imdb).Read More »

Penny Patterson, an American psychology student, began an experiment in primate communication in the early 1970s using a young zoo gorilla named Koko, who was loaned to Penny for the experiment. Due to a philosophical predisposition to consider that “humanizing” animals is wrong, and alarmed at the increasing publicity over the experiments, the zoo took back the gorilla, which by then had learned over three hundred signs and showed, to many observers, an almost human comprehension of her condition. This French documentary explores the experiments, the circumstances of Koko’s being withdrawn from them, and the question of the gorilla’s “civil rights,” if any.

– All Movie GuideRead More »

Synopsis
A young woman sets the table for her wedding anniversary celebration. Her husband is stuck in Paris traffic. The few remaining errands he has to make only delay him more and more.

Une jeune femme prépare la table pour fêter son anniversaire de mariage. Le mari se trouve coincé dans les encombrements parisiens. Les quelques arrêts pour les derniers achats ne font que le retarder davantage.
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Pierre Rissient isn’t famous among French public, but he’s a respected critic who has, over many years of serving as consultant to the Cannes Film Festival and other high profile cinema showcases, pushed then unknown and now famous film directors–Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood and Hou Hsiaohsien, among them–into the spotlight. He also has a long experience in the industry, assisted Godard in the making of ‘A bout de souffle’, produced Rohmer’s ‘L’ Anglaise et le duc’, among other things.Read More »