French

  • Jean-Claude Brisseau – Que le diable nous emporte (2018)

    2011-2020EroticaFranceJean-Claude BrisseauThriller

    Quote:
    Camille, a beautiful fourty-year-old woman, finds a mobile phone that Suzy lost in a station. When Suzy calls her own number, they arrange to meet at Camille’s place so that Suzy can get her phone back. During this encounter, Suzy also meets Clara, Camille’s girlfriend. But they are interrupted by Fabrice, Suzy’s rejected lover, who is drunk and tries to take Suzy back to his place. While Clara takes Suzy to hide in the apartment above theirs, where “Tonton,” a strange old man with a love of yoga, lives, Camille tries to calm down Fabrice. Little by little she consoles him. This is when strange interactions start to occur: Camille becomes passionately involved with Fabrice, while Tonton initiates Suzy into meditation and levitation. Little by little, everyone finds their own path toward happiness, their own place in the game of feelings.Read More »

  • Jean-Pierre Melville – Bob le flambeur (1956)

    Drama1951-1960CrimeFranceJean-Pierre Melville

    Bob, a middle-aged gambler and thief, plans a complicated heist. He deals with a number of underworld characters while planning the robbery of the Deauville Casino. Bob eventually hires a gang that includes an ace safecracker. Unfortunately for them, Bob’s nemesis, an old cop who Bob once saved from death, is tipped off after a money-hungry croupier’s wife betrays them. The police are waiting when the gang begins the seemingly impossible task of robbing the casino vault. Meanwhile in the casino, Bob starts to gamble.Read More »

  • Alfred Hitchcock – Aventure malgache (1944)

    1941-1950Alfred HitchcockShort FilmUnited KingdomWar

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    The Moliere players are in their dressing room, getting ready to go on set. One actor mentions to another that his face reminds him of an opportunist turncoat he knew when he was in the Resistance. He then relates the adventure that he had in the Resistance, running an illegal radio station and dodging the Nazis.Read More »

  • Paul Meyer – Déjà s’envole la fleur maigre AKA From the Branches Drops the Withered Blossom (1960)

    1951-1960ArthouseBelgiumDramaPaul Meyer

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    A diverse group of people from different nationalities struggle to earn a living in a Belgian coal-mining town. Hoping to find a better life, the dreams are shattered when coal prices hit an all-time low and production wipes out the main industry and livelihood of the workers.

    Quote:
    What was supposed to be a documentary to show the progressive nature of Belgium in regards to its immigration policy, turned out to be something completely the opposite. Struck by what he saw, the director decided to take the funds issued to him by the Belgian government to make a film which showed life as it really was in the mining region of Borinage. The promise of a better life for the immigrants, which the Belgian government wanted to show, was nowhere to be found in this film. Instead, we look in on reality of life in Borinage, with staggering unemployment, and a feeling by many of displacement and homesickness.Read More »

  • Jacques Audiard – Un Prophète AKA A Prophet (2009)

    Drama2001-2010CrimeFranceJacques Audiard

    Quote:
    Malik El Djebena is just 19 when he is sent to prison for six years. Immediately, he falls in with a group of Corsican prisoners who rule the roost. From his experiences with these hardened criminals, Malik learns some invaluable lessons and sets about building his own network…Read More »

  • Alain Tanner – Jonas et Lila, à demain (1999)

    1991-2000Alain TannerDramaSwitzerland

    A fake sequel to Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000 (1976). Jonas is now indeed 25, has studied cinema and is living with his black lover, Lila, in Geneva, Switzerland. Between disillusions and the loss of ideals, macjobs and the quest for art, Jonas and Lila try to find their way in life.Read More »

  • Chris Marker – Description d’un combat AKA Description of a Struggle (1960)

    1951-1960Chris MarkerDocumentaryFrance

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    Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Marker’s documentary film, Description d’un combat/Description of a Struggle, examines the condition and circumstances of the young state of Israel and its citizens. The film was made at the time when the Israeli state was 12 years old, and borrows its title from Kafka’s short story. It explores the historical, social, cultural and ethical contexts at the heart of Israel’s existence, and the impact of the tragic and not so distant past on the collective psyche of the nation.Read More »

  • Yves Boisset – Espion, leve-toi (1982)

    1981-1990Film NoirFrancePoliticsYves Boisset

    Sébastien Grenier,a secret agent eliminates all his rivals in order to decipher who has killed some of his associates.

    Sebastien Grenier (Lino Ventura), a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich and cultivating an on-going relationship with Anna Gretz (Krystyna Janda), a German teaching at the university. Then his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative (Michel Piccoli) to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight by a gang of terrorists. Sebastien starts to work but is immediately put off by the fact that his contacts are being murdered before he can reach them. As he gets deeper and deeper into the case, he comes to realize that he is being used in an elaborate political scheme, a scheme that leads to the death of Anna and a vow to get the killers who have now ruined what is left of his life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Raymond Depardon – 12 jours AKA 12 Days (2017)

    2011-2020DocumentaryFranceRaymond Depardon

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    Quote:
    A young woman stares across a table at the judge who is reviewing her case. Her gaze is both searingly intense and curiously blank. Holding herself preternaturally still, muscles tensed against the turmoil of emotions, she pleads to see the two-year-old daughter who has been removed from her care. “Not all the time, I accept that. But just to change her diaper, to love her.” If there’s a more achingly sad moment in any film of the 2017 Cannes film festival, it’s hard to imagine what it could be. For 12 Jours, veteran documentarian Raymond Depardon (Modern Life, Journal de France) turns his lens on to the desperate, broken souls of the patients who have been involuntarily committed into the care of a Lyon psychiatric institution.Read More »

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