French

Review
“dvdtimes.co.uk” wrote:
Few of the characteristics that can be associated with Jean Paul Civyrac can be seen in his first film, a 14 minute short feature. Inevitably, considering its short length, the film is necessarily very much a character study, since there is little room to develop much in the way of a plot. Luc (Jean Descanvelle) is a young man who is determined to do things his own way and consequently conflicts with everyone he meets. He doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks, isn’t interested in any advice they might have to give and is not interested in assistance from friends or family. He is going to do things his way, and do whatever it takes to make money, which is mainly performing sexual favours for any man who is willing to pay for it.Read More »

An erotic drama about a woman facing her 30th birthday who looks back at her life growing-up with her grandmother, crazy mother and her over-indulgence with men, sex and alcohol.Read More »

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Civeyrac moved to making films in Digital Video in 1999, with Les Solitaires, a small, almost theatrical chamber piece that was well suited to the medium, making the use of one main location and a handful of actors. The film takes place in a small Parisian apartment that Pierre (Jean-Claude Montheil) hasn’t left since the death of his wife Madeleine (Mireille Roussel). Wallowing in his solitary misery, without even a phone in the apartment, Pierre is unable to get thoughts of his wife out of his head, seeing her in his restless dreams, where he contemplates suicide in order to rejoin her.Read More »

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“Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime,” which opened yesterday at the New Yorker Theater, was shown at the eighth New York Film Festival. The following is from Roger Greenspun’s review, which appeared Sept. 15, 1970, in The New York Times.

Like most of the previous films of Alain Resnais, “Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime” is science fiction of a sort. And like virtually all of Resnais’s previous films, its concern is for the past recaptured. To support this concern it proposes a story, the most fragmented of all Resnais’ stories, dealing with, perhaps intense but nevertheless transitory love affair.Read More »

In this documentary about the exile of two famous French actors in Argentina during and after World War II, the director Cozarinsky returns to Argentina after many years in France and recalls places and events from his childhood, particularly the celebration of the liberation of Paris on in August of 1944, in Buenos Aires’s Plaza Francia. Featuring testimony from various authors and acquaintances of Maria (Renee) Falconetti and Robert Le Vigan, the film explores their lives and final years in Argentina.Read More »

Synopsis:
Roger spends the winter in a cabin in the woods at an army base. His husband Frank is on a mission in Djibouti and doesn’t communicate much, while their adopted teenage daughter Roxy is starting to get rebellious. Roger finds support with four women and an attractive farmer/boxing trainer, who are also all divorced from their better halves. They dispel the boredom by philosophising about life, seduction attempts and thinking up nicknames for their private parts.
In four seasons, an ironic melodrama unfolds with absurdist accents and conceptual tendencies. Benjamin Crotty, who grew up alongside an American army base, uses both French and American cultural elements, ranging from eco-architecture to dialogues based on texts from American TV series.
Fort Buchanan is a long version of the short, similarly-named film that was also screened in Rotterdam.Read More »

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The best movie that I’ve seen so far at Cinequest is the French thriller Lead Us Not Into Temptation. A middle-aged married man does a good deed for a beautiful young woman and finds himself the pawn in a dangerous game. Inventively constructed, we see the story from the perspective of the guy, then from the young woman’s point of view and finally through the prism of another character. Unlike in Rashomon, we don’t see different realities, but, as secrets are revealed, we finally understand the whole picture. It’s a brilliant screenplay by writer-director-producer Cheyenne Carron. In the young woman, Carron has created a character who is both predatory and damaged but who can act charming, vulnerable and sexy. The story hinges on actress Agnes Delachair’s ability to play that complex role – and she delivers a captivating performance.Read More »

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The role of the doctor in a factory. The investigations he makes to discover the origin of ailments which attack the workers in a large chemical factory.Read More »

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In the rarefied stratosphere of Eugene Green’s film “Le Pont des Arts,” music, literature, philosophy and aesthetics, and the characters’ engagement with them, are literally matters of life and death. Here and in his other films, Mr. Green, the American-born French filmmaker who founded the Theatre de la Sapience, a group dedicated to revitalizing 17th-century Baroque theater in modern productions, has invented a cinematic vocabulary that radically juxtaposes classical and contemporary themes and characters. … In “Le Pont des Arts,” Mr. Green’s propensity for throwing in academically heavyweight references and concepts may seem intimidating, but it is more than an exercise in name-dropping. The movie is an audacious, mythically slanted inquiry into the place of high art in today’s chaotic culture and an assertion of its primacy. … — NYTimesRead More »