French

A brutal murder in Le Havre: 38 people must have noticed, but say they heard or saw nothing. A claustrophobic, moving, beautifully shot film with a strong cast including Yvan Attal, Sophie Quinton and Nicole Garcia. A clear picture of what fear and shame do to people.

Outside an apartment complex in the French port city of Le Havre, a female student is gruesomely murdered in the middle of the night. The complex’s 38 inhabitants say they heard or saw nothing. Until one of them, the introverted pilot Pierre (Yvan Attal), decides to break the silence. He admits to the police that he was awakened by a desperate, primeval cry. A cry that cannot have escaped his neighbours’ attention.Read More »

AMG: Gallic actress-turned-director Josiane Balasko – a Euro cinema mainstay best known for her unconventional romantic lead in Bertrand Blier’s 1989 Trop belle pour toi – helms and co-stars in Cliente, a quirky and offbeat look at the bittersweet life of a male prostitute, which Balasko co-adapted from her 2005 novel with screenwriter Franck Lee Joseph. Eric Caravaca stars as Marco, a French hustler in his mid-30s whose path criss-crosses with that of infomercial actress Judith (Nathalie Baye) in a local park. A nascent divorcee, she’s in the mood for a quick fling, and follows suit with Marco, but this infuriates her sister, Irene (Balasko). Both sexual partners intend to enjoy the liaison as a one-time engagement; for better or worse, it soon repeats itself on multiple occasions and evolves into a deep-seated and very sticky relationship with lots of emotional strings. Significantly, this makes matters very complex and messy for Marco, who happens to be married to hairdresser Fanny (Isabelle Carre) and shares a residence with her, her mother (Catherine Hiegel) and her goth-decked sister (Marilou Berry, Balasko’s real-life daughter)). Fanny, it seems, harbors no knowledge of Marco’s real profession; when she discovers the truth, she systematically attempts to use her husband’s profession to her own selfish advantages in lieu of objecting passionately or leaving him.Read More »

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Having trodden the path towards ever-increasing obscurity in the 1990s, the eternal maverick of French cinema, Jean-Luc Godard made a surprising come-back with Éloge de l’amour, his first major theatrical release outside of France for well over a decade. More sophisticated and mature than Godard’s increasingly abstract and inward-looking works of the 1990s, it is a film which manages to capture the essence of Godard’s cinema (his political concerns, his love of character, his enthusiasm for cinema and literature, to say nothing of his near-pathological contempt for mainstream cinema). At the same time, it is a challenging work, packed with content whilst employing a minimalist approach reminiscent of Robert Bresson (another great director who is often referred to in the film).
The film is divided in two contrasting parts. It begins with an author’s seemingly doomed attempts to realise a ‘project’ (perhaps a film, but we cannot be certain of this). This part of the film is shot beautifully in black-and-white, almost as a sombre elegy to monochrome cinema. This includes some stunning night shots of Paris, immediately evocative of the Nouvelle Vague cinema of the 1960s in which Godard played such a major part. Two thirds of the way into the film, the mood and style change suddenly, as if we have been propelled into a dream. Thanks to the marvels of the latest digital technology, the images suddenly take on an otherworldly form, with overly saturated colour and some occasional visual distortions.
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While the official jury opted for a long German joke, the deliberation for the FIPRESCI award in Stockholm transpired in, literally, a matter of seconds; the choice was that clear. As our citation states, “Elle est des nôtres” is an ambitious and extremely promising debut, a moving symbosis between its director, Siegrid Alnoy, and her lead actor, Sasha Andrès. Titled after a populist French song (and thus poorly translated to English as “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow”), “Elle et des nôtres” resonates with a cultish ring of unwanted belonging; she is one of us, she is one of us. In a way, Siegrid Alnoy’s first feature, which premiered at the Critics Week earlier this year at Cannes – and has proven to be one of that awful festival’s true discoveries – is about possibly the most banal yet damaging cult of them all: human society in the early 21st century. Her main character, Christine Blanc (musician Sasha Andrès, remarkable in her first feature film role) is appropriately named: she is a blank. Perpetually clothed in the same red business suit, Christine toils in limbo as a temp for bosses who don’t know her name, aspiring to full-time employment and social acceptance in her suburban Annecy environment, all indistinct malls, glass office walls and stifling sterility, approaching her daily interactions with the false veneer of politeness.Read More »

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Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough, Elevator to the Gallows. With his follow-up, the scandalous smash The Lovers> (Les amants), he made her a star once and for all. A deeply felt and luxuriously filmed fairy tale for grown-ups, perched on the edge between classical and New Wave cinemas, The Lovers presents Moreau as a restless bourgeois wife whose eye wanders from both her husband and her lover to an attractive passing stranger (Jean-Marc Bory). Thanks to its frank sexuality, The Lovers caused quite a stir, being censored and attacked for obscenity around the world. If today its shock has worn off, its glistening sensuality and seductive storytelling haven’t aged a day.Read More »

Synopsis
A man has been living for thirty years as a recluse in a forest in France. Alone, he hews out deep underground tunnels and galleries, which he decorates with his own engravings. They must withstand the planetary disaster that has been announced, and they must explain things, through their perceptive messages, to future inhabitants. The film recounts this experience as lived on the sidelines of modern society, affected as it is by human wretchedness and the loss, once and for all, of a perfect world.
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The Margin (French: La Marge, also known as The Streetwalker and Emmanuelle 77) is a 1976 French erotic drama film written and directed by Walerian Borowczyk and starring Sylvia Kristel. It is loosely based on the novel The Margin by André Pieyre de Mandiargues.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘A family of aristocrats have fallen on hard times. To pay for repairs to their crumbling country chateau they are forced to use their home as a hotel. The local garage mechanic, Charlie, provides a constant stream of guests for them by sabotaging any car that arrives in his garage. The latest arrival is an important-looking man, Cesar Maricorne, accompanied by his two aides. When she learns that he is a gangster who has just robbed a bank, the aging Marquise realises that her family’s financial worries may be at an end…’
– Films de FranceRead More »

L’aliénation mentale filmée en Lozère, à l’hôpital psychiatrique de Saint-Alban : constat sur les malades eux-mêmes et sur la patiente rééducation de leur cerveau par les psychiatres.

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« C’est un film sur l’impossibilité de montrer la folie, explique Mario Ruspoli dans un entretien accordé au Monde en 1962. Cependant, il est possible de faire passer derrière le miroir, d’utiliser comme tremplin, comme moyen de communication, l’angoisse, qui est le dénominateur commun entre le malade, le médecin et le public. Seul, ce dénominateur commun d’angoisse nous fait pénétrer à l’intérieur du monde de la folie. » Claude Mauriac confirme ces propos : « Parmi les malades non délirants dont la pensée demeure cohérente, les raseurs restent les raseurs. D’où des longueurs. Les autres, les enterrés vifs, font à l’arrière-plan les mêmes gestes toujours recommencés et, toute fraternité oubliée, nous avons peur, parce que nous nous sentons en danger. » Le documentariste explique ses méthodes : « Nous avons mis peu à peu notre technique au point et nous avons utilisé une équipe de trois extrêmement mobile qui permet de filmer en courant, le cas échéant : un cameraman, un homme pour la mise au point, un preneur de son. Pour les interviews dans les fermes, j’ai pensé que si on prenait un interviewer de l’extérieur, les paysans ne diraient rien ; je suis donc arrivé avec des gens du milieu : un docteur, un curé, un instituteur agricole itinérant. L’important, c’est que les gens s’habituent à vous, qu’ils vous connaissent, qu’ils aient de l’estime, de l’amitié pour vous. Il faut les mettre en confiance, il faut qu’ils sachent que vous n’allez pas les trahir, les ridiculiser, les fausser pour leur faire servir une thèse dans le style Mondo Cane. Il faut que les réalisateurs aient une fantastique conscience professionnelle. »
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