French

Based on the 1836 novel by Balzac (wiki)

Quote:
Script-writers who adapt Balzac or Dostoievsky excuse the idiotic transformations they impose on the works from which they construct their scenarios by pleading that the cinema is incapable of rendering every psychological or metaphysical overtone. In their hands, Balzac becomes a collection of engravings in which fashion has the most important place, and Dostoievsky suddenly begins to resemble the novels of Joseph Kessel, with Russian-style drinking-bouts in night-clubs and troika races in the snow. Well, the only cause of these compressions is laziness and lack of imagination. The cinema of today is capable of expressing any kind of reality. What interests us is the creation of this new language. (…) The fundamental problem of the cinema is how to express thought.
Alexandre Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant-Barde: La Camera-Stylo (1948)Read More »

In a grand apartment, where the disorder of an elderly couple and the order of old aunt Léonie are mixed together, Michel is the pampered child of this strange “roulotte” who seems to be rolling away from the world. Yvonne idolizes her son so much she forgets her husband. She would even forget herself if she did not have to take care of his insulin treatment. When Michel sleeps out for the first time, he vows to his mother (who he nicknames “Sophie”) that he loves Madeleine, a young woman who he wishes to present to her. At first reticent, then jealous and exclusive, Yvonne ends up capitulating before her son’s sorrow and his sister Léonie’s insistence. In the meantime, we discover that Madeleine already has an “old” lover who she wants to break up with, who is none other than Georges, Michel’s father. Aunt Léo attempts to bring order to this tragic comedy of life. (Wiki)Read More »

Text from Diagonal Thoughts

“Before being a conflict of classes or parties, politics is a conflict concerning the configuration of the sensible world in which the actors and the objects of these conflicts may appear. Politics is then this exceptional practice, which makes visible that which cannot be seen, which makes audible that which cannot be heard, which counts that which cannot be counted.”Read More »

Linda Loves her work, and her work is LOVE…

Linda comes to the big city in search of fun and excitement. What she finds is exploitation and abuse at the hands of a succession of sleazy guys. Searching for love, she enters into a lesbian relationship with a beautiful countess, discovers drugs and swingers’ parties and starts acting in porno movies. She also begins to write a secret diary… With a cast of some of the most stunning Euro actresses of the period, wall-to-wall sex and nudity, pot parties, porno shoots and a psychedelic soundtrack, this is a gem of 1970s exploitation cinema from Jess Franco. Street scenes shot in Benidorm (Alicante, Spain) and Las Palmas (Gran Canaria, Spain).Read More »

Quote:
Bourgeois convention is demolished in Luis Buñuel’s surrealist gem The Phantom of Liberty. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses, this perverse, playfully absurd comedy of non sequiturs deftly compiles many of the themes that preoccupied Buñuel throughout his career—from the hypocrisy of conventional morality to the arbitrariness of social arrangements.Read More »

Plot (from Allmovie):
La Nuit du Carrefour (A Night at the Crossroads) may well be the least known of Jean Renoir’s sound films. Adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, the story concentrates on a gang of thieves who utilize a cross-road garage as the hideaway. During their last caper, the gang has accidentally murdered a jewel thief, and the heat is on. Winna Winifred, the beautiful ringleader of the gang, makes the fatal mistake of falling in love with Pierre Renoir (the director’s brother), the detective who’s been assigned to bring her in. The only one of Renoir’s productions to thoroughly qualify as a “crime picture,” La Nuit du Carrefour was often dismissed by the director, who felt that he was so successful in creating a “mysterious atmosphere” that no one understood what was going on (He did, however, enjoy working with Georges Simenon, who became a lifelong friend).-Read More »

Synopsis :
When her husband is taken hostage by his striking employees, a trophy wife (Deneuve) takes the reins of the family business and proves to be a remarkably effective leader. Business and personal complications arrive in the form of her ex-lover (Depardieu), a former union leader.Read More »

Review from IMDB:

The Title, Sadly, Says It All, 23 October 2006
10/10
Author: gradyharp from United States

‘La Femme de Gilles’ (‘Gilles’ Wife’) began as a novel by Madeleine Bourdouxhe and was transformed for the screen by Philippe Blasband, Marion Hänsel and Frédéric Fonteyne who also directs this stunning and controversial art piece. Certainly one of the most visually magnificent films of recent years (cinematographer Virginie Saint-Martin) ‘Gilles’ Wife’ succeeds on every level: the story is unique, the direction is liquid and languorous, and the cast is superlative.Read More »

Synopsis

reassurance.blogspot.com wrote:

La vie nouvelle, with its schizophrenic camera and piercing audio frequency, provokes a dangerous sensation. It pulsates like a tremor, as if we’re entering a universe after some unnamed, unmentioned nuclear disaster. While it’s easy to make visual association to familiar images of horror like Night of the Living Dead when the film opens on a dark pasture with zombie-like peasants, Salò; or The 120 Days of Sodom while a group of Russian criminals strip a group of beautiful youths naked or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me as characters malevolently scream into the air, Grandrieux’s vision is wholly unique.Read More »