French

  • Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne – Falsch (1987)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaFranceJean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

    Just before twilight, a four-engine plane lands on the runway of a country airport. The plane comes to a halt. A single passenger disembarks: Joe, the last survivor of a Jewish family, the Falsches. He has an appointment with them all tonight, forty years after leaving Berlin for New York in 1938. They are all waiting for him in the arrival lounge of the airport. A night of encounters, of celebrations beyond life and death; a meeting which will soon turn into a family psychodrama.Thirteen people will confront each other about their links to Germany, their life in exile, the presence of Lilli among the Falsches; the cries of anguish in the face of death in the camps, incomprehensible to those who went into exile, the Berlin of today, where nobody remembers the Falsches – not even Joe, who would prefer to forget, and never see them again.Read More »

  • Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne – Je pense à vous (1992)

    Drama1991-2000FranceJean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

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    Belgium, 1980. On the banks of the Meuse River, against the enormous background of a steel-producing city, factories close one after another and lay off workers. One of those made redundant is Fabrice who, at thirty-five, is proud of his trade, rendered mythical by fire and steel, but feels he has become useless. His wife, Celine, tries to renew his interest in life. Despite a few moments of rediscovered happiness, Fabrice remains trapped in his confusion and one day disappears… Celine, her intense love leading the way, goes looking for him and eventually finds him. Once again, she tries to save him from himself. Can love resuscitate a languishing man? That is Celine’s wager.Read More »

  • Bruce LaBruce – Durch die Nacht mit… Béatrice Dalle und Virginie Despentes (2011)

    2011-2020Bruce LaBruceDocumentaryGermanyTV

    Quote:
    Zwei ungewöhnliche Frauen der Pariser Kulturszene lassen sich vom kanadischen Filmemacher Bruce LaBruce durch die nächtliche französische Metropole begleiten. Wenn es in Frankreich um aufsehenerregende Frauen in Literatur und Film geht, dann fallen schnell die Namen Béatrice Dalle – exzentrische Schauspielerin und Femme fatale des französischen Kinos (“Betty Blue – 37,2 Grad am Morgen”, “Trouble Every Day”) und Virginie Despentes – Star der feministischen Literatur in Frankreich und Regisseurin der Verfilmungen ihrer eigenen Bücher (“Baise-moi/Fick mich!” und “Bye Bye Blondie”). Die beiden Ausnahmekünstlerinnen streifen durch das winterliche Paris und führen sich gegenseitig an die Orte ihrer Inspiration. Nach einem Besuch in dem ehrwürdigen Gotteshaus Eglise Sainte Rita, das sich den “verlorenen Seelen” verschrieben hat, steht eine Musik-Performance mit bizarren Tiermasken in der Galerie Paul Toupet auf dem Programm. Bei der Visite eines DVD-Geschäfts mit echten Raritäten fachsimpeln die beiden Frauen über die besten Filme aller Zeiten und lästern über einige Kollegen.

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  • Claude Lelouch – Les Uns et les autres AKA Bolero: Dance of Life (1981)

    1981-1990Claude LelouchDramaFranceMusical

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    Synopsis :

    Russian ballet dancer Tatiana (Rita Poelvoorde) loses a competition to become her school’s #1 ballerina, but marries Boris Itovich (Jorge Donn). The war blights their lives, but their son Sergei (Donn) eventually becomes a top dancer himself. Parisian music hall musicians Anne and Simon Meyer (Nicole Garcia and Robert Hossein) marry, only to be deported to a concentration camp. They cast their infant out to chance, and he grows up to be a lawyer (Hossein) who wonders where his son Patrick (Manuel Gélin) gets his musical ability. Big band leader Jack Glenn (James Caan) does USO duty while in the Army, but returns to his singer wife Suzan (Geraldine Chaplin). Their children Sara and Jason (Chaplin and Caan) become respectively a big pop singer and a film director. German piano virtuoso Karl Kremer (Daniel Olbrychski) plays for Hitler in 1938, which complicates his career as an orchestra conductor later in life. Evelyne (Evelyn Bouix) comes to a sorry end after taking many lovers in wartime Paris, including German officers; her daughter Edith (Bouix) returns to Paris and eventually tries a career in dancing. Somehow, the multiple threads of so many creative lives converge at a charity dance concert of Ravel’s Bolero at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.Read More »

  • Catherine Breillat – Barbe Bleue (2009)

    Drama2001-2010Catherine BreillatFrance

    Plot : Catherine Breillat puts a new spin on an ancient story in this multi-leveled drama. In France in the mid-1950s, Catherine (Lola Creton) enjoys toying with her younger sister Marie-Anne (Daphne Baiwir) by reading her the story of the murderous and oft-married Bluebeard, embellishing the story with plenty of gore and scaring the child out of her wits. As Catherine rereads the story, we’re taken back to the year 1697, as Lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) prepares to make Marie-Catherine (also played by Creton) his seventh wife. Marie-Catherine’s youth and innocence make her an especially attractive quarry to Bluebeard, and rather than murder her right away, he decides to wait a while in order to savor the terrible joy of claiming her life. Read More »

  • Enki Bilal – Bunker Palace Hôtel (1989)

    Drama1981-1990Enki BilalFranceSci-Fi

    Plot:
    At some time in the future, a crumbling totalitarian state is racked by civil war between the old guard and the insurrectionists.
    The current leaders take refuge in the Bunker Palace Hotel, a subterranean shelter staffed by run-down androids. A rebel spy, Clara, manages to infiltrate the secret base, but her mission is unclear. Meanwhile, the assembled leaders await with growing impatience the arrival of their president…Read More »

  • László Szabó – Les Gants Blancs du Diable aka The White Gloves of the Devil (1973)

    1971-1980CampFranceLászló Szabó

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    László Szabó is mostly famous as actor : his filmo as an actor is like a best of the so-called french new wave from the early 60s up to now, or something like that…he also directed a very few films himself, in Hungary (his homeland) and in France.

    the AMG clerk wrote :

    “An enigmatic man, blind in one eye […] is the hit man in this French thriller. The films opens with this man, in dark glasses, walking into a bar and shooting a barkeeper. With the help of an unscrupulous doctor, the gunman has donated one of his eyes to a government official who is sitting in the bar at the time. As the film proceeds, he is shown receiving training in shooting at targets using sound, alone. As the gunman continues his devastating activities, it appears clear that his actions are part of an elaborate conspiracy by high-ranking government officials.”Read More »

  • Olivier Assayas – Irma Vep (1996)

    1991-2000DramaFranceOlivier Assayas

    Quote:
    As much as Olivier Assayas resists having his themes and styles pinned down, one is tempted to put Irma Vep at the center of the French filmmaker’s shape-shifting oeuvre. A virtually ad-libbed project—written, shot, and edited, like Wong’s Chungking Express, in a creative rush between larger productions—it uses a gallery of frazzled characters to crystallize many of Assayas’s obsessions and, casually and boldly, makes the medium itself the most frazzled character of all. Appropriately, the setting is a hectic Parisian movie shoot in which director René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud), once respected but now shaky and befuddled, plans to remake Louis Feuillades’s 1915 serial Les Vampires. Read More »

  • Olivier Assayas – L’enfant de l’hiver AKA Winter’s child (1989)

    1981-1990DramaFranceOlivier AssayasRomance

    Synopsis:
    Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine; Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A game of emotional chutes and ladders ensues as these two nearly-lost souls awaken to their true feelings and futilely attempt to regain their former lovers. –InbaselineRead More »

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