French

  • Claude Lelouch – L’Amour avec des si AKA In the Affirmative (1962)

    1961-1970Claude LelouchComedyCrimeFrance
    L’Amour avec des si (1962)

    Synopsis
    L’Amour avec des si is a road movie that follows a middle aged man who gives a young woman a lift. On the car radio, news bulletins warn the population against a recently escaped sadist who is known to prey on yong women. Lelouch often cuts away from the main story, if only briefly, to parallel events that are not necessarily crucial to the story but illustrate what is suggested by the radio.Read More »

  • Marco Ferreri – Touche pas à la femme blanche aka Don’t Touch the White Woman (1974)

    1971-1980ComedyFranceMarco FerreriWar

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    Synopsis
    Marcello Mastroianni stars in this French farce, an absurd “western” set in Paris, with Mastroianni as the incurably vain General George Armstrong Custer. Richard Nixon is the American president, but everyone is costumed appropriately for the previous century. Buffalo Bill (Michel Piccoli), the famous scout, is here portrayed as a limp-wristed bungler. Ugo Tognazzi plays one of Custer’s Native American opponents; he runs a curio shop selling Native artifacts made in sweatshops by white women. The climactic battle is held in a large construction excavation where Les Halles market used to be. The language the two sides use to justify their conflict is lifted from that used in the then-current Vietnam War.
    ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Benoît Jacquot – Au fond des bois (2010)

    2001-2010Benoît JacquotDramaFranceMystery

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    Inspired by a true story, this atmospheric drama set in 1865 explores the ability of passion to overcome one’s sense of self as young beauty Josephine’s (Isild Le Besco) comfortable life is thrown into chaos by the hypnotic presence of a wild vagabond named Timothee (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart). After Timothee assaults her, Josephine flees with him into the woods and enters into a life of sensual abandon, until neither can tell who is in controlRead More »

  • Jean-Jacques Jauffret – Après le sud AKA Heat Wave (2011)

    2011-2020DramaFranceJean-Jacques Jauffret


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    A modern drama freely based on real events. One sweltering afternoon in the south of France, four lives intersect: those of Stéphane and Luigi, two cousins barely out of adolescence, Georges, a retired worker, Amelie, Luigi’s girlfriend, and Anne, Amelie’s mother. Four mundane lives full of hurts, humiliations, fears and fatigue which converge on a tragedy.Read More »

  • Claude Lanzmann – Un vivant qui passe AKA A Visitor from the Living (1997)

    1991-2000Claude LanzmannDocumentaryFrancePolitics

    http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/3128/unvivantquipasse2589648.jpg

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    In 1979, while making his epochal Holocaust film, “Shoah,” Claude Lanzmann filmed this interview with Maurice Rossel, a Red Cross doctor from Switzerland who, having visited Auschwitz and Theresienstadt in 1944, gave the latter a highly favorable report. Lanzmann questions Rossel insistently about the deceptions that the Germans forced the Jewish inmates of Theresienstadt to perpetrate for Rossel’s benefit—which fooled the doctor completely. Lanzmann culminates his interview by reading a speech with which the Jewish “mayor” of the concentration camp had welcomed Rossel, which, though vague enough to pass unnoticed by the German captors, resounds unambiguously as a thinly veiled cry for help—and an exhortation to Rossel to not be deceived by appearances. Rossel is easy to despise and easier to mock, but the cold light of his detachment serves as a reminder of the tyrannical deceits that, even now, conceal atrocities. Released in 1997.Read More »

  • Claude Misonne – Le Crabe aux pinces d’or AKA The Crab with the Golden Claws (1947)

    1941-1950AnimationBelgiumClaude MisonneCult

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    Description: Stop-motion animated version of the classic TinTin story. Tintin is informed by the Thompsons of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab-meat with the word Karaboudjan scrawled on it. His subsequent investigation and the kidnapping of a Japanese man interested in talking to him leads Tintin to a ship also called the Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have been hiding opium in the crab tins. Escaping from his locked room, Tintin encounters Captain Haddock, an alcoholic who is manipulated by his first mate, Allan, and is unaware of his crew’s criminal activities. Escaping the ship in a lifeboat in an attempt to reach Spain, they are attacked by a seaplane. They hijack the plane and tie up the pilots, but a storm and Haddock’s drunken behaviour causes them to crash-land in the Sahara.Read More »

  • Anne Fontaine – Nathalie… [+Extras] (2003)

    2001-2010Anne FontaineDramaFrance

    Quote:
    A rich woman hires an elite prostitute in order to verify her husband’s faithfulness. Before long the experiment gets out of control.Read More »

  • Gérald Hustache-Mathieu – Poupoupidou (2011)

    2011-2020DramaFranceGérald Hustache-MathieuMystery


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    Synopsis
    He is a Parisian and author of a series of best selling crime novels. She is a blonde bombshell, convinced that she is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. When they meet at Mouthe, the coldest town in France, he is suffering from a bad case of writer’s block and she is dead, believed by the police to have taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. David Rousseau is unconvinced and begins his own investigation into the mysterious past of Candice Lecoeur, certain that this will provide him with the inspiration for his next novel…Read More »

  • Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne – Le gamin au vélo aka The Kid with a Bike (2011)

    2011-2020BelgiumDramaJean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne


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    Quote:
    Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider.

    Quote:
    The Kid with a Bike (French: Le Gamin au vélo) is a 2011 drama film written and directed by the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, starring Cécile de France and Thomas Doret. Set in Seraing, it tells the story of an 11-year-old boy who turns to a woman after his father has abandoned him.[1] The film was produced through companies in Belgium, France and Italy. While it does not deviate from the naturalistic style of the Dardenne brothers’ earlier works, a brighter aesthetic than usual was employed, and the screenplay had a structure inspired by fairytales. Unusually for a film by the directors it also uses music. It premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and won the festival’s Grand Prix.Read More »

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