French

Clarke Fountain, Rovi wrote:
Celia, who calls herself Ginevra, is a movie actress who is appearing in an art-film. When she collapses from exhaustion while browsing in a bookstore and subsequently has a car crash, she decides to run away, throwing away her belongings and attempting to live incognito with a bar singer. Eventually she returns to her oh-so-boring life and shuttles between two additional lovers while working on the set of “Tears of an Angel.” Some allusions are made to the Arthurian and Camelot myths, but these are not developed. Reviewers found the main attraction of this “art film” to be the numerous sex scenes between the star (played by Amanda Ooms) and her various lovers.Read More »

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A chance remark leads three French naval officers to reminisce, together and privately, about the compelling young commander Willsdorf, nicknamed The Drummer Crab, recalling his exploits from the fog-shrouded rivers of Indochina to an attempted military coup in Algeria to his lonely, anonymous vigil in the North Atlantic fishing lanes nearby. Joseph Conrad would have loved this film, arguably the finest modern seafaring adventure ever made: a thoughtful and thrilling study of man versus the elements, where the past itself becomes an elemental force even more unyielding than the vivid Winter seascapes captured by Raoul Coutard’s breathtaking cinematography. In metaphor, Willsdorf’s fate is the fate of French colonialism, and only by pursuing his memory, through crashing waves and hissing spindrift, can his three erstwhile companions (a dying captain, a middle-aged medical officer, and a robust, veteran Chief Engineer) confront and endure their collective loss. This is a spellbinding film, rich in history and detail.Read More »

Philippe, a photography enthusiast, is attracted to his young aunt so he makes a plan to get his uncle involved with their maid in order to get the chance to have sex with his aunt.Read More »

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A beautiful 18-year-old orphan escapes from a reformatory and hooks up wth a gang of jewel smugglers, and decides on a life of crime. However, she falls for and marries a policeman, putting a crimp in her criminal career.Read More »

The Son of Gascogne (1995)
October 9, 1995
FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW;Maybe He’s The Son Of a Film Legend
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: October 9, 1995

There really isn’t much difference between a favorite screen image and a personal memory of youthful passion, except that one exists on film and the other only in our private mental movies. That insight lies at the heart of Pascal Aubier’s delicious comic bouillabaisse of a film, “The Son of Gascogne.” The film, which the New York Film Festival is showing tonight at 9 and tomorrow night at 6 at Alice Tully Hall, is a fable about an innocent young man who inherits a mystique that has everything to do with old movies and old loves and our eagerness to confuse the two.Read More »

In a dying French mining town near the German border, the last miners are preparing to strike. Marek and Mimmo, two young miners and friends, have different views on the impending strike.Read More »

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Merlusse is a teacher in an all-boys boarding school – pupils hate him since he smells, they think, has a glass eye and is very strict. When Christmas Eve arrives most boys leave school to spend the holidays with their families but a small group of lonely boys is left behind with Merlusse as their overseer. Merlusse doesn’t get along with the boys very well and they pull various tricks on him…Read More »

An ill-assorted group of international criminals executes a tightly-planned ransom sting in Spain. Things go along swimmingly until various tensions within the group come to the fore. A somewhat predictable, but enjoyable crime melodrama, enhanced by a cool soundtrack, a sustained atmosphere of sunlit unease and a touch of incest. Geraldine Chaplin’s film debut in which she gives the insanely sexy Sophie Daumier a run for her money. Based on a novel by James Hadley Chase.Read More »

It is the discovery of a document recognising the services rendered by two fishermen from Lake Geneva during the Occupation that triggered the investigation undertaken by Swiss author Janine Massard in her novel Gens du lac, published in 2013. Jean-Marie Straub retraces the itinerary of the son, Paulus – just as he and Danièle Huillet had followed that of Jean Bricard just over ten years ago in the last film they made together. Gens du lac does not depart from the rule that sets each Straubfilm as an account of a historical situation in which men have resisted (Daney). Shot aboard a boat and hardly ever leaving the lake’s waters, the film depicts the life of this only son who has found brothers over the course of his fishing – be it his first steps in the trade, the help given to fugitives and deliveries of provisions to the Resistance, or his contribution to the emergence of a new Left in post-war Francophone Switzerland. Read More »