Michel Houellebecq travels to Guadeloupe to take part in a look-alike contest, whose jury is chaired by Blanche Gardin. But unforeseen events will plunge our duo into the heart of a bizarre intrigue.

Dans.la.peau.de.Blanche.Houellebecq.2024.FRENCH.720p.WEB-DL.H264-Slay3R.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 23 min
Size: 	1.89 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1484x620 
Aspect ratio:  	2.39:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 831 kb/s
BPP: 	0.123
Audio
#1:  	French (FR) 5.1ch AC-3 @ 384 kb/s (VFF)

https://nitro.download/view/625948133CB5E55/Dans.la.peau.de.Blanche.Houellebecq.2024.FRENCH.720p.WEB-DL.H264-Slay3R.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/ADBE467EA403DA2/2024_-_Dans_la_peau_de_Blanche_Houellebecq.srt

Language(s):French, Creole
Subtitles:French (for parts spoken in Creole), Spanish

The post Guillaume Nicloux – Being Blanche Houellebecq (2024) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Provocative French writer Michel Houellebecq meets Gérard Depardieu at a sea water therapy center. Together, they try to survive the health regime to which they are subjected by the establishment. But events quickly derail their routine.

Thalasso (2019) 1080p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 33 min
Size: 	3.09 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1912x800 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 366 kb/s
BPP: 	0.119
Audio
#1:  	French 5.1ch AC-3 @ 384 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/691ECE1148A0FF7/Thalasso_(2019)_1080p.mkv

Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:English soft, French hard where needed

The post Guillaume Nicloux – Thalasso (2019) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley of Love drops audiences in the more than appropriately named Death Valley, which ultimately functions not only as the perfect mirror for the film’s official title, but as the most suitable setting for the interaction between two cinematic giants. It’s as if the landscape had opened itself up into an unadorned crater of a stage to allow Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu to mingle with one another. They star as a divorced couple named Isabelle and Gérard—a humble acknowledgement from Nicloux that any attempt to forget the stature of these actors will be futile. Isabelle and Gérard haven’t seen each other in a long time, but they’ve reunited in California at the behest of their recently deceased son, Michael, who left them letters before he committed suicide intimating that they forge a reunion and that, if they follow his guidelines, he would reappear to them.

Nicloux offers very little detail on who Michael was, apart from the fact that he’d once exiled himself in Death Valley. This is one of the film’s most gripping qualities, though it’s a reticence that Nicloux doesn’t manage to fully sustain. We know Michael was a photographer with a penchant for perverse promises, and a certain melancholic, quasi-gayness haunts his presence/absence, even if the film never outs him as gay—one that recalls the work of French writer Hervé Guibert, also a photographer with a knack for the epistolary, and who also let death bleed into his life and work with script-like precision.

For as long as Isabelle and Gérard refer to the contents of the letters without spelling them out, Valley of Love is drenched in a fertile gloominess. The film enables us to feel the emotional weight of a posthumous letter precisely because we can only imagine its contents, which sets up the disappointing moment when Nicloux reveals what the letters actually say by having mother and father read them out loud to each other. No level of poesis or literary dexterity, both of which the letters lack, could save the film from this faux pas. Suddenly, Michael is no longer a teasing angel, allegorical device, or Guibert-like provocateur, but a prankster with pedestrian writing skills.

The film only recovers from this blunder when it surrenders again to restraint in one of the most arresting sequences in contemporary cinema. Isabelle and Gérard have been following Michael’s script as best as they can, hoping to receive a sign from their son. They hike in the scorching desert heat, get irked by vulgar Americans at their hotel, and they yell, quarrel, and weep. Then, they threaten to give up. But one morning, when Isabelle is taking a break from the sun, Gérard explores one of the canyons in the area by himself and rushes back to Isabelle to tell her that Michael has appeared. She runs toward the canyon screaming her son’s name, only to find nothing. And it’s impossible not to be overcome by her despair, which suggests a doomed and childish refusal to accept a loss that certainly predates her son’s actual demise.

The entirety of Valley of Love is the groundwork for this sequence. Gérard begs Isabelle to believe that he saw their son, who held his hand and told him that he loved them and that he forgave them for their mistakes. While his account seems just as fantastic as Isabelle’s belief in a material encounter beyond the one that the ghostly son has so efficiently staged, the audience realizes, and accepts, that the most dignified way for the missing object to be visible again isn’t with its literal presence, but with its fantasy.

1.24GB | 1h 32m | 852×342 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/317A3700FA36235/Guillaume_Nicloux_-_(2015)_Valley_of_Love.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Guillaume Nicloux – Valley of Love (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

“Le Poulpe” is adapted from one of a series of French crime novels, each written by a different author. They are quick reads and often of dubious quality. This film adaptation by Guillaume Nicloux is, however, a different matter.
Gabriel, dit Le Poulpe (The Octopus), played superbly by Jean-Pierre Darroussin, is a laid-back private investigator who works on cases for his own pleasure. He is drawn to the fictional Loire Valley port of Angerneau (St. Nazaire, Loire-Atlantique), with his lover Clotilde (the luscious Courau) who has been summoned by the police concerning the defacement of a deceased relative’s grave. Since Angernau is her home town, she wants to leave it as soon as possible to avoid old acquaintances, but Gabriel stumbles on intriguing events concerning the cargo of a ship in port. Central to the scheme of things is a drunken Scotsman (Faulkner) who seems stranded in the town.Three of the town’s young people are found dead in the course of events and Gabriel calls in his offsider, Pablo (Demonico), a rumpled heap of an oaf in the vein of Christian Clavier’s Jacquart in “Les Visiteurs”. Together they investigate the shady dealings which connect Clotilde’s old lover, the town Mayor (Driessche), with the ship.
Essentially a film policier with a decidedly TV Movie feel, “Le Poulpe” is very much more. Director Nicloux has infused this low-key thriller with innovations requiring the alert viewer to rewind often (if watching on video):
• Puzzled characters pop in at frame left for no apparent reason, but somehow add to the sequence.
• The taxi driver wears a hearing aid that is always on the blink.
• Flies are always buzzing around the head of one of the baddies.
• Cut-frame editing produces a hallucinatory effect as Gabriel snoops in the room of a suspect.
• In a jibe at Jean-Marie Le Penn’s Front National, a female right-wing politician is sent up hilariously.
• Gabriel scans a newspaper in the back of a taxi, then throws it on the rear window ledge. The camera follows, checks out what he was reading, and then the front page rips off, flies out the window and settles on the street.
• The conversations between Gabriel and Clotilde are complex and rewarding; they cover every possible subject in depth, and thankfully lead nowhere. And the sex scenes between them are actually sexy.
• One of the most engaging scenes shows the bisexual Clotilde pulling off her top in a clothes shop to try on a tee shirt. She tells the mildly shocked salesgirl that she’ll buy the tee shirt if the salesgirl will take off her top too.
Inspired editing and a great screenplay make “Le Poulpe” a delight. A great addition to the genre.
Harold Hark link

Quote:
Name: Gabriel Lecouvreur, alias “Le Poulpe” (The Octopus)
Distinguishing features: Shoes. Soft white leather or coarse red canvas, what matters most is feeling good in them. (Previous owners are normally out of the running.)
Occupation: Neither cop nor detective. Occasionally, publicist.
Wages: Paid in flesh.
Love life: Cheryl, as long as he gets home in time. (The hot-blooded hairdresser digs a little stockroom salsa when The Octopus is on the road.)
Known hangouts: Places of religious and fashion worship, waterfronts and urban dives. Favorite quotation: If you fuck in the henhouse, you’re gonna break eggs.

https://nitro.download/view/8FA83A9CD4B1CD1/Le_Poulpe_Guillaume_Nicloux.avi
https://nitro.download/view/5C4C8C51857D762/Le_Poulpe_Guillaume_Nicloux_-_ENGLISH_-_02.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Guillaume Nicloux – Le poulpe AKA The Octopus (1998) first appeared on Cinema of the World.