Tag: French Cinema
Aline | Review
The Face of Another: Lemercier Normalizes Weird Choices in Bizarre Biopic
Like something novel born out of a 30 Rock satire (remember the unauthorized Janis...
The Rose Maker (La fine fleur) | Review
In the Name of the Rose: Frot Elevates Formulaic Melodrama from Pinaud
“What is life without beauty?,” inquires antiquated rosarian Eve Vernet in Pierre Pinaud’s...
Gagarine | Review
Favorites of the Moon: Liatard and Trouilh Stargaze Through the Rubble of Resistance
Yuri (Alseni Bathily) seems to be the glue holding his community together...
Passenger’s Seat: Happening’s Anamaria Vartolomei Cast as “Maria” Schneider
Winner of the Cesar award for best Female Newcomer this past Friday for her perf in Audrey Diwan's Golden Lion winning L’Événement (Happening), actress...
Blame it on the Rain: Guillaume Canet & Laetitia Dosch to Get Soaked for Just Philippot’s “Eau-forte”
Launching his feature filmmaking career with one of the buzz titles of the canceled 2020 Cannes edition (the Cannes Critics' Week did highlight five...
My Best Part (Garçon chiffon) | Review
Green Eyes, They’re Crying: Maury Mines Sorrow in Tragicomic Debut
Actor Nicolas Maury crafts his own starring vehicle in My Best Part (Garçon chiffon) as...
À propos de Joan (About Joan) | 2022 Berlin International Film Festival Review
Ladies They Talk About: Larivière Utilizes Huppert in Shaky Melodrama on Loss & Love
For his sophomore film À propos de Joan (About Joan), Laurent...
Incredible But True | 2022 Berlin International Film Festival Review
Beauty Secrets: Dupieux Latest a Strangely Tragic Fable on Human Foibles
The films of Quentin Dupieux, a prolific Belgian director who has spent most of...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #25. Bertrand Bonello’s La bête
La bête
As we explored earlier on our countdown, Bertrand Bonello segued to micro-budget Coma while awaiting the greenlight for his ambitious triple era pronged...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #27. Rebecca Zlotowski’s Les enfants des autres
Les enfants des autres (Other People’s Children)
Directly after premiering her fourth feature film Une fille facile (An Easy Girl) in the Directors' Fortnight section,...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #36. Quentin Dupieux’s Fumer fait tousser
Fumer fait tousser
Especially comforting in these awkward pandemic days of 2022, we'll be receiving not one, but two servings of chicken soup for the...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #40. Léonor Serraille’s Un petit frère
Un petit frère
Catapulted onto the film scene when her feature debut film Jeune Femme (aka Montparnasse Bienvenüe) was first selected for the Un Certain...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #54. Romain Gavras’ Athena (Fka Moussa)
Athena
Look for a title change to occur on Romain Gavras' third feature film project which is passing as RG03 and Moussa -- a term...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #58. Guillaume Nicloux’s La Tour d’Assitan
La Tour d’Assitan (Lockdown Tower)
Upon getting a whiff of this project one can't help but feel that Gareth Evans' The Raid created a new...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #59. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s Les Amandiers
Les Amandiers
There'll definitely be some autobiographical elements in Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's fifth feature film as a filmmaker and it might be the formative years...
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #84. Cédric Jimenez’s Novembre
Novembre
Perhaps France's answer to Antoine Fuqua, Cédric Jimenez has padded his decade long filmography working mostly with gritty texts that either get in tight...
Vincent Lacoste & Juliette Binoche to Get Schooled in Christophe Honoré’s “Le Lycéen” (Winter Boy)
'Tis the season to be jolly for Christophe Honoré as he is set to begin lensing Le Lycéen next week with a trio comprised...
France | Review
France de France: Dumont Soars with Offbeat Melodrama on Media & Misogyny
Few and far between are odd cinematic delights so deliberately off-center and...
Benedetta | Review
Blaspheme, Queen: Verhoeven Turns to Nunsploitation in Erotic Melodrama
Occupying a dazzling intersection of exploitation and queer historical recuperation is the long-awaited Benedetta from Dutch...
Only the Animals | Review
Catfish People: Moll Returns to the Ripple Effects of Identity Issues
In the early 2000s, German born Dominik Moll was a fast-rising director of contemporary...
Bergman Island | Review
The Passion of Mia: Hansen-Love Makes Her Own Place at the Table
For her complex and absorbing seventh feature, Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve returns to...
Piece of the Puzzle: Alice Winocour Books Virginie Efira for “Revoir Paris”
Augustine, Maryland and Proxima filmmaker Alice Winocour is set to begin production on her fourth feature film with production beginning this month and lasting...
Titane | Review
Car Crash Set: Ducournau Crafts a Cult Classic with Grotesque Odyssey of Dysfunction
In J.G. Ballard’s seminal 1973 cult novel Crash, infamously adapted in 1996...
Promises | 2021 Venice Film Festival Review
Broken is the Golden Bowl: Kruithof Rips at the Red Tape in Character Driven Political Drama
It’s not so much politics as usual in Les...
Mama Weed | Review
Selective Affinities: High-Fives for Huppert & Hannelore Cayre in Vivacious French Neo-noir
Often described as cold, icy, impassive, and inscrutable, the performances of Isabelle Huppert,...
Annette | Review
Henry Fool: Music & Misogyny Explored in Glossy Return of Carax
Like nearly all of Leos Carax’s films over the past thirty years (of which...
La Fracture | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Conqueror Worms: Corsini Juggles Metaphors in Strangely Asymmetrical Social Issue Film
Director Catherine Corsini metastasizes an ensemble exercise for her eleventh feature, La Fracture, a...
Softie (Petite nature) | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Sharp Shock to Your Soft Side: Theis Mines the Uncomfortable Realities of Sexuality
In the one-hundred-and-twenty-five years since the detrimental trials of Oscar Wilde and...
Tom Medina | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
The Man Without a Country: Gatlif Explores the Tribulations of Redemption in Oblique Character Study
French-Algerian director Tony Gatlif remains something of a European anomaly...
Roaring 20’s | 2021 Tribeca Film Festival Review
Walking & Talking: Vogler Captures the Bustling & Bebopping of Distinctive Parisian Summer
Decades from now, the cinematic impact of projects conceived of and filmed...
Spring Blossom (Seize printemps) | Review
The Flower of Her Secret: Lindon Conquers a Crush in Directorial Debut
Exemplifying the sincere transitional period Britney Spears famously moaned about when she sang...
Slalom | Review
Slippery Slopes: Favier Blends Coming-of-Age and Sexual Assault Narrative in Chilly Debut
There’s an immediate discomfort apparent in the opening act of Charlène Favier’s debut...
The Salt of Tears | Review
Love Means Never Having to Say: Garrel Continues Exploration of Love and Lust
“Love ain’t nothin’ but sex misspelled,” Harlon Ellison astutely wrote, for too...
Albatros (Drift Away) | 2021 Berlin International Film Festival Review
Bye Bye Birdie: Beauvois Bears Burdens in Old-Fashioned Melodrama
The albatross, a large white seabird with a significant wingspan, has been a symbol of a...
Petite Maman | 2021 Berlin International Film Festival Review
Going Home Again: Sciamma Delivers a Slight, Eloquent Slice of Novel Sci-fi
Céline Sciamma has built a formidable filmography on tenuous stages of women’s developmental...
The Emotional Lives of … 8 Year-Olds!: Céline Sciamma Begins Filming “Petite Maman”
After portraits dealing on teenage sexuality (Water Lilies), gender identity (Tomboy), reinvention (Girlhood) and yearning (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Céline Sciamma will...
Sibyl | Review
Doctor Strange: Triet Gets Tricky with Autofiction Affair
Reuniting with Virginie Efira, the lead from her 2016 sophomore breakout Victoria (aka In Bed with Victoria),...
Video Interview: Maïmouna Doucouré – Cuties | 2020 Sundance Film Festival
With her award-winning short Maman(s), Maïmouna Doucouré masterfully details the traumas associated by living in a nonsecular upbringing. Mining from her own experiences and...
The Bare Necessity | Review
I Think I Love You: Le Duc Looks for Love in Absurdist Comedy
“Is the life you’re living truly yours?” asks a whispery Fanny Ardant...
Criterion Collection: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) | Blu-ray Review
In a world concerned with rigid dichotomies, there remains a roughhewn juxtaposition of the male gaze and the female gaze. Taking into consideration the...
Love Affair(s) | Cannes 2020 Label Review
The Most Important Thing is to Love: Mouret’s Loquacious Ode to Capricious Romance(s)
With narratives often constructed on the gossamer threads of human interactions, it’s...
The Truth | Review
I Remember Mama: Kore-eda Anoints Deneuve as a Diva in Pleasurable Drama
A subtle exercise in the limited reality of both perspective and memory, auteur...
On a Magical Night | Review
A Room with a Screw: Honoré Waxes Playful on Marital Discord
The flexibility (or lack thereof) of fidelity in heteronormative relationships is at the center...
Deerskin | Review
Full Leather Jacket: Dupieux’s Cinema Bizarre Continues with Killer Style
Quentin Dupieux, France’s purveyor or loopy absurdism, returns with Deerskin, headlined by high-profilers Jean...
Caught in a Bad Romance: Clouzot’s Dire Love Story Resurrected “Manon” | Blu-ray Review
Arrow Academy resurrects an early notable work from the filmography of Henri-Georges Clouzot with his 1949 Manon, which won the Golden Lion at the...
Three on a Match: Chabrol Breaks Commandments with “The Third Lover” | Blu-ray Review
A prominent member of the French New Wave, often credited as the French Hitchcock, director Claude Chabrol’s first few features were internationally renowned, seminal...
Crime and Punishment: Sautet’s Enthralling Policier an Obscure Neo-Noir “Max and the Junkmen” | Blu-ray Review
An unsung genre masterpiece from Claude Sautet, 1971’s Max and the Junkmen comes to Blu-ray for the first time courtesy of Kino Lorber. Featuring...
Her Love is Real, But She is Not: Gainsbourg Plays with Gender Norms in “Je t’aime moi non plus” (1976) Blu-ray Review
An obscure oddity from the late 70s, to be sure, is French pop artist Serge Gainsbourg’s 1976 directorial debut, Je t’aime moi non plus...
Lost in Translation: Lapid Languishes in Enigmatic, Complex Study on Cultural Identities with “Synonyms” | Blu-ray Review
Winning the Golden Bear at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival, Nadav Lapid’s third film Synonyms was one of the best theatrical releases of...
Criterion Collection: Betty Blue (1986) | Blu-ray Video Review
It’s time to take another look at the famed Cinema du Look auteurs of 1980s and 1990s French cinema, and what better way to...
