You couldn’t imagine a more discreet tribute to the heroes of the wartime French Resistance than this terrific late-’60s thriller by the ex-Maquis member Melville, the director best known for his gangster masterpieces like ‘The Samourai’. In the 16th century in the Cévennes, a horse dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas leads a happy family life. |
parable, whereby her ostracism at school, the cruel neglect by her father, the insinuating glances of the villagers and her gruelling domestic duties stand for the Stations of the Cross. | Gross: Slightly pompous preamble aside, this ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is pure joy, a self-conscious but never precious attempt to revisit childhood fantasies and half-remembered dreams. For Desplechin, Junon’s crisis is an excuse to explore endless family rifts, hidden desires, past traumas and emotional diversions. They don’t, and Malle’s achievement lies not only in his subtle but clear delineation of his protagonist’s emotions but in his grasp of life’s compromises; his portrait of Parisian society is astringent, never facile.
As their relationship begins to fray, it all goes horribly wrong. The action unfolds in Nantes (where Demy spent much of his childhood and adolescence), against the backdrop of the historic 1953 workers’ strike; and yet, the film is essentially a love story between a steelworker (Richard Berry) and an aristocrat (Dominique Sanda). André Dussollier, Best viewed on tape. Stars:
Even in its more surreal or cinematic moments, ‘Fill ’er Up With Super’ feels incredibly fresh, authentic and uncensored; made like a shoestring documentary (with the director, camera and sound guys squeezed into the car’s backseat), it’s a heady, poignant artefact of ’70s filmmaking. With dialogues by writer Marc Cholodenko and a jazzy saxophone score by Barney Wilen, the ‘Les Baisers de Secours’ has all the spontaneity and cool sensibility of a Cassavetes flick. It’s satisfying on just about every level: from its grasping, murderous schemers (played by Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet) to its plot that twists and turns in all sorts of deliriously tricksy ways. $0.69M, 58 min Its two-threaded story follows a lovelorn pizza delivery boy – voiced in French by Hakim Faris and in English by Dev Patel – and a disembodied hand with shades of Thing in ‘The Addams Family’ as they overcome obstacles (a lack of meaning and inquisitive pigeons) in the search for something ineluctable but elusive. Stars: The camera lavishes black-and-white love on Paris, strolling up the Champs-Elysées, edging across café terraces, sweeping over the rooftop skyline, Mozart mixing with cool jazz riffs in the night air.
Prelude: a young woman sits compliantly as Buñuel takes a razor and slices her eye open. Edith Scob, Votes: Duvivier paints a bleak picture of human nature at its vilest and most cruel. DJ, Throughout his professional life, France’s Henri-Georges Clouzot suffered comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock – the former's critical reputation languished for it, and he took it hard. Eric Judor, Such text-book reservations come and go as this extraordinary film meanders like the Arpels’ concrete garden path. | The director seeks advice from his father (played by Garrel’s actual father) and eventually reconciles with Jeanne for the sake of their child (seven-year-old Louis Garrel). audacious slides from melodrama into farce, from realism into fantasy, and from comedy into tragedy. It bullies and persuades you to love Audiard’s filmmaking style. The comic genius Jacques Tati was born Taticheff, descended from a noble Russian family. WH, In 1959 François Truffaut, neglected son, passionate reader, delinquent student and cinephile, wrote and filmed one of the first glistening droplets of the French New Wave, ‘The 400 Blows’, in which Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) demonstrates – unforgettably – that a good brain and bad parents don’t necessarily turn a boy into a talented film director, although they will, one way or another, turn him into a liar. Ophüls’s second French film following his return from the USA was adapted from three stories by Maupassant. DJ, 1934’s ‘L’Atalante’ is the single feature from the then 29-year-old French master Jean Vigo and was made as its director died of TB.
Financed by the Vicomte de Noailles, a dream patron who loyally pronounced the film exquisite and delicious, even as Right-wing extremists were pelting it with ink and stink bombs, this is a jagged memento of that Golden Age before directors forgot the art of filming erotica (the celebrated toe-sucking is sexier by far than almost anything since), the revolutionary avant-garde lost its sense of humour, and surrealism itself fell prey to advertising-agency chic. It’s a great yarn, with a delicious twist (don’t be ‘diabolique’ and ruin the end for your friends, warn the end credits), as Signoret and Clouzot dispose of their victim but must then deal with creepy signs that their plan might be coming unstuck.
There’s a comic-strip aspect, a roundelay of disguises, kidnappings, secret codes and acrobatic getaways. Tracing the self-sacrificial exploits from October 1942 to February 1943 of a small group of field operatives – the acerbic Lino Ventura’s ex-engineer, Simone Signoret’s iron-nerved Mathilde among them – Melville’s film adopts a formal essentialism to outline the codes and manners of impassive-looking ‘warriors’ over whom the Damocles sword of discovery, torture and death is ever hovering. Emmanuelle Devos, Votes: Each grotesquely larger-than-life inhabitant of the scrofulous tenement has his own little story; visually, the film evokes Gilliam, Lynch, the Coens and Carné, but the allusions never get in the way of the nightmarish humour. For the Laurents, it’s the start of a horrific upset that mirrors the disturbing breakdown of familial comfort that characterised Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’, ‘Time of the Wolf’ and ‘Benny’s Video’. But the characterisations are turned on their heads. As movies evolved, so did France and throughout the different styles and periods maintained a strong role in the international film scene, continuing to transcend the norms and innovate. Eric Rohmer’s 1969 work made his name outside of France and preceded enduring works like ‘Pauline at the Beach’ and ‘The Green Ray’. Kassovitz has made only one film before (the droll race-comedy ‘Métisse’), but ‘La Haine’ puts him right at the front of the field: this is virtuosic, on-the-edge stuff, as exciting as anything we’ve seen from the States in ages, and more thoroughly engaged with the reality it describes. DJ, Banned on its original release as ‘too demoralising’, and only made available again in its original form in 1956, Renoir’s brilliant social comedy is epitomised by the phrase ‘everyone has their reasons’. Vinz hangs out with Hubert (Koundé) and Saïd (Taghmaoui). Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director who was very quickly interested by cinema, with a predilection for a fantastic cinema where form is as important as the subject. In the 18th century game which Rohmer transposes to a contemporary setting, this pair can be seen as intellect trying to dominate instinct, but only succeeding in rousing unwanted passions. | Charles Berling, Unrated The trouble starts when dying mob boss ‘The Mexican’ (Jacques Dumesnil) summons ex-gangster Fernand (Lino Ventura) to take care of some of his business, and as can only be expected, Fernand finds himself overwhelmed as the death count gets higher and higher. Don’t let the extended running time dissuade you: this is the rare breezy three-plus-hours that manages to explore heady concepts – from the malleability of personality to the fine line separating voyeurism and participation – without once feeling laboured. TCH, Amateur illusionist Céline (Juliet Berto) and studious librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) meet in a park and become practically inseparable — so much so that they can try on each other’s identities like best friends swapping favourite apparel. ‘Hold on, pretty butterfly!’ says Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a fretful and fame-occupied singer, to herself as she prepares to roam the city for two hours while awaiting a possibly momentous doctor’s verdict. Wryly and delightfully witty. TM, There are high-school movies and then there are movies about high school. A secular response to Bresson’s ‘A Man Escaped’. Perhaps the most well known of all the periods in French cinema is the “French New Wave” during the 1950s and 60s which took the world by storm with its threadbare, emotionally exposed films. But at least in contrast to later works like ‘Playtime’ and ‘Traffic’, there’s enough dramatic structure to make it more than simply a series of one-off gags. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has championed her film, Meli-melo/Mix-Up. | $0.02M, Not Rated | Despite its simplistic view of Napoleon himself – seen from childhood to the fascistic start of his empire-building as a ‘man of destiny’, guided through hardships and loneliness by his ‘inner eagle’ – the film is completely vindicated by Gance’s raving enthusiasm for his medium. Comedy, Drama, Romance. Love. Director:
parable, whereby her ostracism at school, the cruel neglect by her father, the insinuating glances of the villagers and her gruelling domestic duties stand for the Stations of the Cross. | Gross: Slightly pompous preamble aside, this ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is pure joy, a self-conscious but never precious attempt to revisit childhood fantasies and half-remembered dreams. For Desplechin, Junon’s crisis is an excuse to explore endless family rifts, hidden desires, past traumas and emotional diversions. They don’t, and Malle’s achievement lies not only in his subtle but clear delineation of his protagonist’s emotions but in his grasp of life’s compromises; his portrait of Parisian society is astringent, never facile.
As their relationship begins to fray, it all goes horribly wrong. The action unfolds in Nantes (where Demy spent much of his childhood and adolescence), against the backdrop of the historic 1953 workers’ strike; and yet, the film is essentially a love story between a steelworker (Richard Berry) and an aristocrat (Dominique Sanda). André Dussollier, Best viewed on tape. Stars:
Even in its more surreal or cinematic moments, ‘Fill ’er Up With Super’ feels incredibly fresh, authentic and uncensored; made like a shoestring documentary (with the director, camera and sound guys squeezed into the car’s backseat), it’s a heady, poignant artefact of ’70s filmmaking. With dialogues by writer Marc Cholodenko and a jazzy saxophone score by Barney Wilen, the ‘Les Baisers de Secours’ has all the spontaneity and cool sensibility of a Cassavetes flick. It’s satisfying on just about every level: from its grasping, murderous schemers (played by Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet) to its plot that twists and turns in all sorts of deliriously tricksy ways. $0.69M, 58 min Its two-threaded story follows a lovelorn pizza delivery boy – voiced in French by Hakim Faris and in English by Dev Patel – and a disembodied hand with shades of Thing in ‘The Addams Family’ as they overcome obstacles (a lack of meaning and inquisitive pigeons) in the search for something ineluctable but elusive. Stars: The camera lavishes black-and-white love on Paris, strolling up the Champs-Elysées, edging across café terraces, sweeping over the rooftop skyline, Mozart mixing with cool jazz riffs in the night air.
Prelude: a young woman sits compliantly as Buñuel takes a razor and slices her eye open. Edith Scob, Votes: Duvivier paints a bleak picture of human nature at its vilest and most cruel. DJ, Throughout his professional life, France’s Henri-Georges Clouzot suffered comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock – the former's critical reputation languished for it, and he took it hard. Eric Judor, Such text-book reservations come and go as this extraordinary film meanders like the Arpels’ concrete garden path. | The director seeks advice from his father (played by Garrel’s actual father) and eventually reconciles with Jeanne for the sake of their child (seven-year-old Louis Garrel). audacious slides from melodrama into farce, from realism into fantasy, and from comedy into tragedy. It bullies and persuades you to love Audiard’s filmmaking style. The comic genius Jacques Tati was born Taticheff, descended from a noble Russian family. WH, In 1959 François Truffaut, neglected son, passionate reader, delinquent student and cinephile, wrote and filmed one of the first glistening droplets of the French New Wave, ‘The 400 Blows’, in which Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) demonstrates – unforgettably – that a good brain and bad parents don’t necessarily turn a boy into a talented film director, although they will, one way or another, turn him into a liar. Ophüls’s second French film following his return from the USA was adapted from three stories by Maupassant. DJ, 1934’s ‘L’Atalante’ is the single feature from the then 29-year-old French master Jean Vigo and was made as its director died of TB.
Financed by the Vicomte de Noailles, a dream patron who loyally pronounced the film exquisite and delicious, even as Right-wing extremists were pelting it with ink and stink bombs, this is a jagged memento of that Golden Age before directors forgot the art of filming erotica (the celebrated toe-sucking is sexier by far than almost anything since), the revolutionary avant-garde lost its sense of humour, and surrealism itself fell prey to advertising-agency chic. It’s a great yarn, with a delicious twist (don’t be ‘diabolique’ and ruin the end for your friends, warn the end credits), as Signoret and Clouzot dispose of their victim but must then deal with creepy signs that their plan might be coming unstuck.
There’s a comic-strip aspect, a roundelay of disguises, kidnappings, secret codes and acrobatic getaways. Tracing the self-sacrificial exploits from October 1942 to February 1943 of a small group of field operatives – the acerbic Lino Ventura’s ex-engineer, Simone Signoret’s iron-nerved Mathilde among them – Melville’s film adopts a formal essentialism to outline the codes and manners of impassive-looking ‘warriors’ over whom the Damocles sword of discovery, torture and death is ever hovering. Emmanuelle Devos, Votes: Each grotesquely larger-than-life inhabitant of the scrofulous tenement has his own little story; visually, the film evokes Gilliam, Lynch, the Coens and Carné, but the allusions never get in the way of the nightmarish humour. For the Laurents, it’s the start of a horrific upset that mirrors the disturbing breakdown of familial comfort that characterised Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’, ‘Time of the Wolf’ and ‘Benny’s Video’. But the characterisations are turned on their heads. As movies evolved, so did France and throughout the different styles and periods maintained a strong role in the international film scene, continuing to transcend the norms and innovate. Eric Rohmer’s 1969 work made his name outside of France and preceded enduring works like ‘Pauline at the Beach’ and ‘The Green Ray’. Kassovitz has made only one film before (the droll race-comedy ‘Métisse’), but ‘La Haine’ puts him right at the front of the field: this is virtuosic, on-the-edge stuff, as exciting as anything we’ve seen from the States in ages, and more thoroughly engaged with the reality it describes. DJ, Banned on its original release as ‘too demoralising’, and only made available again in its original form in 1956, Renoir’s brilliant social comedy is epitomised by the phrase ‘everyone has their reasons’. Vinz hangs out with Hubert (Koundé) and Saïd (Taghmaoui). Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director who was very quickly interested by cinema, with a predilection for a fantastic cinema where form is as important as the subject. In the 18th century game which Rohmer transposes to a contemporary setting, this pair can be seen as intellect trying to dominate instinct, but only succeeding in rousing unwanted passions. | Charles Berling, Unrated The trouble starts when dying mob boss ‘The Mexican’ (Jacques Dumesnil) summons ex-gangster Fernand (Lino Ventura) to take care of some of his business, and as can only be expected, Fernand finds himself overwhelmed as the death count gets higher and higher. Don’t let the extended running time dissuade you: this is the rare breezy three-plus-hours that manages to explore heady concepts – from the malleability of personality to the fine line separating voyeurism and participation – without once feeling laboured. TCH, Amateur illusionist Céline (Juliet Berto) and studious librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) meet in a park and become practically inseparable — so much so that they can try on each other’s identities like best friends swapping favourite apparel. ‘Hold on, pretty butterfly!’ says Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a fretful and fame-occupied singer, to herself as she prepares to roam the city for two hours while awaiting a possibly momentous doctor’s verdict. Wryly and delightfully witty. TM, There are high-school movies and then there are movies about high school. A secular response to Bresson’s ‘A Man Escaped’. Perhaps the most well known of all the periods in French cinema is the “French New Wave” during the 1950s and 60s which took the world by storm with its threadbare, emotionally exposed films. But at least in contrast to later works like ‘Playtime’ and ‘Traffic’, there’s enough dramatic structure to make it more than simply a series of one-off gags. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has championed her film, Meli-melo/Mix-Up. | $0.02M, Not Rated | Despite its simplistic view of Napoleon himself – seen from childhood to the fascistic start of his empire-building as a ‘man of destiny’, guided through hardships and loneliness by his ‘inner eagle’ – the film is completely vindicated by Gance’s raving enthusiasm for his medium. Comedy, Drama, Romance. Love. Director: