France
The Unknown Girl sees the directors yet again flirt with their beloved recurrent theme of criminality, here taking their most overt detour into procedural thriller territory to date.
Elle faithfully transcribes the original book “Oh…”, presenting masochistic and sadistic elements as comedy in the darkest form.
Racism in France has been a long-discussed topic within cinema, from Mathieu Kassovitz’s eponymous film La Haine to 2011’s hit comedy Les Intouchables. In recent days Muslim/Arab citizens have been the focus of racial prejudice from the French justice system; Fatima could not come at a better time with its refreshing take on Arab/French culture. Philippe Faucon adds to this conversation with a portrayal of racial tension in France.
We shot Dead Certain in the French Alps during seventeen intense days in the winter of 2014. A post-epidemic thriller, we wanted the film to feel desolate and lonely. The quaint town of Monnetier-Mornex offered a perfect setting:
No matter what the critics say, film festival juries frequently appear to be in their own little bubble where they award the top prize to the film with the most political relevance, instead of the best artistic qualities. Last year at Cannes, the middling immigrant drama Dheepan trumped some of the year’s most widely acclaimed movies, from Son of Saul to Carol, for the festival’s top prize. But this was far from the only area critics were left bemused, as Rooney Mara’s performance in Carol suffered the indignity of sharing the Best Actress award with the unhyped Emmanuelle Bercot in My King.
In Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, a treatise about the human condition, he wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” For many people the work they do is pointless, only going far enough to provide limited sustenance while killing the spirit inside which yearns to be free. Naturally, this is nothing new.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is female-directed French films.
First released with Kung-Fu Master! in 1988, Jane B. Par Agnès V.
Entering the world of an Agnès Varda film requires coming to terms with who she is as a filmmaker. She understood and explored the ways in which documentary and fiction are inextricably linked while generally eschewing linear narratives, working instead to show her own complex relationship with her films as she made them. Films like Jane B.
One of the hardest things to decide when reviewing a film is if the intentions behind the production feel genuine. One aspect that always arises during the Oscar/Award periods is actors doing roles or movies being made purely for “Oscar bait”. The idea of making a movie purely for the sake of gaining awards attention is somewhat cynical, but the transparency of movie production nowadays makes this something that sadly may have some truth behind it.
It’s been a week now since the world was shocked by a string of attacks throughout the city known world over as the civic symbol of love. Paris is many different things to many different people, and whether or not one has had the occasion to even visit, it is likely that they at least hold some associations with it, something representative of its ranking it among the world’s top tier metropolises. With Paris, as with most things, there is no better window into the place it holds in the hearts of those looking both from the outside as well as within as the frame of the movie screen.
It may be fair to say that in the film industry, any motion picture that is not spoken in the English language is tagged under ‘foreign’. As we all know, Hollywood cinema is dominant among the world of film due to technological advancements, box office strategies for blockbusters, and stardom. For this reason, audiences are usually very selective when it comes to watching ‘foreign’ films.
Every year I seem to arrive at an impasse with horror films. Like many other lovers of the genre out there, we will always have love for Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers (just tell Rob Zombie to cut it out). But when you’ve seen one too many teens by the lake, and you hear Freddy say “bitch” one time too many, you realize there’s more to the genre than just blood lust and hockey masks.
A young Montana boy named T.S. Spivet leaves his rustic home and heads to Washington D.
Le Havre (2011) is a still, quiet and dryly hilarious film. It has many of the qualities of a Japanese master like Mizoguchi, but if he had emigrated to a small French port and had been forced to make working class comedies. It focuses on a shoe shiner called Marcel Marx whose wife contracts a seemingly terminal disease.