La Graine et le mulet – Abdel Kechiche 7.5/10 As a resident of France I was a little surprised by recent article in the Guardian by Jason Solomons about the re-birth of the French film industry in the wake of the nation’s first Palme D’Or winner (‘Entre Les Murs’/’The Classroom’) in many a year. Further [...]
French cinema, separating the grain
February 22nd, 2009 · 1 Comment · Film
Tags:Abdel Kechiche·Farida Benkhetache·French cinema·French film·Habib Boufares·Hafsia Herzi·neo-realism·renaissance·Toubon Law·Tunisia
Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale) – Arnaud Desplechin
August 14th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Film
“Christmas time … mistletoe and [lots and lots of] wine” 7/10 I’m not going to try and summarize the tangled human relationships that characterise Arnaud Desplechin’s striking ‘Un Conte de Noel’ (A Christmas Tale), so fiddly and time-consuming that it would be. The premise is an extended and admirably dysfunctional family gathering for Christmas in [...]
Tags:alcaholism·Anne Consigny·Arnaud Desplechin·Catherine Deneuve·Chiara Mastroianni·Christmas·Emmanuelle Devos·family·French cinema·Jean-Paul Roussillon·Mathieu Amalric·Northern France·realism
13 Tzameti – Gela Babluani
March 7th, 2006 · No Comments · Film
Black and white oddity from France 8/10 13 Tzameti is a surprising and memorable film that references but does not plagiarise other works while mining a distinct character of its own. Shot in stark monochrome, it opens in a bleak French coastal town where Sebastian, a young Georgian immigrant, is working as a handyman to [...]
Tags:French cinema·Georgia·Pascal Bongard·Russian roulette
Hidden (Caché) – Michael Haneke
February 23rd, 2006 · No Comments · Film
The secret history 9/10 Caché – ‘Hidden’ – directed by Michael (The Piano Teacher) Haneke, is a masterclass on how to unnerve your audience, not through what you necessarily show but by what is indeed hidden from view. Georges (Daniel Auteil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) are a bourgeois Parisian couple with a teenage son. Georges [...]