France
Persian Lessons review - confusing Holocaust dramaSaturday, 23 January 2021
This is an odd film, made even odder by a caption near the beginning, which claims it is "inspired by true events" but doesn’t elaborate. Produced in Belarus, it’s a Holocaust drama based on a novella by the veteran East German screenwriter/director... Read more... |
Blu-ray: LibertéTuesday, 19 January 2021
Catalan director Albert Serra’s interest in late 18th century France is well established – his previous film was The Death of Louis XIV – but the title of his new one has precious little to do with the triadic revolutionary slogan that swept away... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place review - an intimate portrait, necessarily incompleteTuesday, 01 December 2020
As much as we would like it to, writing can never fully recapture someone who is gone. This we learn all too effectively in A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux, arguably one of France’s most important living authors. The text, released in an updated... Read more... |
Blu-Ray: La HaineSunday, 29 November 2020
The BFI has done an excellent job of giving La Haine the 4k restoration treatment under the vigilant eye of the film’s cinematographer, Pierre Aïm. From the opening image of planet earth being torched by a slo-mo Molotov cocktail to the... Read more... |
Little Wars, Union Theatre online review - richly emotional, but formulaicTuesday, 03 November 2020
Feuds make good theatre. I mean, look at the furious 1970s spat between playwright Lillian Hellman and critic Mary McCarthy. Yikes. So far, I’ve counted three recent stage versions: in 2002 there was Nora Ephron’s Imaginary Friends, followed in 2014... Read more... |
Julia Bullock, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH review – bewitching dreamscapesFriday, 30 October 2020
Nobody would wish it this way, but orchestras playing on a stage specially built-up for distancing to a handful of invitees have never sounded better in the Royal Festival Hall. The Philharmonia’s outgoing principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is a... Read more... |
Summer of 85 review - a tender, tragic coming-of-ageFriday, 23 October 2020
Intriguingly, Summer of 85 could have been François Ozon’s very first film. Back in the mid-Eighties the French director was much taken by Dance on My Grave, the YA novel by Aidan Chambers on which it’s based, its youth-romance, coming-of-age story... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Beau TravailTuesday, 29 September 2020
This fifth feature from Claire Denis must surely be the director’s most sheerly concentrated film. Scaling back narrative and dialogue alike – story elucidation relies mainly on intermittent retrospective voice-over narration – Beau Travail engages... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: MademoiselleTuesday, 22 September 2020
Mademoiselle is Jeanne Moreau, in smouldering femme fatale mode: a school-teacher and town hall secretary in a small French village, she wreaks havoc by setting fire to barns, poisoning cattle and unleashing flood waters in a farm yard full of... Read more... |
Coincoin and the Extra-Humans review – God's gunkMonday, 27 July 2020
It’s no accident that the eponymous young antihero of Coincoin and the Extra-Humans loses his virginity to the daughter of a French white nationalist in a field close to a sewage farm. The stench of racism pervades the hilarity of Bruce Dumont’s... Read more... |
DVD: Who You Think I AmSunday, 19 July 2020
Imagine, if you will, that the Internet doesn’t allow you to see other people. Because that is the premise upon which Safy Nebbou's Who Do You Think I Am rests. It smacks of an idea that hails from the days of Friends Reunited (one for the... Read more... |
The Old Guard review - serious sillinessThursday, 09 July 2020
It’s hard to take The Old Guard seriously — it’s an action film about thousand-year-old immortal warriors. Pulpy flashbacks and fake blood abounds. But The Old Guard doesn’t need to be serious or even memorable: it’s a fun, feel-good film, a rare... Read more... |
