French cinema
Full Time review - Laure Calamy as a driven single motherSaturday, 27 May 2023![]() Full Time opens in darkness. All we can hear is the sound of a sleeping woman breathing. It’s one of the few quiet moments in a film that follows Julie (Laure Calamy) as she scrambles to manage her life. Divorced with two young children, she... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Fill 'er Up With SuperTuesday, 16 May 2023![]() This almost forgotten, naturalistic 1976 road movie lets four young Frenchmen off the leash in a cross-country trip from Lille to Cannes.Car salesman Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is forced by his oppressive boss to ditch a promised weekend with his wife... Read more... |
Pacifiction review - portending hell in paradiseMonday, 24 April 2023![]() Paranoia seeps into paradise in Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, a scathing critique of French colonialism on the Polynesian island of Tahiti. Acting on rumours that his overlords are about to resume nuclear testing in the region and fearing his... Read more... |
One Fine Morning review - Léa Seydoux stars in Mia Hanson-Løve's poignant love storyFriday, 14 April 2023![]() In the first scene of Mia Hanson-Løve’s wonderful One Fine Morning, Sandra (Léa Seydoux in a minimal, nuanced performance), is trying to visit her father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), in his Paris flat. But, stuck on the other side, he can’t find the... Read more... |
Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022)Thursday, 15 September 2022![]() Paris, 16 March 1960 – and cinema ruptured. The first public screening of the 29-year-old Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature, A Bout de Souffle, breathed life into an arthritic medium, announcing a new world of possibility.Its story, of a French petty... Read more... |
Blu-ray: PickpocketTuesday, 12 July 2022![]() Pickpocket regularly makes it into the list of best films of all times. It is a film-maker’s film, more of an essay on the art of cinema and a discourse on crime than a thriller. Much French art house cinema is characterised by serious intent and... Read more... |
We (Nous) review - a low-key look at life in the suburbs of ParisTuesday, 28 June 2022![]() Director Alice Diop read an article by Pierre Bergounioux in which he described how he began writing to draw attention to his overlooked neck of the woods – Correze, in central France. It was a lightbulb moment for her: “My approach as a film-maker... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Soft SkinSunday, 19 June 2022![]() The 400 Blows (1959) and Jules et Jim (1962) established François Truffaut as an outstanding and original director. His next film, The Soft Skin (La peau douce) from 1964, was not in the same league.Although it displays many of his story-telling... Read more... |
Everything Went Fine review - classy French family dramaTuesday, 14 June 2022![]() French filmmakers do family dramas so well, and none better than François Ozon when he is on form, as he is on Everything Went Fine.André (veteran charmer André Dussolier) is a wealthy industrialist and art dealer who, after suffering a debilitating... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Last MetroTuesday, 14 June 2022![]() The Last Metro (Le dernier métro), from 1980, is without doubt one of François Truffaut’s best films: a story beautifully told, strong on character, sometimes funny and always profoundly moving. Most of the credit has gone to Truffaut and co-stars... Read more... |
Vortex review – an old couple's road to nowhereTuesday, 17 May 2022![]() Life, opined Thomas Hobbes, is “nasty, brutish, and short”. In Gaspar Noé’s Vortex it’s not short enough for a dementia-afflicted octogenarian psychiatrist (Françoise Lebrun) and her addled film critic husband (giallo auteur Dario Argento), whose... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Round MidnightTuesday, 10 May 2022![]() Among the plentiful bonus items in this Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Round Midnight, the last one is a surprise. It shows Dexter Gordon in his prime, back in 1969.He’s doing the thing for which, purely as a jazz musician, he’s best known. We see... Read more... |
