French cinema
DVD: The Death of Louis XIVTuesday, 21 November 2017
Albert Serra has earned himself the directorial moniker “the Catalan king of stasis”, and nothing in The Death of Louis XIV is going to dispel such a reputation – if anything, he has honed that characteristic approach further, concentrating this... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Serge Gainsbourg & Jean-Claude VannierSunday, 05 November 2017
In terms of cinema history, 1969’s Les Chemins de Katmandou is a footnote. Directed by André Cayatte, whose most interesting films were 1963’s interrelated marital dramas Jean-Marc ou la Vie Conjugale and Françoise ou la Vie Conjugale, it was a... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Wages of FearTuesday, 31 October 2017
The opening shot sets the tone for what follows: a pair of duelling cockroaches attached to a string, tormented by a bored child. In 1953’s The Wages of Fear, we quickly sense that Henri-Georges Clouzot’s characters are similarly powerless. His... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Love of a WomanFriday, 01 September 2017
In Jean Grémillon's final fiction film The Love of a Woman, Marie Prieur (Micheline Presle) arrives on the Breton island of Ushant to replace the tiny settlement's aging Dr Morel (Robert Naly). While showing Marie her new digs and surgery, Mme Morel... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Touchez Pas au GrisbiTuesday, 29 August 2017
Jean Gabin’s gangster’s paradise says more about him than the bullets he later lets fly. France’s greatest male star made a barnstorming comeback to pre-eminence as sharp-suited, drolly masterful Max in Jacques Becker’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: J'AccuseFriday, 25 August 2017
Abel Gance’s remake of his 1919 classic was a worthy but overwrought attempt to avert World War II, which by 1938 was already a fait accompli. In their comparative sombreness, King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925) and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the... Read more... |
Coming soon: trailers to the next big filmsFriday, 11 August 2017
Summer's here, which can only mean Hollywood blockbusters. But it's not all Spider-Man, talking apes and World War Two with platoons of thespians fighting on the beaches. There's comedy, a saucy menage-à-trois, a film about golf and even a ghost... Read more... |
DVD: Cézanne et moiFriday, 14 July 2017
For viewers not familiar with the background story of Cézanne et moi – which surely includes most of us without specialist knowledge of late 19th century French artistic and literary culture – the moi of this lavish yet curiously uninvolving double... Read more... |
Souvenir review – Huppert does deadpan like Buster KeatonSaturday, 24 June 2017
Isabelle Huppert isn’t just here for the nasty things in life. Her rape non-victim in Elle was one of the most iconoclastic performances even she’s given, enigmatic yet emotionally rich, rooted and moving. She won’t get nearly as much attention for... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Claude Barras and Céline Sciamma on My Life as a CourgetteSaturday, 03 June 2017
If one were to stop at the title, My Life as a Courgette – from the French Ma vie de Courgette and unsurprisingly renamed for those insular Americans as My Life As a Zucchini – could be too easily dismissed as a juvenile or childlike frivolity. And... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Spotlight On a MurdererFriday, 02 June 2017
After Eyes Without a Face, came this. Georges Franju is largely known for the grisly, surreal horror of his second feature, about a mad surgeon grafting stalked young women’s faces onto his disfigured wife. His all but forgotten follow-up, Spotlight... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Madame de…Tuesday, 23 May 2017
Initially, Madame de… feels as if it might wear out its welcome. What seems a wearisome exposition on how privileged people with too much time on their hands fill their hours with vacuity gradually turns into an incisive discourse on the power of... Read more... |
