Tag: french film
Everybody Loves Jeanne
Friday, September 15th, 2023 Film Reviews,There should be a special ‘Quirky’ classification for films such as Everybody Loves Jeanne. The last movie I saw that combined comedy and strangeness in this fashion, was Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann (2016), in whch a woman with a high-powered job is tormented by an embarassing father who wants to be part of everything. In […]
Reality & Driving Madeleine
Friday, July 7th, 2023 Film Reviews,Reality is a film that lives up to its title, with a script taken word-for-word from one woman’s experience of an actual FBI search. The protagonist is a young civil servant with the rather surreal name of Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) who arrives home from the supermarket to find two men waiting for her outside […]
Saint Omer & One Fine Morning
Friday, June 9th, 2023 Film Reviews,Hollywood scriptwriters are on strike, protesting about poor rates of pay and the threat of being replaced by AI. There may be quality writing on cable TV, but the stuff we get in American action films and superhero flicks could already have been written by AI, or by a fridge, or a lawnmower. My most […]
The Innocent
Friday, April 14th, 2023 Film Reviews,Although I didn’t get to write about this year’s French Film Festival, our national love affair with French cinema shows no signs of abating. As usual, a good percentage of the movies shown during the festival will get a local release. This comes as something of a relief, as we have gone into the annual […]
The Night of the 12th
Friday, October 14th, 2022 Film Reviews,Never has a whodunnit been less dependent on suspense than Dominik Moll’s The Night of the 12th. At the very beginning we are told the French Criminal Investigation Department opens 800 murder investigations every year. “Some are never resolved,” we read. “This film is about one of these.” Even though we know this is the […]
Full Time & Juniper
Saturday, August 6th, 2022 Film Reviews,If you’ve been to Paris and not experienced a demonstration or strike, you’ve missed one of the quintessentially French cultural experiences. Perhaps it’s a legacy of the Revolution, but Parisians have never been shy about taking their grievances to the streets. It’s tremendously stirring for those doing the marching and chanting, but a pain for […]
Lost Illusions
Friday, July 1st, 2022 Film Reviews,Everything is taxed, everything is sold, everything is manufactured, even success. […]
Maigret
Friday, May 27th, 2022 Film Reviews,Not for the first time I feel as if my reading habits might be working against my ability to enjoy a film-as-film. The great Belgian crime writer, Georges Simenon (1903-89), is a personal addiction. By any standards, Simenon is one of the most remarkable authors of all time. He is said to have written in […]
Farewell, Mr. Haffmann
Friday, April 8th, 2022 Film Reviews,Perhaps the only positive thing that can be said about the Nazi occupation of France, from 1940-44, was that it has inspired a lot of excellent movies. These years brought out the best and the worst of the French, from the heroism of the Resistance to the scandalous number of collaborators and informers that sought […]
De Gaulle
Friday, May 7th, 2021 Film Reviews,Charles De Gaulle was an imposing figure, both physically and morally. Standing at 196 cms, he was a man almost everyone looked up to. As leader-in-exile of the French Resistance, the head of the provisional post-war government, and the nation’s dominant political figure of the 20th century, De Gaulle enjoyed an unshakable power and prestige. […]