Famed swordsman and poet Cyrano de Bergerac is in love with his cousin Roxane. He has never expressed his love for her as he his large nose undermines his self-confidence. Then he finds a way to express his love to her, indirectly.Read More »
France
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Jean-Paul Rappeneau – Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)
Jean-Paul Rappeneau1981-1990DramaFrance -
Adolfo Arrieta – Grenouilles (1983)
Adolfo Arrieta1981-1990ArthouseFantasyFranceGrenouilles (Frogs) is perhaps his strangest film. Anne Wiazemsky plays a beautiful Russian spy, Nora, who arrives on an island in the middle of the ocean, to avenge the betrayal of her lover, the artist Tibor. Other characters include a spy from UNESCO, a mysterious stranger who is plotting the end of the world, and a gang of thieves disguised as frogmen….Read More »
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Barbet Schroeder – L’avocat de la terreur aka Terror’s Advocate (2007)
Barbet Schroeder2001-2010DocumentaryFrancePoliticsQuote:
A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla who has defended unpopular figures such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.
Communist, anticolonialist, right-wing extremist? What convictions guide the moral mind of Jacques Vergès? Barbet Schroeder takes us down history’s darkest paths in his attempt to illuminate the mystery behind this enigmatic figure.
A brilliant study in the link between moral corruption and narcissism.Read More » -
Jacques Doillon & Alain Resnais & Jean Rouch – L’an 01 AKA The Year 01 (1973)
Jacques Doillon1971-1980Alain ResnaisComedyFranceJean RouchPoliticsThe Films of May '68Quote:
The film narrates a utopian abandonment, consensual and festive of the market economy and high productivity. The population decides on a number of resolutions beginning with “We stop everything” and the second “After a total downtime will be revived-reluctantly-that the services and products including lack will prove intolerable. Probably: water to drink, electricity for reading at night, the TSF to say “This is not the end of the world, this is an 01, and now a page of Celestial Mechanics”. The implementation of these resolutions is the first day of a new era, Year 01.Read More » -
Dominique Bernard-Deschamps – Monsieur Coccinelle (1938)
1931-1940ComedyDominique Bernard-DeschampsFranceQuote:
One of the great unknown films of the 30’s.
Astonishingly inventive and constantly amusing tale of
a bureaucrat whose dead aunt proves to be irrepressibly alive.
Colin Crisp – French Cinema – A Critical Filmography, Volume 1 (1929–1939)Read More » -
Reza Riahi – Navazandeh AKA The Musician (2020)
2011-2020AnimationFranceReza RiahiShort FilmDuring a vicious attack, a young musician and the love of his life are brutally separated from one another. Fifty years later, the musician is summoned to play at the Mongol castle where his beloved has been held.Read More »
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Romain Goupil – Gustave Courbet, the Origin of his World [+Extras] (2007)
Romain Goupil2001-2010DocumentaryFranceGustave Courbet, The Origin of his World
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), painter of real life, the earth, and material things, was so much a part of his era he lost himself in it. He paid for this dearly: wealthy and famous in this youth, he was later obliged to chum out paintings to avoid starvation.
“Only an hour long, Romain Goupil’s 2007 documentary on Gustave Courbet, the great French 19th-century realist painter, still expands your mind and heightens your reactions, with the lucidity and grace of all the best art (and criticism). Courbet was a terrific character, a rebel from the bourgeoisie, who accomplished in paint the revolution that he couldn’t quite manage in life. A lifelong anti-clericist and socialist, he was an important figure in the Paris Commune, a political indiscretion for which he later paid dearly, with exile and bankruptcy.Read More » -
Patrice Rhomm – Helga, la louve de Stilberg AKA Bloody Camp (1978)
1971-1980ExploitationFrancePatrice RhommHelga, a woman who runs a strict prison camp, forces her female prisoners into slave labor and to be love toys for her own personal pleasure, as well as for her soldiers. Issuing torture and whippings to anyone who dares defy her, man or woman.Read More »
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Jean-Claude Rousseau – De son Appartement (2007)
Jean-Claude Rousseau2001-2010ExperimentalFrancePROPOSITIONS
Selected examples of a New CinemaThe continuing demand for high standards is what sets Rouseau’s work apart. What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting «Bérénice» to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost – that is the goal. (Jean-Pierre Rehm)Read More »