Bruno Putzulu

In a dying French mining town near the German border, the last miners are preparing to strike. Marek and Mimmo, two young miners and friends, have different views on the impending strike.Read More »

Synopsis
(1)
Someone we hear but don’t see talks of a project entitled Eloge de l’amour, which deals with the four key moments of love: the meeting, the physical passion, the quarrels and separation, the reconciliation. These moments are seen through three couples: young, adult and elderly. Is the project to be a play, a film, or even an opera? A sort of servant or assistant always accompanies the author of the project.

Adults pose a real problem. Unlike old people or young people, an adult is hard to define without telling a story. The author of the project finally meets an extraordinary young woman. In fact, they had already met three years earlier when Edgar had by chance been present during a discussion between some Americans and the young woman’s grandparents. When he comes to tell the young woman that his project is on, Edgar learns that she has died.Read More »

Quote:
Three adolescents, a girl who serves as the priming and two boys, kill two men cold blooded who were known by the girl only for to steal the money of them. With the money the three want to open a shop for clothing in the United States. But their dream turns out to be more difficult to realize than the assassination.
Volker BoehmRead More »

Synopsis:
The thoughts and dreams of a group of people riding a subway in Paris provides the springboard for Jean-Claude Guiguet’s drama Les Passagers/The Passengers. As the train rolls along, various characters either talk among themselves or address the camera on a variety of subjects. A mathematician (Bruno Putzulu) speaks with one of his students (Stephane Rideau) about the statistical implications of the spread of AIDS. A nurse (Fabienne Babe) meets with a security guard she’s infatuated with (Philippe Garziano), while her friend enjoys a daydream about the joys of life as a rural housewife. A man rants about problems with sex and the virtues of masturbation, while another person debates the relative merits of the films Savage Nights and The Mother and The Whore. Les Passagers/The Passengers was screened as part of the “Un Certain Regard” series at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
Having trodden the path towards ever-increasing obscurity in the 1990s, the eternal maverick of French cinema, Jean-Luc Godard made a surprising come-back with Éloge de l’amour, his first major theatrical release outside of France for well over a decade. More sophisticated and mature than Godard’s increasingly abstract and inward-looking works of the 1990s, it is a film which manages to capture the essence of Godard’s cinema (his political concerns, his love of character, his enthusiasm for cinema and literature, to say nothing of his near-pathological contempt for mainstream cinema). At the same time, it is a challenging work, packed with content whilst employing a minimalist approach reminiscent of Robert Bresson (another great director who is often referred to in the film).
The film is divided in two contrasting parts. It begins with an author’s seemingly doomed attempts to realise a ‘project’ (perhaps a film, but we cannot be certain of this). This part of the film is shot beautifully in black-and-white, almost as a sombre elegy to monochrome cinema. This includes some stunning night shots of Paris, immediately evocative of the Nouvelle Vague cinema of the 1960s in which Godard played such a major part. Two thirds of the way into the film, the mood and style change suddenly, as if we have been propelled into a dream. Thanks to the marvels of the latest digital technology, the images suddenly take on an otherworldly form, with overly saturated colour and some occasional visual distortions.
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