This symbolic drama underscores the human need for affection. Children steal lemons for the thrill, while women steal other women’s men just to prove they can. Drug smuggling, clandestine love affairs, and two lovers involved with the production of Shakespeare’s Othello carry on their own off-stage tragedy.Read More »
Bresson’s brilliant adaptation of Dostoevsky’s short story (A Gentle Creature) exhibits in its lapidary sequences the political and existential revolt of a young student in Paris. Sharing a theme that can be traced from Bresson’s Mouchette to his fantastic exploration of revolutionary choices in The Devil Probably, Une Femme Douce articulates in its inimitable minimalist mode a range of issues from the ideological options of France post-May ’68 to human relationships. Dominique Sanda is not the conventional, recognizable student revolutionary, but a “gentle” philosopher whose powers of sensitivity and social scrutiny exceed and tease the prosaic, crude disposition of her bourgeois husband. The sequences in the zoo, the museum of natural history and the performance of Hamlet are powerful. On another note, look out for Indian experimental filmmaker Kumar Shahani who was assisting Bresson at this time, sitting diagonally behind Sanda in the sequence at the movie theater.Read More »
A mature lady approaches a young actor and offers him a great amount of money to get acquainted with her lonely daughter, who suffers of an incurable illness. Eventually a true romance emerges, as mother has secret feelings for the man, while he truly falls in love with the daughter. After the expected death of the daughter, the man leaves in grief rejecting the money, and the mature woman stays in deep loneliness, trying to cope with a double loss.Read More »
Each night in Paris, hundreds of men and women anonymously use telephone lines that date from the German Occupation and are no longer listed to talk to each other, to love each other.
The plot of Le Navire Night concerns a love affair between a young man and a woman, F., who first make contact by telephone one night, quite by chance. They have never seen each other or met before, but a relationship begins as a result of the conversation; F. continues telephoning. He, however, never learns F.’ s full name, telephone number or address, and all initiative for the relationship falls to her. The affair unfolds purely as an affair of the human voice, but this adds to the sexual intensity of the relationship rather than detracting from it: ‘C’est un orgasme noir,’ one hears the voice of Bulle Ogier saying. ‘Sans toucher réciproque. Read More »
After the international firestorm of Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci went on to create one of the grandest and most legendary epics in modern cinema. A stunning five-hour saga following the intertwined fates of two childhood friends born on the same day in 1901 at opposite ends of the social scale through five decades of class struggle.Read More »
Quote:
Nena’s family, who reunite in their house by the sea to celebrate her birthday. Everybody is there. Even Paco, Alma’s peacock.Read More »
After a painful separation from the woman he loved, Julien (Laurent Terzieff) leaves his apartment.
He goes in search of his yesterday friends but no one answers him and the town stays silent.
So Julien is leaving the city in search of his childhood, his old school and his favorite teacher.
To the children who are here today he speaks a language that charm them
as it also charms the discreet Sylvie (Dominique Sanda)
His original teaching method is not to the taste of everyone.
It will even provoke the hostility of the parents and the administration. He’s fired.
Continuing his way, Julien goes to the sea and enters the sea.
The classroom doors suddenly open and a huge crowd of children
suddenly appears at the top of the dunes preparing to invade the beaches.
Then a storm breaks, a new battle is prepared and Utopia seems closer than ever.Read More »
IMDb storyline: Roland des Roncesvalles is a legendary knight from the age of chivalry in France. In the 11th-century epic La Chanson de Roland, he is depicted as a key figure in halting the advance of the Arabs into France. In this story, the 10th-century legend is staged by a group of 12th-century pilgrims using the 11th-century poem. Their acting is interrupted by a violent peasant uprising, which kills many of the pilgrims. However, one of the survivors, is converted to the peasant cause and later speaks out in favor of more just treatment for the downtrodden. (Written by Ulf Kjell Gür)Read More »
*** BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM – Oscar winner, 1972 ***
Plot
The film is set in Ferrara, northern Italy, between 1938-1943, and shows the lives of the Jewish Finzi-Contini family and their friends as they struggle against Mussolini’s fascism and anti-Semitism in wartime Italy. The Finzi-Contini family is one of the leading families in the town. The adult children, Micòl and Alberto, gather friends for tennis at their villa with its lovely grounds, keeping the rest of the world at bay. Into the circle steps Giorgio, a Jew from the middle class who falls in love with Micòl.Read More »