Based on James Baldwin’s novel “If Beale Street Could Talk” (1974), the action is transferred from Harlem to present day working class districts around Marseilles harbour. The movie chronicles the inter-racial love story between white Clem and black Bebe, who was adopted by a white family, along with his sister. They plan to marry but Bebe is in prison accused of raping a Bosnian refugee who, manipulated by a racist white policeman, has disappeared after denouncing him.Read More »
Quote:
A fragmented account of the life of Jeanne as she sets out on the path of adult life and gradually experiences the harsh realities of a woman’s life in the 19th-century.Read More »
From imdb:
7 a.m. Catherine receives a phone call from someone called Kirsch. This untimely call throws her into a great state of agitation, which she takes out on her boyfriend, Raphaël. Upset, in turn, Raphaël fights with his employer and even succeeds in getting himself fired. To excuse himself for his early morning call, Kirsch decides to send Catherine a bouquet of flowers, which, in Catherine’s absence, winds up with her neighbors Alice and Antoine. The bouquet will go from hand to hand, setting off all manner of mistakes, misunderstanding and misinterpretations. The bouquet is the catalyst of a multitude of insignificant events, which reveal the whimsy of our lives today.Read More »
“…It began with the a couple much like Joseph and Mary, only in a modern French setting. This fable continued for a little longer, until it became revealed that it was a story being read to a near-catatonic woman by an older lady. The younger of the women turns out to be Natasha, a pediatrician amongst the poor in Marseilles, and a political activist. She is the central character, and the rest of the film delves into her story, through flashbacks, and the contradiction that she represents.Read More »
Synopsis:
A dock worker in Le Havre hears a human sound inside one of the containers in port, that container which left Gabon three weeks ago and which was supposed to arrive in London five days after its departure from Gabon, which didn’t happen. The Le Havre police and French border guards find a still alive group of illegal African immigrants inside. On the sign from one of his elders, a young teen boy among the illegal immigrants manages to escape, news of which hits the local media. The first friendly face that boy, Idrissa, encounters is that of former artist now aged shoeshine Marcel Marx. Marcel decides to help Idrissa by hiding him in his house, news which slowly trickles through his community of friends – most of whom he associates with at his local bar – and neighbors, most who assist Marcel in this task.Read More »
“Robert Guédiguian is well-known for his idiosyncratic slices of life set
in his beloved Marseille, in films such as Marius et Jeannette (1997)
and À la place du coeur (1998). Whilst most of Guédiguian’s films are set in this historic
French port they span a remarkable range of genres and encompass a
dizzying assortment of themes, including noir-style thriller intrigue,
classic romance and pressing social issues. Ki lo sa?, Guédiguian’s
third feature, is one of his more unusual films in this series, a
surprisingly dark and mystical work which explores various
existentialist concerns through the interlocking prisms of black comedy
and social realism.Read More »
“Le Poulpe” is adapted from one of a series of French crime novels, each written by a different author. They are quick reads and often of dubious quality. This film adaptation by Guillaume Nicloux is, however, a different matter.
Gabriel, dit Le Poulpe (The Octopus), played superbly by Jean-Pierre Darroussin, is a laid-back private investigator who works on cases for his own pleasure. He is drawn to the fictional Loire Valley port of Angerneau (St. Nazaire, Loire-Atlantique), with his lover Clotilde (the luscious Courau) who has been summoned by the police concerning the defacement of a deceased relative’s grave. Since Angernau is her home town, she wants to leave it as soon as possible to avoid old acquaintances, but Gabriel stumbles on intriguing events concerning the cargo of a ship in port. Central to the scheme of things is a drunken Scotsman (Faulkner) who seems stranded in the town.Read More »
A madcap comedy about a famous actress who gets more than she bargains for when she goes on a secret vacation in the mountains trying to cure her nymphomania.Read More »
From Stephen Holden review in NYT: “In his unsettling urban panorama, “The Town Is Quiet,” the director Robert Guédiguian invests the French port city of Marseille with the same epic sense of drama that infused Robert Altman’s “Nashville.” Raw, wrenching and more starkly tragic than Mr. Altman’s satire, “The Town Is Quiet” evokes a similar vision of a city as a teeming organism in violent, spasmodic flux.
Like “Nashville,” the film is a sprawling mosaic of interlocking stories whose characters run the social gamut, from right-wing upper- class politicians to young North African immigrants to blue-collar dock workers. As much as the director grasps the anxieties of the city’s well-heeled establishment, his sympathies lie with the sufferings of its underdogs, the struggles of its working class and the dreams of newcomers pouring into the city through its teeming harbor. If his identification with the common people recalls Frank Capra, the go-for-broke passion with which he expresses that vision is closer to Pier Paolo Pasolini.”Read More »