Manuel Blanc

  • Édouard Molinaro – Beaumarchais l’insolent AKA Beaumarchais the Scoundrel (1996)

    Édouard Molinaro1991-2000AdventureFranceRomance
    Beaumarchais l'insolent (1996)
    Beaumarchais l’insolent (1996)

    Quote:
    Here is a lavish and charming film about a decade in the life of the multi-talented eighteenth century playwright and political activist. Under the guiding hand of director Edouard Molinaro, Fabrice Luchini gives a polished, witty, and mesmerizing performance as this French patron saint of freedom. Throughout his turbulent life, Pierre-Augustin Caron Beaumarchais swung back and forth between the pinnacles of success and the ignominy of imprisonment. His classic plays, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, were politically critical of the ruling class and corruption in high places. They both landed him in jail. But the resilient Beaumarchais found a new avenue for his creativity as a secret agent in England. There he got involved with an American who persuaded him to run arms for the American colonies. Beaumarchais, The Scoundrel is a convincing parable about the intoxicating enchantments and the spiritual firepower of freedom.Read More »

  • Werner Schroeter – Deux AKA Two (2002)

    Werner Schroeter2001-2010ArthouseDramaFrance

    Quote:
    A young woman named Magdalena (Isabelle Huppert) retrieves a postcard that had been cast into the wind by her biological mother (Bulle Ogier) from a seaside town in Portugal and discovers that she has a twin sister named Maria. From this seemingly introspective opening premise on identity, connection, and history, Deux diverges into unexpectedly abstract, non-intersecting trajectories that involve a schoolgirl attraction with a fellow classmate, a mother’s wartime romance, a serial killer who leaves a tell-tale rose on the bodies of his victims, a lonely woman who adopts a fox as a household pet. Composed of asequential and dissociated vignettes, the film evokes the baroque tableaux of Sergei Paradjanov, the formalism of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and fractured surrealism of Luis Buñuel infused with quasi-religious iconography and Actionism of Otto Mühl (most notably, in the image of disemboweled figures such as ornamental cherubs).Read More »

  • Anne-Marie Miéville – Lou n’a pas dit non (1994)

    1991-2000Anne-Marie MiévilleArthouseSwitzerland

    Synopsis
    Pierre et Lou sont séparés. Lui sur le point de se remarier mais y renonçant à la mairie. Lou travaille sur un film présentant les statues de Mars et Vénus au Louvre. Pierre et Lou sortent ensemble quelquefois le soir. Mais tandis qu’il papillonne d’une femme à une autre, Lou se lie à Théo, le conservateur du musée, détesté par Pierre. Lou participe aussi à l’action d’une association luttant pour les personnes traversant des difficultés morales. Lou termine son court-métrage qui est projeté.Read More »

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