Mathieu Demy

Quote:
Documenteur, Agnès Varda’s companion piece and follow-up to her documentary Mur murs, shares with it a filming location and a similarly punning title (a menteur is a liar, in French). But the similarities end there: while Mur murs is a more or less straightforward film that purports to document the murals, the artists who created them, and the effect the pictures have on the neighborhoods surrounding them, Documenteur, which includes shots of some of those same murals and has scenes set in those same neighborhoods, is, by its own admission, “an emotion picture.” Neither pure fictional feature film nor documentary, it’s perhaps best described as a documentary with a fictionalized main character.Read More »

Marie-Christine Questerbert’s La Chambre Obscure (The Dark Room) stands apart as a costume drama set in Italy in the 14th century.

Aliénor is the daughter of Gérard de Narbonne, a distinguished doctor of medicine of the 14th Century. She puts the skills she has inherited from her father to good use by curing the king of France of a life-threatening fistula. By way of recompense, she asks to marry Bertrand de Roussillon, whom she has loved since childhood. Alas, Betrand has no love for Aliénor, and rather than consummate the marriage he goes off to fight in Tuscany…Read More »

Quote:

Aesthetically, Agnès Varda’s two 1988 features, Jane B. par Agnes V. and Kung-Fu Master!, are diametrically opposed, but they’re linked by the showcase opportunities that they provide actress, singer, and model Jane Birkin. Kung-Fu Master! is, on its surface at least, a straightforward drama, one that concerns a middle-aged single mother, Mary-Jane (Birkin), finding herself smitten by her adolescent daughter’s classmate, Julien (Mathieu Demy). But like any story about this kind of subject matter, the simplicity of the setup belies the moral and emotional quandary it underpins. Even the midlife crisis suggested by Mary-Jane’s infatuation must be viewed within the context of the pressure that society, not internal doubt, places on women who turn 40.Read More »

A man who returns to Los Angeles to wrap up his mother’s estate sets out in search of the mysterious woman named in her will.Read More »