Synopsis :
A University professor, meets a student in a bar. She claims that her name is Aurore, and that she sent him a paper on his latest book. A few days later, Vichac, who has found Aurore’s paper (and her address), turns up at her apartment. This is the start of a period of misunderstanding, romantic confusion and seductive schemes that ends in a major crisis for Vichac and his wife, Aliette.Read More »
French bad boy director François Ozon, who caused a stir with his controversial first feature Sitcom (1998) and his shorts A Summer Dress (1997) and See the Sea (1997), creates a dark and brooding tale of transgression and sexuality for his second feature outing. Alice (Natacha Régnier) is a bored, spoiled high schooler with a gorgeous body and a sociopathic mind. She persuades one of her suitors, the naive and trusting Luc (Jeremie Renier), to murder another suitor, the handsome, rakish Said (Salim Kechiouche). Read More »
Quote:
Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier both won “Best Actress” honors at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival in this naturalistic drama about two women alienated from mainstream society. After a trio of short films, this is the feature directorial debut of 41-year-old French filmmaker Erick Zonca. With opening scenes reminiscent of Agnes Varda’s Vagabond (1985), optimistic hobo Isa (Bouchez), with her life in her backpack, has a gritty existence on the road, going from one town to another through northern France, working factory jobs and selling cards. After she loses a garment-factory job, her withdrawn, near-catatonic co-worker Marie (Regnier) lets Isa share space in her Lille living quarters — an apartment actually belonging to a hospitalized mother and daughter.Read More »
SYNOPSIS
Amidst the impersonal hubbub of Paris’ Orly Airport, strangers meet, secrets are revealed, and sudden intimacies develop in this beautifully observed mosaic of lives in transit.
REVIEW
Quote:
Loosely-linked scenes in the hall of Paris’ Orly airport. A man and a woman, both French but living abroad, meet each other by chance. He has just decided to move back to Paris and she longs to return there. A mother and her almost adult son are going to the funeral of her ex-husband, his father. A young couple is embarking on its first big trip. And a woman reads a letter from the man she has recently left. They are all waiting for their flight.Read More »
Quote:
In the rarefied stratosphere of Eugene Green’s film “Le Pont des Arts,” music, literature, philosophy and aesthetics, and the characters’ engagement with them, are literally matters of life and death. Here and in his other films, Mr. Green, the American-born French filmmaker who founded the Theatre de la Sapience, a group dedicated to revitalizing 17th-century Baroque theater in modern productions, has invented a cinematic vocabulary that radically juxtaposes classical and contemporary themes and characters. … In “Le Pont des Arts,” Mr. Green’s propensity for throwing in academically heavyweight references and concepts may seem intimidating, but it is more than an exercise in name-dropping. The movie is an audacious, mythically slanted inquiry into the place of high art in today’s chaotic culture and an assertion of its primacy. … — NYTimesRead More »