Un Ours dans le Jura
The Bear Did It
It sometimes helps to go to a film with low expectations – on the rare occasions when they are turned upside down, the sense of sheer pleasure and relief afterward feels all the better. That was the case with the … Read More
Trois Amies
What's Love Got to Do With It?
As Tolstoy famously wrote at the beginning of Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Perhaps the same principle could be applied to happy and unhappy couples. In any case, Emmanuel … Read More
Vivre, Mourir, Renaître
Life After HIV
There is something poignant in director Gaël Morel’s decision to situate his new film, Vivre, Mourir, Renaître (To Live, To Die, To Live Again), between 1990 and ’95; it was during that period that Morel first made his name as … Read More
Hors du Temps
Reliving an Idyllic Lockdown
As a Parisian who was cooped up in a small apartment during the various lockdown periods for COVID-19, I was extremely envious of French people who were able to hunker down in lovely country houses with big gardens, while we … Read More
Madame de Sévigné
Dearest Daughter . . .
The fact that the life of Marie, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-96) has, as far as I am aware, never been made into a feature film before is perhaps unsurprising. How does one remain true to the reason her name is … Read More
La Bête (The Beast)
The Indelible Beast Within
Director Bertrand Bonello’s latest film, La Bête (The Beast), is a very stylish movie, carried along by its star Léa Seydoux’s undeniably charming pout, or should I say pouts, as she seems to be pouting – and otherwise expressionless – … Read More
Making Of
Through a Lens Darkly
There is nothing film directors like more than to make movies about their own craft. From classics like Fellini’s 8 1/2, Truffaut’s La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night) and Singin’ in the Rain to more recent examples like The Artist, … Read More
Vincent Doit Mourir
Paranoia Strikes Deep
It’s not all that unusual to find allegory lurking in current cinema and in media in general, especially in horror – one message hidden behind another, symbols that face one direction while pointing toward another, political dog-whistling in all its … Read More
L’Été Dernier (Last Summer)
Echoes of Phaedra
Writer and filmmaker Catherine Breillat made her name with explicit, prolonged depictions of sex and sexuality, perhaps most notoriously in Romance (1999), in which she directed Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi in a number of unsimulated sex scenes, and À … Read More
Yannick
(Dangerously) Live Onstage!
Quentin Dupieux is one of the most original, innovative and downright wacky movie directors around. All his films have started from a completely absurd premise; for example, in Deerskin, the protagonist falls in love with a deerskin jacket that speaks … Read More