Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, code name OSS 117, is a character based on the novels of French writer Jean Bruce (the pen name of Jean Brochet), published in the 1940s, before Ian Fleming’s James Bond thrillers came out. OSS … Read More
Mystery writers these days seem to be required to stake out a geographical territory – Donna Leon has Venice, Steven Saylor has ancient Rome, Sara Paretsky has Chicago, etc. – and give it the status of a character in their … Read More
One of those inexplicable things about France is the near-universal adoration of Johnny Hallyday, a rock singer who made his name in the 1960s by singing French versions of American hits and dressing like a tough-guy rocker. Even today, at … Read More
Du Jour au Lendemain (From One Day to the Next), directed by Philippe Le Guay, poses the following question: What happens when a man’s sad, gray life suddenly – and for no apparent reason – takes on brilliant colors and … Read More
The conceit of Toi et Moi (You and Me) is that one of the main characters, the pretty, ditzy Ariane (Julie Depardieu), is the author of Toi et Moi, a roman-photo, a sort of comic-book version of a Harlequin romance, … Read More
French films are often badly received at international film festivals; for some reason their very “Frenchness” seems to bring out the ire of the critics. So it was with some trepidation that I sat down recently at the Berlin Film … Read More
Why would any self-respecting Parisian ride the Métro to the outskirts of the city and then mount a crowded bus for a long ride into the suburbs, far from the périphérique, that psychological dividing line between civilization and the rest … Read More
The worst thing about Valerie Lemercier’s Palais Royal! is the exclamation mark in the title. Lemercier’s third film as director is a funny, sharp and silly satire about a royal family with a strange resemblance to the one on the … Read More
About an hour into Combien Tu M’Aimes? (How Much Do You Love Me?) the film’s director Bertrand Blier makes a Hitchcock-like cameo appearance as a client in a brothel. It’s a typical Blier moment from the director of Les Valeuses … Read More
Are you ready for a swashbuckling French costume comedy? Here it is: Il ne Faut Jurer de Rien, starring Gérard Jugnot, star of last year’s surprise box-office smash Les Choristes, and Mélanie Doutey, the new French screen sweetheart, who made … Read More
