Ricky - A review of Francois Ozon's wondrous Ricky, a film about an ordinary man and woman who produce an extraordinary baby.
A French Gigolo review - The title might make you think you are in for something raunchy, but Josiane Balasko's bittersweet film is anything but. The always wonderful Nathalie Baye and Eric Caravaca star.
The Wedding Song - A review of Karin Albou's THE WEDDING SONG. Set during World War II in Tunis, Karin Albou's The Wedding Song is the story of a friendship between adolescent girls tested by drastic circumstances.
Wild Grass review - Alain Resnais 'Wild Grass' is a fine, odd, and unpredictable film. Sabine Azema, Andre Dussollier, Emmanuelle Devos, Anne Consigny and Mathieu Amalric star.
Pola X - A review of Leo Carax's film Pola X starring Guillaume Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve. Jurgen Fauth reviews.
Un Coeur en Hiver - A review of the French Film Un Coeur en Hiver, a love triangle between three people strains a longstanding friendship and questions the nature of romance. Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Beart star.
Human Resources review - Laurent Cantet's "Human Resources" tells the story of Franck (Jalil Lespert), the son of working class parents who returns home to manage the local company,
A review of Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours, starring Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, and Jérémie Renier.
Jean-François Richet turned infamous bank robber Jacques Mesrine's life into a two part biopic that gives Vincent Cassel four hours to explore the legendary criminal's deadly mixture of greed, charm, and murderousness. It's a perfect role for Cassel, and together, the two parts of Mesrine -- "L'Instinct de mort" and "L'Ennemi public n°1" -- make one fiendishly entertaining movie. The ensemble cast features Gerard Depardie, Mathie Almaric, Cecile de France and Ludivine Sagnier.
The Beaches of Agnes review - Agnès Varda takes a long back at her life by revisiting her favorite beaches in the moving [i]The Beaches of Agnès[/i].
A Christmas Tale review (Un conte de Noel) - a review of Arnaud Desplachin's A Christmas Tale. Catherine Deneuve stars as Junon Vuillard, the family matriarch who needs a bone marrow transplant to save her life. Mathieu Amalric, Melvil Poupaud, Chiara Mastroianni, Anne Consigny, and Emmanuelle Devos also star.
Lauren Cantent's The Class - A review of Lauren Cantent's The Class - The Class won the Palm D'or at the 2008 Canne Film Festival and opens this year's New York Film Festival. Marcy reviews Lauren Cantent's The Class, based on the novel by Francois Begaudeau.
"A Secret" review - A review of Claude Miller's "A Secret", starring Mathieu Amalric, Patrick Bruel, Cecile De France, Ludivine Sagnier, Julie Depardieu.
I've Loved You So Long Review - A review of Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long starring Kristin Scott Thomas as a woman who returns home after fifteen years in prison.
Guillaume Canet’s thriller "Tell No One" based on the bestselling novel by Harlan Coben, is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. Francois Cluzet stars as Alexandre Beck who is charged for the murder of his wife eight years (Marie-Josee Croze) after his death.
In diversity and accomplishment, the output of French filmmakers rivals that of any country. Here is a list of ten landmark French films that should not be missed by any serious film fan.
French film, of course, has a bad rep for being talky and ponderous, and Americans' idea of the Gallic sense of humor usually involves misguided notions about Jerry Lewis. All the more reason to check out some geniunely side-splitting exports rather than the half-assed American remakes.
Read about the importance of Francois Truffaut's 1959 New Wave film and watch excerpts as RealVideo clips. From Film.com.
It's "Memento" reimagined as a love story: Francois Ozon ("Swimming Pool," "8 Women") tells the story of two lovers in five chapters, moving backwards in time from their divorce to the first chance meeting.
Mahmoud Zemmouri's new French film is highspirited, fun, and also political.
If you fall in love with a character, as I did with Antonine Doinel in Francois Truffaut's masterpiece "The 400 Blows," than there is no greater treat than a box set of Antoine Doniel movies. Luckily, Criterion obliged with this extraordinary five-DVD collection. Truffaut's young hero, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, is impulsive, defiant, romantic, idealistic, melancholic, and perhaps unintentionally, a world class comedian.
Romain Duris stars and Audrey ("Amelie") Tautou pouts in Cedric Klapsich's pleasant tale about a young French man who finds his way during a year abroad in Barcelona.
The last and greatest film of Jean Vigo.
Rene Clair's 1931 comedy about the fate of two escaped convicts looks fresh and clean in this new DVD transfer courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
Isild le Besco stars in Benoît Jacquot's "A Tout de Suite." Any film featuring the intense French actress is worth seeing. She breathes life and passion into the role of a young borgeouis art student who takes off with her Moroccan lover after he robs a bank.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's lavish follow-up to "Amélie" is both a whimsical love story featuring his favorite brown-eyed star Audrey Tautou at her most adorable, and a nitty-gritty depiction of World War One trench warfare.
The final installment is a melodrama that follows Pascal, a cop who seeks a redemption of credibility in the capture of escaped convict Bruno, who in turn is harbored by Pascal's morphine-addicted wife Agnes.
André Téchiné's gorgeous new film stars Juliette Binoche and Alexis Loret as troubled lovers.
France's biggest export since the croissant is set to conquer a nation starved for happiness: But "Amélie," an unabashedly cheerful ode to life's small pleasures, is too cute for its own good.
After the menacing opening installment "On The Run," the second part of Lucas Belvaux's "Trilogy" is a perfect farce--a charming and side-splittingly funny comedy of errors starring Ornella Muti.
Luc Besson’s “Angel-A”, an astonishingly beautiful black and white fantasy portrait of the city of Paris, tell the story of a man down on his luck. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film on March 23rd, 2007 in New York and Los Angeles
French filmmaker Jacques Audiard's adaption of James Toback 1978 cult classic "Fingers" is an odd, compelling film. Romain Duris stars as Tom, a real estate thug, unhappy with his life, trains to become a classical concert pianist.
Daniel Auteuil stars in Pierre Salvadori's charming comedy "Après vous"
The braying of a donkey is the first sound we hear in Robert Besson's 1966 classic "Au Hasard Balthazar." The white-nosed ass with the name of a saint is indeed the protagonist of the tale, and I won't hesitate to declare it the best movie about a donkey I have ever seen.
The Official Entry from France for this year’s Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, Daniele Thompson's Avenue Montaigne opens February 16, 2007.
Jean-Pierre Ameris' teenage drama takes some surprising twists and turns that make "Breaking the Waves" look like a picnic on the beach. A powerful and memorable film.
To hear Jean-Luc Godard tell it, his seventh film "Band of Outsiders" should be a terrible bore: made as a "systemic assault" on the myths of traditional French filmmaking, the young New Wave director set forth to break all the rules. It is a testament to Godard's skills that "Band of Outsiders," almost in spite of his intentions, is an eminently watchable and charming film.
Jean-Luc Godard set out to break all the rules, but "Band of Outsiders" remains his most charming and accessible film.
The French classic finds new life on DVD. Ice cold beauty Catherine Deneuve lures you in; insightful commentary offers clarity to surrealist Bunuel's inscrutable intentions.
Julie Gavras' "Blame It On Fidel" depicts a Parisian family's political evolution through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl.
Spies, crooks, Nazis, divas, politicians and nuclear scientists circle one another in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's romantic wartime comedy "Bon Voyage." Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu and Virginie Ledoyen lead the star-studded ensemble cast, a raucous bunch who flee Paris for Bordeaux at the beginning of World War II.
Action-Adventure Guide Fred Topel interviews martial arts star Mark Dacascos about this horror flick set in the 18th century.
Forget Robin Williams in
The Bird Cage. See the original and laugh your head off.
French superstars Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu come together again in Andre Téchiné's Changing Times. The on-screen lovers are older, sadder and more compelling than ever. Set in Tangiers, Techine's complicated melodrama weaves numerous storylines into a tense, suspenseful film.
Men are selfish buffoons at best and murderous pimps at worst in Coline Serreau's exciting mix of revenge thriller, domestic comedy, and feminist manifesto.
Marcel Carné's poetic 1945 classic lives up to the hype it has received over the years, and with Criterion's restored DVD, it looks as good as it hasn't in decades: this film might just be perfect.
The final installment of Eric Rohmer's "moral tales," this story of infidelity is a delicious treat.
Cute, well-acted and utterly predictable, Christophe Barratier's feature debut "The Chorus" is France's selection for Best Foreign Film.
New York's Film Forum unearthed and restored this terrific 1960 thriller by director Claude Sautet, starring Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Brigitte Bardot shares the screen with Fritz Lang and Jack Palance in Jean-Luc Godard's absorbing 1963 film about love and the movies.
A sexy French summer comedy sounds like a good enough idea, but Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's "Crustacés et coquillages" simply doesn't cut it, not even as a pleasant diversion.
French director Francois Ozon's dark film about two lovers lost in the wood.
The lovely Emmanuelle Beart plays the violin in this wise and touching film about love.
Christophe Honoré's follow-up to Ma Mere is a loving homage to the French New Wave that stays true to its own emotional core. Heartthrobs Louis Garrell (The Dreamers) and Romain Duris (Moliere, The Beat My Heart Skipped) play brothers who find themselves once again in their father's small Paris apartment, Jonathan (Garrell) as a student, Paul (Duris) in the throes of depression after his breakup with longtime girlfriend Anna (Joanna Preiss.)
A delightful farce and one of the most popular French comedies since the glory days of Louis de Funes.
Julian Schnabel's unorthodox biopic tells the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the editor of the French Elle Magazine who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable "locked in" syndrome at the age of 43. After recovering from her initial horror, Marcy was able to almost enjoy the experience of watching this discomfiting, wholly unique narrative.
A film by Erick Zonca. Winner at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.
The botanist, the bishop, the milkman, and his lover: Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert, the team that gave the world "Children of Paradise," made this very silly movie in 1937.
Jacques Rivette's impeccably assured adaptation of Balzac s tale of obsessive love and romantic gamesmanship in 1820s Paris. With Jeanne Balibar, Guillaume Depardieu, Bulle Ogier and Michel Piccoli.
Not disturbed enough? See Catherine "Romance" Breillat's twisted tale of adolescence.
Veteran director Claude Chabrol's 50th film covers familiar territory:a bourgeois family rife with incest, corruption, and murder.
Patrice Leconte's new comedy about a knife thrower and his new recruit. Starring Vanessa Paradis and Daniel Auteil.
A lesbian love story set in a timeless underworld of mysterious lounge singers and grim sugar daddies. Sounds good? Well, it isn't. Everything that could be wrong with a World Film is wrong with "The Girl."
Mathieu Amalric stars in "Heartbeat Detector," Nicolas Klotz's stylish and riveting political thriller about a man who unwittingly unearths the ghosts of his corporate employer’s sordid past.
Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche play a middle-aged, successful literary couple in Michael Haneke's discomfiting drama "Hidden." The film the 2005 European film award.
Alexandre Aja's relentless slasher flick "High Tension," starring Cecile de France and Maiwenn, celebrates the horror genre by heaping cliche upon cliche. The film packs a sharply focused punch – like the quick stab of a razorblade to the jugular. Read Jürgen's review.
In this lovely French film by Claude Berri, middle-aged divorcé Jean-Pierre Bacri finds solace with his irrepressible young housekeeper (Émilie Dequenne.) Can their improbable affair work out?
Jalil Lespert stars in Laurent Cantent's quiet, wise movie about a son who has to tackle with suddenly being on the wrong side of the trenches in a labor fight that includes his father and everybody else he grew up with.
French director Bruno Dumont's film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 1999.
Lucile Hadzihalilovic's fairy-tale-like "Innocence" is a pedophile's dream come true. Set in the seeming paradise of a secluded boarding school, beatiful little girls parade accross the screen, dressed in white. Read why this film made Marcy squirm.
The 1962 classic by François. Starring Jeanne Moreau.
"Kaena: The Prophecy," the first CGI-animated fantasy film from France, features the voices of Kirsten Dunst and Anjelica Houston. Jurgen Fauth reviews.
Arnaud Desplechin's sprawling drama "Kings and Queen" stars gorgeous Emmenuelle Devos as cinema's newest femme fatale.
The freshness of this lovely Eric Rohmer film makes up for its lack of sophisticated perfection of form.
In Emmanuel Carrère's feature film La Moustache, based on the novel he also penned, a married man (Vincent Lindon) shaves off his mustache. To his pyschic distress, his wife (Emmanuelle Devos) does not notice, propelling the clean shaven hero into an unexpected journey.
A DVD review of Claude Miller's 1985 coming-of-age tale starring Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Olivier Dahan's "La Vie En Rose" (La Môme), a portrait of Edith Piaf, France's most famous singer, features a bravada performance by the diminutive but impressively abrasive Marion Cotillard.
Asia Argento stars as the passionate La Vellini in Catherine Breillat's most conventional film yet, an eighteenth century costume drama. Fu'ad Ait Attou makes his film debut as Ryno De Marigny, a young lord torn between his beautiful young bride (Roxane Mesquida) and the troubled mistress he cannot let go of.
Nathalie Baye plays a hardened Paris detective in Xavier Beauvoir's gritty police thriller.
Dominik Moll returns with an outstanding thriller about a perfect couple whose lives are thrown into chaos when the boss and his bitter wife come over for dinner. With Charlotte Rampling, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Lucas Laurent.
What better escape from the news than French slapstick? Jean Reno and Christian Clavier clown their way through this 1993 time-travelling comedy, now out on DVD.
Agnès Jaoui's wonderful second feature "Look At Me" opens this year's New York Film Festival. The film, which already won the best screenplay award at Cannes, is talky but never dull, fluidly crossing over from drama to comedy to social satire.
Featuring the brightest young stars of French cinema and directed by rising filmmaker Christophe Honoré (DANS PARIS), LOVE SONGS is a vibrant and audacious ultra-modern movie musical. Louis Garrel (THE DREAMERS, DANS PARIS), Ludivine Sagnier (SWIMMING POOL), Chiara Mastroianni (PERSEPOLIS), Clotilde Hesme (REGULAR LOVERS), and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet star.
Luc Besson co-wrote the screenplay with comic artist Jean Graton for Louis-Pascal Couvelaire's highly anticipated film "Michel Valliant." The official site offers teasers and a making of video.
Romain Duris stars in Laurent Tirard's charming bio about the great French writer focuses on the years between his release from prison in 1645 at age 22 and his return to Paris 13 years later after a triumphant career as a traveling playwright and actor. Ludivine Sagnier, Fabrice Luchini, Laura Morante, and Edouard Baer co-star.
The black and white, relentless portrait of an adolescent young girl, Robert Bresson's 1967 "Mouchette" is being released this week on DVD by Criterion. Nadine Nortier stars in the title role.
Roger Ebert's review for this comedy classic goes a long way in explaining the film to anybody who feels that they "didn't laugh as much as they expected."
In 1955, Alain Resnais made the first documentary about the Nazi concentration camps. Almost 50 years and literally hundreds of Holocaust movies later, it is still the most devastating film of its kind.
A review of Alain Resnais's "Not On The Lips" (Pas Sur La Buche), an daptation to the screen of a 1925 French operetta by André Barde and Maurice Yvain. The film stars Sabine Azema, Audrey Tautou, Christopher Lambert, Pierre Arditi, and Isabelle Nanty.
Jean-Luc Godard latest film, "Notre Musique," which plays at the New York Film Festival, is a unqiue blend of almost abstract cinema, fiction, and documentary.
The first installment of Lucas Belvaux' "Trilogy" is a noir thriller about a former terrorist who escapes after fifteen years in prison, and is looking to settle old scores. Belvaux stars as Bruno opposite reformed school teacher Catherine Frot.
Dennis Decourt's menacing drama about a concert pianist (Catherine Frot) and her quiet, sexy young page turner (Deborah Francois) is all about revenge.
Jean Gabin is utterly winning in this supremely entertaining crime classic set in the exotic maze of the Casbah.
In black-and-white animation, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud depicts Marjane's own painful coming of age in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war, and the deceptively simple drawings keep pointing to our shared humanity. Like real life, "Persepolis" is both an effective tearjerker and shamelessly funny.
The screenplay and direction of Emmanuel Bourdieu's "Poison Friends" is as pompous and blind to reality as its main character Andre Morley. Premiering in the US at the New York Film Festival, this film tells the story of a brilliant and manipulative literature student who runs amuck--while causing his trusted friends' harm.
Leos Carax returns with this marvelous and disturbing Melville adaptation. Starring Catherine Deneuve and Guillaume Depardieu.
PRICELESS, starring Audrey Tautou, is a sexy and thoroughly charming romantic comedy, and a fresh re-imagining of the cinema classic, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S. PRICELESS opens in theaters on March 28th.
Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Carole Bouquet star in the terrifically tense and equally unpleasant "Red Lights. Directed by Cedric Kahn, the film screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival.
Hsiao-hsien Hou creates an intimate portrait of a small, unique family in Paris in the charming and uneventful "Flight of the Red Balloon." A frazzled and blond Juliette Binoche stars as Suzanne, an accomplished puppeteer who hires Taiwanese nanny Song Fang (played with remarkable calm and enormous appeal by Song Fang of the same name) for her seven-year-old son Simon (Simon Iteanu).
Eighteen-year old newcomer Emilie Dequenne won best actress, the film took the Golden Palm in Cannes in 1999.
The two-disc DVD of Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game" does the celebrated 1939 film justice with lavish bonus materials that examine its troubled history, controversial reception, and influental legacy.
ROMAN DE GARE, the highly anticipated new film from Oscar-winning director Claude Lelouch (A MAN AND A WOMAN), features Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant as an unlikely pair caught up in a game with high stakes – and deadly consequences.
Bertrand Tavernier crams his fascinating three-hour tapestry of filmmaker's lives in occupied Paris full of details, stories, and anecdotes.
Julie Lopes-Curval's ensemble drama about locals living in a run-down working-class resort town on the French seaside is deceptively simple and leisurely paced, but if you have the patience, the film becomes increasingly engrossing.
Jean-Claude Brisseau directed the erotic French thriller "Secret Things" starring Sabrina Seyvecou, Coralie Revel, Roger Mirmont, Blandine Bury and Fabrice Deville.
Emmanuelle Béart plays a beautiful widow who hides her children from the advancing German army in André Téchiné's carefully observed wartime drama. With Gaspard Ulliel as mysterious drifter.
Sex kitten Ludivine Sagnier parades topless in "Swimming Pool," Francois Ozon's erotic thriller that aims for the suspense of classic Hitchcock.
If your idea of French film is a bunch of bourgeois people sitting around arguing the fine points of relationships, politics, and poststructuralist theory, think again.
Sylvain Chomet's charming French drama, about a boy, his bicycle, and grandmother who set out on a journey that takes them through the countryside and directly into the hands of the French mafia.
Zero-gravity cybersex and acute agoraphobia: the Belgian movie "Thomas in Love," shot from the claustrophobic point of view of an hermitic über-nerd, makes for caustic satire but poor psychoanalysis.
Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Beart, John Malkovich star in Raul Ruiz's film. Based on the novel by Marcel Proust.
This French story of a Jewish village which organizes a fake deportation train to escape has won many international prizes.
Celebrated French filmmaker Bruno Dumont cranks up the volume in the ludicrious sex/horror/art film "Twentynine Palms." Starring Katerina Gollub ("Pola X") and amateur actor David Wissak.
Celebrated French filmmaker Bruno Dumont cranks up the volume in the ludicrious sex/horror/art film "Twentynine Palms." Starring Katerina Gollub ("Pola X") and amateur actor David Wissak. Read Marcy's review. And if highly pretentious over-sexed French films are your thing, check out Jurgen's hearty pan of Jean-Claude Brisseau's "Secret Things."
Jean Reno goes to Japan in this very silly international crime story. Pop phenomenon Ryoko Hirosue plays the tough cop's bouncy daughter.
Review of this hair-raising thriller starring Yves Montand and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, from
deep focus.
Francis Veber ("The Dinner Game," "The Closet"), the living master of French farce, has combined his classic elements of hilarious slapstick with quick-witted dialogue in the new comedy "The Valet."Gad Elmaleh, Alice Taglioni, Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas, Virginie Ledoyen, Richard Berry star. The film opens April 20, 2007.
Céline Sciamma debut film "Water Lilies" follows three fifteen-year-old girls--Marie, Anne and Floriane--in an angst ridden summer in the French suburbs. Young actresses Adele Haenel, Louise Blachere, and Pauline Acquart star.
Yolande Moreau plays a performer with a unique stage show in the odd but touching romance "When the Sea Rises," directed by Moreau and Gilles Porte. Wim Wallaert co-stars as the paper-mache giant carrier who falls for her and follows her through the French countryside.
Syringes, botched anesthesia, and cranium saws: Gilles Marchand's taut hospital thriller "Who Killed Bambi?" is not for the squeamish. With Sophie Quinton and Laurent Lucas.
The less you read about Dominik Moll's wicked cross-breed of psychological thriller and dark comedy, the better: you should just go see it. If you need any more convincing, read the 100% spoiler-free review.
"The Witnesses", the latest from acclaimed director André Téchiné ("Changing Times, Strayed, Wild Reeds") captures the end of an era through the tale of a group of friends and lovers. The marvelous ensemble cast includes Michel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu and Johan Libéreau, the film captures the end of an era through the tale of a group of friends and lovers.
