Anticipating Theo Angelopoulos’ The Hunters in its allegorical dissection of a dysfunctional, polarized, contemporary society engendered by the incestuous and repressive, right-wing regime, Carlos Saura’s taut and subversive magnum opus, The Hunt is a harrowing and potent exposition into the pervasive moral corruption that has surfaced under a corrosive combination of Franco-era class entrenchment and […]
Un Cœur en hiver is a sublimely sensual and sophisticated love story. Camille, a concert violinist (Emmanuelle Beart) is intrigued by her lover Maxim’s (Andre Dussollier) business partner, Stephane (Daniel Auteuil). Stephane is a methodical repairer of fine musical instruments. He is precise in his craft, silent, and enigmatic. Noticing a string buzz on her […]
Somewhere between the idealism of youth and the nostalgia of old age lies regret, and it is at this life’s juncture that we find three lifelong friends in Claude Sautet’s poignant film, Vincent, François, Paul and the Others. Every Sunday, friends and family congregate at Paul (Serge Reggiani) and Julia’s (Antonella Lualdi) house in the […]
An early episode in Les choses de la vie shows a young man, Bertrand Bérard (Gérard Lartigau), politely demonstrating to his attentive father Pierre (Michel Piccoli) his latest novelty invention: an electronic bird call sound synthesizer that is programmable to a variety of frequency settings. Pierre appears skeptical of the potential market for such an […]
The coincidental, near parallel deaths of unarmed Guinean immigrant (and innocent victim), Amadou Diallo in the hallway of his apartment building at the hands of over-aggressive police officers in 1999, and American Peace Corps volunteer Jesse Thyne on the treacherous rural roads of Guinea en route back to Diallo’s ancestral village, serve as a potent […]
A young woman named Magdalena (Isabelle Huppert) retrieves a postcard that had been cast into the wind by her biological mother (Bulle Ogier) from a seaside town in Portugal and discovers that she has a twin sister named Maria. From this seemingly introspective opening premise on identity, connection, and history, Deux diverges into unexpectedly abstract, […]