François (Benoit Magimel) has returned to France after living in Chicago for the past three years to find that, despite his father Gérard’s (Bernard Le Coq) intriguing intimations, little has changed in the petit bourgeois household of the Charpin-Vasseurs. His determined stepmother Anne (Nathalie Baye) has channeled her energy towards a mayoral candidacy, against the […]
Tag: French Cinema
La Cérémonie, 1995
A young woman named Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) is interviewed for a housekeeping position at the country estate of Catherine Lelievre (Jacqueline Bisset) and her family. Sophie is enigmatically succinct in her answers, but her references are highly complimentary, and she is immediately offered the job. However, from the onset, it is evident that there is […]
The Story of Women, 1988
During the darker days of German occupation, Marie Latour was guillotined for crimes against the country, one of the last women to be executed in France. In The Story of Women, a dispassionate narrator recounts childhood memories of Marie Latour, his mother, with seeming detachment. Marie (Isabelle Huppert) is a young, neglected wife struggling through […]
Le Boucher, 1969
The discordant opening music of Le Boucher accompanies a series of curious limestone cave formations, and serves as a harbinger for the tragic events which are to unfold in this idyllic French countryside. Helene (Stephane Audran) is a beautiful, sophisticated school headmistress who moved to the region after a failed relationship. Popaul (Jean Yanne) has […]
India Song, 1975
The static shot of a sun setting in real-time on an eerily tranquil, desolate horizon is framed against the sound of multicultural voices interwoven into a curious – and strangely dissociative – chorus of traditional storytelling chants and third-person recollective dialogue. Recounting the story of a Laotian-born beggar girl along the Ganges River who, at […]
Nathalie Granger, 1972
It would seem logical to characterize Marguerite Duras’ organic, elliptical anti-melodrama Nathalie Granger as a precursor of sorts to the implosive isolation and domestic violence of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Both films depict a silent ritualism to the performance of domestic chores through stationary shots and disembodied framing, and […]