La Jetee

1962 Director Chris Marker

This film is one of those rare landmark films who's influence will recur for decades. It was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys and draws quite heavily from the influence of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The claustrophobic atmosphere brings to mind Orson Well's The Trial. A haunting score by Trevor Duncan completes this little gem.

Simply shot using black and white stills it weaves an hypnotic and disturbing tale of cause and effect in just 28 minutes. Set in a post apocalyptic Paris, its focus is on a man haunted by a childhood memory of a man being shot on the viewing platform at Orly airport. Because of the strong memory scientists use this to project him back in time where he befriends a woman. He is then projected into the future to obtain a power source that will be used to rebuild Paris. Upon return he works out that this knowledge will lead to his execution. Given the option of escape to the future he chooses the past to rejoin the woman with tragic consequences.

The whole film is narrated leaving little for interpretation. However, there is a small tell worth watching for. The whispered conversations between the scientists is in German and adds greatly to the underlying menace of the film. Sadly they are not subtitled. So if you understand German you will enjoy this more. This is a real gem and one that gets better with multiple viewings.

Mado

1976 Director Claude Sautet

In a corrupt, ruthless, dog-eat-dog world, are the bonds of friendship and loyalty more important and reliable than the fleeting connections of passion and romantic/erotic love? That is the rhetorical question posed in Claude Sautet's Mado, a clear-eyed, sombre, yet surprisingly sweet drama masquerading as a sort of noirish thriller.

The film recounts the misfortunes of Simon Léotard and his unique relationship with Mado, a prostitute whose services he avails himself of, who also acts as his buddy, moral conscience, and advisor in difficult times. Simon is a real estate developer whose business partner has committed suicide after having irretrievably indebted them to Lépidon, a corrupt competitor who means to undermine their enterprise by any means necessary. A toughened, world-weary old hand at the vicious games of the business world, Simon finds himself in real need of Mado and her loose group of idealistic, unemployed or wage-slaving acquaintances who can offer him ideas, knowledge, and aid as he manoeuvres to save his business and turn the tables on Lépidon.

 

Sautet is remarkably successful at smoothly shifting our attention away from the obligatory material aspirations and dealings of his characters and toward their human feelings, the responsibility they feel for one another. He ends the film not with any resolution or reassurance that our dreams and ambitions can work out, but with a gentle, empathetic sense of half-hopeful resignation. The characters cannot even come close to doing all they would really like to, for themselves or each other; but despite that disappointment, they will do what they can, and there is some small, unspoken glory in that.

Le Pont du Nord

1981 Director Jacques Rivette

This nearly lost film captures the visions and moods of a nearly lost Paris and of a mode of thought that was also on its way out.

It starts as a whimsical urban riff on the theme of chance connections: Marie, a toughened woman of a certain age, heads to Paris after getting out of prison and is joined by Baptiste (her real-life daughter), a long-limbed and fiercely determined dark angel who travels by scooter. Marie reunites with her boyfriend, Julien, a pathological gambler whose mysterious briefcase entangles him in big trouble that Baptiste decides to unravel.

The women’s poetic excursions through the ruins of industrial sites and Impressionist landscapes morph into a spy-versus-spy caper involving left-wing terrorist plots and government infiltration. The labyrinthine city of recondite romanticism and the bloody ideals of revolutionary heroism appear fated to vanish together, even as the chill of rational order reveals another shimmery layer of ingrained authority.

All that said in deference to experimental cinema; this is a truly awful film especially in post production. The sound is unedited which is jarring when going from cut to cut. There are numerous continuity errors. The plot is needlessly convoluted. The acting is hammed and over the top and the characters appear to have no motivation whatsoever. Unsurprisingly the ending is predictable and inconclusive. Really one to avoid.

Rebellion

2011 Director Mathieu Kassovitz

This film is something of a comeback for Mathieu Kassovitz, an intelligent political drama, part thriller, part war movie, and informed by something of the anger against established authority that fuelled La Haine.

Rebellion is based with some fidelity on a 1990 memoir by Philippe Legorjus, a captain in the GIGN (Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale), an elite unit of the armed forces charged with counterterrorism and hostage negotiation who took part in the brutal repression of an insurrection by inhabitants in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. Legorjus, a man of probity torn between doing what is right and fulfilling his duty as a military man, is sensitively played by Kassovitz himself. Legorjus's book is called La morale et l'action, the film was released in France as L'ordre et la morale, and both titles are superior to the commonplace one under which it is being shown here.

At times Rebellion brings to mind Apocalypse Now (and, indeed, there are several references to Coppola's movie). It's an exciting, complex story about a government committed to realpolitik and convinced that national interest can justify any kind of sacrifice (including the truth) in order to retain influence. And it's about a man involved in a morally and politically complicated event that is ultimately beyond his control, but from which he doesn't believe he can escape. It's all the more interesting because the incident has been so rapidly forgotten, and indeed failed to become a cause celebre in its time.

Eden Log

2007 Director Franck Vestiel

This is Vestiel's debut film and an unusual science fiction journey. French cinema is not known for this genre and as such is a bold seminal exploration. The entire film is seen from a single perspective whereby the viewer only sees and knows what the lead character experiences.

Set in a post apocalyptic future, mankind has discovered a new energy source through a tree from which they are able to syphon energy to fuel a city. The denizens below are technicians who are promised paradise when they have completed their work and can return above. Our main character awakens in a confused mud soaked state and embarks on his journey of discovery. Along the way he is given clues as to what has gone wrong by broken machinery, lost transmissions and the revelation of more industrial mayhem. The journey isn’t without its problems.

The most testing element is the modern colour scheme the films makers chose to use in this film. Mostly grey scaled with blue and green colourisation, it is a bit too much to really see past. Even sci-fi films who use this technique give us a break in contrast and slight colour variations. The problem here is that the contrast is too contrasted, so on top of a confused plot, you also are somewhat blinded to everything to be seen. That said, it does engage and even though the ending is reminiscent to Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" it does not disappoint.  Although badly received on release I think this film will gain a cult status in time as it is pretty ground breaking in its singular approach.

Potiche

2010 Director François Ozon

Adapted from a stage comedy by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy, this film casts a wry eye over the outrageous sexual and political attitudes of the late 1970s and dares to ask whether anything has really changed.

Robert Pujol is the diminutive wrecking ball of right-wing fury who runs his umbrella factory with an iron fist. That is until his surly workforce downs tools and goes on strike and his enemy, pinko local mayor Maurice Babin, is brought in to broker a deal. Under pressure, Robert’s fragile ticker gives up and, as he rests up abroad, his Tinkerbell-like trophy wife Suzanne must take the reins. She injects the ailing business with her own enlightened practices, much to his chagrin.

Simultaneously mocking and revering the look and content of the archetypal ’70s sitcom, ‘Potiche’ succeeds largely due to the fact that all the performers understand the ‘wink-wink’ nature of the material. Ozon evokes the spirit of the era through kitsch, split-screen editing and by filling the soundtrack with old-school Euro chanteurs like Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday, and even tossing in a bit of Boney M.

It’s as light and soft as a pink satin pillow, and a little overstretched, but it’s also packed with bawdy zingers and pointed political barbs.

Hors la Loi

2010 Director Rachid Bouchareb

This film is the stand alone sequel to Bouchareb’s 2006 film “Days of Glory” and is the second in a loosely planned trilogy. The film starts in 1925 and ends in the early 1960’s and deals with lives of three Algerian brothers living in France during the Algerian war for independence. This war was a messy bit of business involving guerilla warfare, torture, and terrorism against civilians and the film immediately sparked controversy when it was released.

The three brothers couldn’t be more different. One joins the military, one turns to pimping as a way to make himself some money, and the other, after being released from jail where he was being held on ridiculous charges, immediately rises to the ranks of a major player in the Algerian revolution. Throughout it all though, even when things are at their most difficult, they stick by one another. As the brother’s lives grow and change they struggle to take care of their aging mother and to keep the lines of communication open on their strained relationships with one another. As the Algerian resistance movement intensifies each one of them must decide how great a role they will play in the movement and their decisions ultimately affect not only their own individual lives, but they way they viewed by their brothers as well.

Hors la Loi is a film that’s strong in all the right places. The acting is wonderful, the script is well written and the pacing works, the visuals are stunning, and the ending, although expected, is still somewhat of a shocker. It does run a tad on the long side however. Interesting for its historical representation of the Algerian war, but perhaps more so for its message of brotherly love, Hors la Loi is a film that’s well worth the effort to seek out.

Point Blank

2010 Director Fred Cavayé

This is fast paced, adrenalin packed ride through the streets of Paris. It continues the Hitchcockian theme that Cavayé started in his debut film "Anything for her". Take an ordinary man place him in extraordinary circumstances and let him loose.

A male nurse unwittingly saves the life of a dangerous criminal only to find his heavily pregnant wife kidnapped to ensure the criminal's escape. A roller coaster ride of twists and turns, subterfuge and misdirection follow that will keep you riveted to the very end.

Superb acting and very intelligent directing make this a must see. Cavayé is definitely a name to watch out for. His work is simple and focused, packing a tremendous story into a only 80 minutes with such precision that you have to pay full attention, not that you'll have much chance to become distracted.

Trafic

1971 Director Jacques Tati

This was Jacques Tati’s last foray in to the chaotic world of his hapless alter ego Hulot and also his penultimate film.

The bumbling Monsieur Hulot, outfitted as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’ highways and byways. For this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as a car company’s head designer, and accompanies his camper, fitted out with absurd gadgetry, to a trade show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road is paved with modern-age mishaps.

After the financial disaster of Playtime, Tati embarked on this project undeterred, returning to his finer observational filming. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’ expert timing and side splitting visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.

The Last Battle

1983 Director Luc Besson

This is Luc Bessons debut film. Set in a post apocalyptic world it charts the progress of one mans struggle to survive.

Having built a glider out of spare parts our hero sets off to find a better area to live. Here he encounters a fierce opponent, played by a very young Jean Reno. Having come off the worse for his first encounter he is taken in by a doctor. All is not what it seems as the good doctor has his own agenda.

Shot in black and white with no dialogue at all, this film is a curious cross between David Lynch's Eraserhead and Jacques Tati's Les Vacances to M. Hulot. This is a very good example of an accomplished director cutting his teeth and feeling his way. Unfortunately the low budget shows at times but if you can forgive some fairly obvious anachronisms then this is definitely worth a watch.

If you have already seen Subway then you will recognise quite a few scenes and their composition, as well as Jean Boise, who played the doctor.

Mon Oncle

1958 Director Jacques Tati

This is Tati's second Hulot film contrasting the emerging ultra-modern wave of the late 50's with the more sedate and shambolic life he is used to.

This time, the story finds Hulot on a constant collision with the physical world. Visiting his sister and brother-in-law in their ultra-progressive household full of noisy gadgets and futuristic decor, Hulot inevitably has dust-ups with modernity, each one exceptionally funny. Taking a page from Buster Keaton’s playbook, Tati also employs his trademark techniques with sound and production design to achieve the indefinable, comic genius of his films: the rhythmic clacking of footsteps, the cartoon-panel distance of his camera frame from the heart of the action.

This is a wonderfully gentle satire on modern development that Tati was to take to a darker stage in his next film Playtime. This is marked a departure from his previous more gentle looks at rural attitudes. Tati is one of the cinema’s great treasures, and this movie is unforgettable.

Une femme est une femme

1961 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This is Jean-Luc Godard's deceptively sardonic tribute to the Hollywood musical comedy.

An exotic dancer decides that it is time for her to have a child. When her lover refuses to commit to the decision, she turns her romantic attention to his best friend. This being a Godard film, the straightforward story serves as a framework for improvisation and stylistic experimentation, allowing for odd interludes and unexpected images.

Like Alphville, this romp away from dense intellectualism that characterise the later Godard works this film fails on a number of levels. As a pure satire of the dross that was being churned out by Hollywood it is overlong; as a homage to the same machine it is banal. The musical score is jarring and the acting is hammed and stilted. It's quite painful to watch and requires real perseverance to see through to the predictably disappointing end. One to avoid unless as a cure for insomnia.

Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

2008 Director Jean-Francois Richet

The life of Jacques Mesrine comes once and for all to a full bloody circle in a climax only fitting for Public Enemy No. 1.

In the climactic second part of the Mesrine saga, Jacques Mesrine is back in France after his brazen assault on the maximum-security prison from which he daringly escaped. Once again in police custody and facing stern justice for his crimes, the "man of a thousand faces" escapes directly from the courtroom after kidnapping the judge at gunpoint. As Mesrine continues to author his own legend through the media and his own memoirs, he becomes a household name and anti-hero across all of France. As he plans his last and greatest escape, leaving France - and the iconic character he has created for himself - behind, the police begin to close in and his monumental rise begins to shadow the inevitable fall.

The split screen shots that were used to such good effect in part 1 are absent in this concluding installment although all the loose cinematographic ends are all tied up very neatly. Equally fast paced, this is very watchable. The character development is handled superbly with Mesrine acquiring a captivating charisma along with his new found fame and confidence.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

2008 Director Jean-Francois Richet

The first part of an epic two-film saga. Killer Instinct introduces us to Jacques Mesrine at the beginning of his incredible true-life career of bank heists, prison breaks and kidnappings throughout the 60's and 70's and across three continents.

Recently returned from the war in Algeria, Mesrine soon bores of the 9 to 5 life and gradually drifts into a life of crime under the tutelage of veteran gangster Guido played in a very Brondoesque style by Gerard Depardieu. He quickly discovers he has a gift for robbing banks and forms a duo with lover Jeanne Schneider to rival Bonnie and Clyde. When the couple is finally hunted down in the Arizona desert, Mesrine is sentenced to ten years in a maximum-security penitentiary. But he is about to prove that no prison is big enough to contain him as his larger-than-life story unfolds.

This is a superbly made film that makes very effective use of split screen. It has the grit and realism reminiscent of the Bourne Supremacy and keeps you at the edge of your seat throughout. Unlike other films of this genre it shows that people are very complex and that compassion and caring can co-exist quite happily with cold blooded brutality. This will undoubtedly become a cult classic like the Godfather. Vincent Cassel plays the role brilliantly.

Passion

1982 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This film is a major part in Jean-Luc Godard's ongoing investigation of the relations between painting and cinema and uses innovative forms to explore political and economic questions.

The plot, if it can be called that, is very simplistic. A director is shooting a film whose scenes are all reproductions of paintings by Goya, Valasquez, and other European masters. Production comes to a halt when his producers refuse to increase his budget until he explains the film's story to them. Meanwhile he is ending an affair with the wife of the manager of the hotel where the film's cast and crew are staying. In a sub-plot a factory worker attempts to unionize her fellow employees.

The story of Passion is elliptical and incomplete. It is a means of presenting a collection of scenes and images on related themes. This kind of story would become the hallmark of Godard's later career. This film marks the reunion of Godard with director of photography Raoul Coutard, who shot many of Godard's films of the 1960s. The cinematography is key to understanding this difficult film in which how an image is shot is as important as what it depicts. Godard and Coutard favor shots that begin as open, disorganized framings and become painterly compositions as the people and things in them move.

Pierrot le fou

1965 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This is Godard’s mischievous, free-associative tenth film. It falls more into the Breathless, Band a Part,  Le Petit Soldat genre, in that there is a discerable story to follow, rather than his more experimental efforts, taking the simple and well tried boy meets girl format.

He a rakish, unemployed adman choking on consumerist jargon and bourgeois conformity, she a happy-clappy coquette with unspecified links to an underground military faction. Each is an impulsive, alienated, despairing soul who finds solace in the other’s desire for chaos and withdrawal. They flee Paris for the south of France in a hail of gunfire and Gauloises. They converse in disjointed, inhumanly droll patter, break  into song, duff up gas station attendants and eagerly concoct a new civilisation on a deserted beach. Then, as their relationship begins to fray, it all goes horribly wrong.

Basing his film ever so loosely on Lionel White’s pulp crime novel ‘Obsession’, Godard inventively drapes genre pastiche, literary references, flash inserts and cheeky agitprop over a robust ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ like framework to deliver a film which, in spirit, feels like both the sum total of his past work and an exhilarating sign of things to come. It’s a wild-eyed, everything-in-the-pot cross-processing of artistic, cinematic, political and personal concerns, where the story stutters, splinters and infuriates its way to an explosive finale.

Diary Of A Chambermaid

1964 Director Luis Buñuel

This is a remake of the 1946 Jean Renoir film based on the novel by Octave Mirbeau and is now considered to be a classic piece of Luis Bunuel film making.

Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer.  She quickly learns that he is a harmless boot fetishist, his daughter a frigid woman more concerned with the family furnishings than in returning the affections of her husband, who, in turn, can't keep his hands off the servants. The gamekeeper, is a fascist who keeps his masters informed of all the doings downstairs, and the next door neighbor is a veteran who can't stand the owner and is sharing a bed with his housekeeper. Celestine picks her way through this minefield carefully, spurning the advances of all of the men until it's convenient for her.

Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary Of A Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.

Made in U.S.A.

1966 Director Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard directed this brightly colored, pop-art homage to American crime cinema, which somehow finds room for commentary on leftist politics and the corrupt nature of advertising.

Paula Nelson is a mystery woman who used to be involved with  an outspoken Communist and has been linked to the murder of a foreign agent. Paula wants to silence him before he starts making trouble for her, but she can't find much hard evidence that's he's still alive outside of a recently discovered tape recorder that plays his recorded rants on current political issues. While speaking with a small time hood who knows about Paula's relationship, shots ring out and suddenly the hood is dead. As Paula tries to find a way to get rid of the body, she tries to discover who killed him and why, as a pair of lackadaisical hoods follow her around Paris.

Filled with references to American genre cinema this was the last film Godard would make with his one-time wife Anna Karina. The flimsy plot was loosely adapted from the novel The Jugger by Donald E. Westlake , who wasn't paid for the rights and prevented this film from being released in the United States until after his death in 2008.

L'Antidote

2005 Director Vincent De Brus

This film is a beautiful mixture of laugh-out-load humour and irony. Sadly not available with sub-titles, unless you speak french pretty fluently you will miss much of the subtler sides of the film.

Jam, played by Christian Clavier, is a highly successful entrepreneur on the brink of a major takeover when he starts suffering from anxiety attacks. His doctor thinks that this is to do with childhood experiences and suggests he searches back in his mind to something that could be the trigger and will prove to be the antidote. Enter André Morin, played by the late, great Jacques Villeret, reprising his role of the amiable "con" (idiot) who proves wiser than everyone. Morin is a small time accountant who has become a champion of the little man – the small shareholders who are taken for granted by today's business leaders more interested in power and wealth. It is a real clash of cultures and provides plenty of laughs.

Without giving anything away the story obviously owes something to Citizen Kane. There is an interesting opening title sequence, which suggests more thriller than comedy and some good special effects for the Rosebud moment. If you loved Le Diner des Cons you will enjoy this film.

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Le Ballon Rouge

1956 Director Albert Lamorisse

Most of Albert Lamorisse's films celebrate the miracle of flight, but few were as landmark as his 1956 short subject The Red Balloon. This is a truly delightful gem.

The story, told with a minimum of dialogue, concerns a little boy, played by the director's son Pascal, who comes across a helium-filled balloon. As he plays with his new acquisition, the boy discovers that the balloon seemingly has a mind of its own. The little red orb follows its new "master" all through the streets of Paris, then dogs the boy's trail into the schoolroom, which drives the teacher to comic distraction. Towards the end, it seems as though boy and balloon will be parted forever, but director Lamorisse has a delightful surprise in store for us.

This film serves as a color record of the Belleville area of Paris which had fallen into decay by the 1960s and was eventually demolished as a slum-clearance effort. Part of the site was built up with housing projects; the remainder was left as wasteland for 20 years. Ninety-five percent of what is seen in the film exists no more: the bakeries, the famous Y-shaped staircase situated just beyond the equally famous café "Au Repos de la Montagne", the long-gone steep steps of the rue Vilin where Pascal finds the balloon initially and the waste ground where all the battles took place. Only the church of Notre-Dame de la Croix, between the Place Maurice Chevalier and the Place de Ménilmontant remains.

It won numerous awards, including an Oscar for Lamorisse for writing the best original screenplay in 1956 and the Palme d'Or for short films at Cannes. The film also became popular with children and educators.