Delicatessen

1991 Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

This is a unique and surreal dark comedy that has rightly received overwhelming critical acclaim.

In a post-apocalyptic society where meat is scarce, cannibalism is no longer unsavory. And when a young ex-clown takes a job in a dilapidated deli, he's completely unaware that the butcher plans to serve him to the building's bizarre tenants. But when the butcher’s nearsighted daughter falls for the clown, she'll go to absurd lengths to foil her father's plan.

This dark tale is played out in a brilliantly designed, gloriously surreal world reminiscent of the works of Terry Gilliam. Like Gilliam, Jeunet comes from an animation background, and has a fondness for extravagant visuals, absurd twists, and a sense of humor that combines sharp satire with broad slapstick and gross-out imagery. This mixture may displease the weak of stomach, but those attuned to the film's sensibility will be delighted by the obvious technical virtuosity and wicked sense of humor.

Breathless

1960 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This is Jean-Luc Godard debut feature film and one that would grab cinema by the scruff of the neck.

One of the seminal films of the French New Wave, this is a story of the love between a small-time hood wanted for killing a policeman, and an American girl who sells the Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as he hides out from a dragnet.

Godard developed his now famous techniques: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition he uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.

When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation. It is as fresh today as it was then and a joy to watch.

Werckmeister Harmonies

2000 Director Bela Tarr

This is Bela Tarr's follow up to his seven-hour epic Satantango. This elegant, haunting work is about the cycles of violence that have dogged Eastern European history.This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain, which is surrounded by nothing but frost.

Jancos is a wide-eyed innocent who works as an occasional postal worker and as a caretaker. He marvels at the miracles of creation, from the planets rotating in the heavens to the animals on earth. One fatal day, a circus featuring jars full of medical anomalies and a massive dead whale entombed in a corrugated metal trailer visits this depressed town. Another more sinister attraction is a shadowy figure dubbed "The Prince," whose nihilist rants incite the town's disaffected to riot. Tension in the town builds until, after one of The Prince's hate-filled speeches, throngs of angry men with blunt instruments ransack and brutalize a men's hospital ward. When the dust clears, lives are irrevocably changed.

Bela Tarr employs all of his groundbreaking techniques that made Satantango so unique. Long tracking shots, long holds on scene after the action has ceased. The only criticism I have is that the violence in the hospital scene is not convincing without the commensurate sound that would have been there in real life. A mob of enraged men is loud and vocal. I admit that the silent angry march was eerie and menacing but silent violence isn't. It's just odd. The way the tables are turned on poor Jancos is unexpected but it's a beautifully cynical twist to the end of a captivating film.

Bande à part

1964 Director Jean-Luc Godard

Based on Dolores Hitchens' novel Fool's Gold this is one of Jean-Luc Godard's most pioneering films. Many of the techniques perfected here went on to become the defacto way of doing things. This is a set piece in any serious cinema student's curriculum.

It tells the tale of three disaffected youths who plan a burglary with deadly results. The alienated young trio is marvelous, particularly Anna Karina, and the early scenes of their clearly overdeveloped fantasy lives are splendidly handled. Of note are the race through Le Louvres and the now famous Cafe dance routine.

Something of a companion piece to Godard's classic À Bout de Souffle, its young characters have the same odd mixture of fatalism and starry-eyed naivety that is, by turns, appealing and tragic. Trivia buffs should note that the film gave its name to Quentin Tarantino's production company (A Band Apart), and several of its scenes are echoed in his Pulp Fiction.

L'Homme du Train

2002 Director Patrice Leconte

Leconte gets the very best from Hallyday in this unusual tale of friendship, respect and alternative circumstances.

A bank robber and a retired literature teacher are thrown together by circumstances. As they start to listen to each other, both yearn for the life of the other in preference to their own. Each is driven forward by their own relentless circumstances unable to escape the fate that awaits them.

It is a touching study in the art of introspection, which is notoriously hard to do well on screen. Leconte succeeds superbly. This underrated film yields Hallyday's best performance. The film is darkly humorous and beautifully shot.

The Banishment

2007 Director Andrei Zvyagintsev

This is Zvyagintsev's follow up to The Return. It is the tale of two brothers struggling to keep their lives together in the face of certain disaster.

Alex and his family move from the city to his father's old house in the countryside. As the family settles into their rustic existence, Alex's wife reveals that she is pregnant by another man. Enraged by his wife's announcement, Alex consults with his brother and demands that she terminates the pregnancy. When the forced abortion goes horribly awry and Alex's brother suffers a severe heart attack, a confrontation with the man Alex believes to have seduced his wife send events quickly spiraling out of control.

A tale of high morals and pride set against stunning scenery, all beautifully filmed. The transition from idyll to nightmare is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. It is a harrowing story that highlights the critical points in one's life where devastation can so easily follow ill informed decisions. Well worth seeing.

The Wages of Fear

1953 Director Henri-Georges Clouzot

This film earned Henri-Georges Clouzot the reputation as a "French Hitchcock." In truth, Clouzot's ability to sustain suspense may have even exceeded Hitchcock's; when originally released, Wages ran for 155 tension-filled minutes. Based on the much-imitated novel by Georges Arnaud, the film is set in Central America.

The Southern Oil Company suffers a well fire, which can only be put out with the use of high explosives. It offers a bounty to any truck driver who can deliver enough nitroglycerin to do the job. So starts a nail biting trip across some of the most treacherous terrain on earth. Through tense interactions and flashbacks, we become intimately acquainted with the four drivers who sign up for this death-defying mission. The first half of the film slowly, methodically introduces the characters and their motivations. The second half, the drive itself, is a relentless, goosebump-inducing assault on the audience's senses.

This is a quite unique film and one of the first to use multiple languages simultaneously without excuse. Filmed against stunning backdrops and meticulously acted, this is a real treat in the art of suspense. The Wages of Fear was remade by William Friedkin as Sorcerer in 1977.

Subway

1985 Director Luc Besson

Luc Besson created this tongue-in-cheek look at the denizens in the tunnels of the Paris Metro, all set to a thumping good soundtrack.

Christopher Lambert plays a young man who steals a portfolio from the host of a cocktail party and uses it as leverage to secure a date with his wife. In the meantime he takes refuge in the labyrinth that is the Parisian Metro. She is rebellious and bored with her bourgeois life and welcomes the distraction. This underground world is populated with various characters that hinder and help the protagonist along the way. Through all of these encounters and activities, the police and others are after him for their own reasons, none of which coincide.

Subway is an art house film that is a surreal feast for the senses.  Espionage, blackmail & passion make it an intense ride.

The Return

2003 Director Andrei Zvyagintsev

This is Zvyagintsev's debut film about sibling relationships. A tense psychological drama set along a journey to a remote island.

One summer, two brothers are surprised by the arrival of their long absent father. Although the boys only know him from an old photograph, he persuades them to accompany him on a fishing trip. One brother takes to his father immediately while the other shows a deep contempt and distrust. The father shows an amount of favouritism to the older bother, which worsens matters with the younger. Finally they arrive at the island only to find that the father has another agenda.

Ivan Dobronravov plays the younger brother and puts in an award winning performance. I have never seen a more intense piece of acting by one so young. The story is meticulously filmed in breathtakingly beautiful landscapes. As a debut film, Zvyagintsev set a very high standard, which he gratifyingly managed to maintain in his follow up film "The Banishment". This is a director to watch out for.

Three Colours: Red

1994 Director Krzysztof Kieslowski

This is the concluding film in the Three Colours Trilogy and sadly also Kieslowski's last film. It takes the fraternity part of the French flag as its theme. It also very neatly ties off all the loose ends of the preceding two films.

The film draws heavily on the connectedness of humans via the telephone and the abuse that this lends itself to. Through an accident Valentine is drawn into the life of a retired judge who has taken up telephonic eavesdropping. Her relationship with him leads him to make a startling resolution regarding his obsessions.

This is the triumphant conclusion to the Trilogy and the point of convergence for the three sets of characters in the series. It is the warmest of all three films and this stems from the main theme of the colour red. On a deeper level, it is a film about the invisible connections that intertwine our lives. From the opening scenes until the very end where all the seemingly loose elements converge, the colour red pops up like an eyesore, and this imagery even extends to the characters themselves. If Kieslowski will be remembered for anything, it will be the well-written and well-directed intellectual puzzle called "Red".