French cinema
Jean Cocteau: 'A poet can never die'Friday, 11 October 2013
Jean Cocteau, who died 50 years ago today, was a poet/novelist /playwright /film director/designer/painter/stage director/ballet producer/patron/myth-maker/friend of the great/raconteur/wit. A Jacques of all trades and master of all. “Etonne-moi... Read more... |
The Artist and the ModelWednesday, 11 September 2013
One of the most mystifying of working relationships is that between an artist and model. For any sitter the experience must be tiring, if not tiresome, but for the artist their compliance is as integral as paint or clay; one may become famous, while... Read more... |
DVD: Something in the AirFriday, 23 August 2013
It’s always irritating being told “you had to be there”. Even more irksome is when some author, film director or nostalgic creative decides to record – naturally, they “fictionalise” it – their contribution to some golden era or significant event... Read more... |
Something in the AirWednesday, 22 May 2013
Cinema sometimes seems to have left the Age of Aquarius behind. The filmmakers who came of age in the Sixties have long since said what they needed to, and nowadays the decade’s evanescent aura feels confined to 50th anniversaries of the likes of... Read more... |
DVD: Hors SatanThursday, 09 May 2013
A female hiker is naked. A village is close. Lying on the slope down to a river, she invites the taciturn man she’s followed to have sex. They do. She begins shrieking and foaming at the mouth. He fastens his face to hers. She could then be dead yet... Read more... |
In the HouseFriday, 29 March 2013
There is an arresting moment towards the start of In the House when a character looks the camera – and by extension, the audience - directly in the eye. A warm trusting face and a slight squint hint at vulnerability (see clip below). His name is... Read more... |
DVD: The Claire Denis CollectionTuesday, 26 February 2013
Inevitably, in box sets collecting the works of a single director one film will overshadow the others. So it is with the four discs of The Claire Denis Collection, where 2009’s White Material expresses the temperament, texture and compositional... Read more... |
DVD: You Ain't Seen Nothin' YetTuesday, 01 January 2013
By declaring that You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet wasn’t his final film, the 89-year-old Alain Resnais might have been acknowledging his lack of a fixed relationship with time and memory, his continual exploration of their interchangeabilty. In his mind... Read more... |
DVD: Confession of a Child of the CenturyFriday, 28 December 2012
Not-long into this farrago, Peter – the former Pete - Doherty opines that “nothing is beyond romance, except for the pain that is killing me every day”. Thankfully, the pain here is limited to the close-to two hours that Confession of a Child of the... Read more... |
DVD: Fairy Tales, Early Colour Stencil Films From PathéFriday, 07 December 2012
Although it's impossible to place yourself in the shoes of audiences seeing these other-worldly short films at the dawn of the 20th century, the reaction they provoke now cannot be that different. Delight, surprise and then amazement. These films... Read more... |
DVD: Les Enfants du paradisFriday, 21 September 2012
Begun in 1943 and released in 1945, Les Enfants du paradis, which unfolds in two acts – the first frantic, the second slow – in Paris’s theatre quarter in the 1820s and ’30s, is regarded as the crowning glory of director Marcel Carné and... Read more... |
DVD: Goodbye, First LoveSaturday, 08 September 2012
The third sensitive feature written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve is a semi-autobiographical realist drama about a young woman making the agonising emotional transition many endure after their initial romance. It gives little away to disclose that... Read more... |
