Agnès Le Roux, a young independent woman, returns to Nice in 1976 to have a new start in her life after a failed marriage. All while falling in love with an older lawyer.
Martin, an ex-Parisian well-heeled hipster passionate about Gustave Flaubert who settled into a Norman village as a baker, sees an English couple moving into a small farm nearby. Not only ... See full summary »
Director:
Anne Fontaine
Stars:
Fabrice Luchini,
Gemma Arterton,
Jason Flemyng
Samba migrated to France ten years ago from Senegal, and has since been plugging away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burn-out. Both struggle... See full summary »
Muriel Bayen, a divorced beautician and mother of two, loves to tell stories. She is a huge fan of this singer Vincent Lacroix, in fact she is a dedicated fan. One day Vincent knocks on her door and asks for her help.
Antoine is too depressed to go on playing in his rock band. After wandering in the streets, he decides to seek an occupation. Unskilled as he is, he is lucky to be hired as the caretaker of... See full summary »
Gracie, a young Tamil woman living near Madras, has been having behavioural disorders since the day she was married. The memory of her French friend Catherine, who died in unresolved ... See full summary »
Between his friends and the family business, Arnaud's summer looks set to be a peaceful one. Peaceful until he runs into Madeleine, as beautiful as she is brusque, a concrete block of ... See full summary »
Benjamin is going to become a great doctor, he is sure of it. But his first experience as junior doctor in his father's service, the Professor Barois, does not turn out the way he hoped it ... See full summary »
Director:
Thomas Lilti
Stars:
Vincent Lacoste,
Jacques Gamblin,
Reda Kateb
Twenty year old Antoine has made enemies of a gang of young thugs, to whom he owes money. Fed up with his scams and petty crimes, his mother and older brother decide to send Antoine to his ... See full summary »
Director:
Roschdy Zem
Stars:
Vincent Rottiers,
Yolin François Gauvin,
Marina Foïs
Pierre, a sixty-year-old technician on an offshore oil rig, has become a misanthropic loner. He had a wife but she died after a breakdown whose seriousness he had more or less deliberately ... See full summary »
Director:
Jean Becker
Stars:
Gérard Lanvin,
Fred Testot,
Jean-Pierre Darroussin
This was a funny one for me... while there was a lot to admire about this movie, there were several things that irritated me about it.
On the one hand, it was, in many respects a well-made film; the acting was superb (almost always the case in European movies), the pacing was good, and it was well shot. Some of the scenes were excellent, and the director did a fantastic job of building the tension, and making the audience squirm as the main protagonist dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole of self-destruction. The ending was left deliberately and intriguingly ambiguous (which I like). There were also moments of real comedy, which were well-placed.
There were, however, a number of frustrating aspects to it. Several elements of the plot were glaringly improbable, which made the characters harder to empathise with, and the movie harder to take seriously. The musical score was almost comically ominous and melodramatic. A narrator suddenly popped up halfway through the movie and only appeared twice more - a needless, distracting and frankly baffling gimmick. One strand of the plot fizzled out and proved ultimately irrelevant.
In summary, this movie is worth seeing if there's nothing else on. There are some interesting ideas, some great scenes, and its emotional, passionate nature would appeal to the romantics of this world. The cast is also superb. There were, however, several problems with it, which served to exasperate me.
11 of 14 people found this review helpful.
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This was a funny one for me... while there was a lot to admire about this movie, there were several things that irritated me about it.
On the one hand, it was, in many respects a well-made film; the acting was superb (almost always the case in European movies), the pacing was good, and it was well shot. Some of the scenes were excellent, and the director did a fantastic job of building the tension, and making the audience squirm as the main protagonist dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole of self-destruction. The ending was left deliberately and intriguingly ambiguous (which I like). There were also moments of real comedy, which were well-placed.
There were, however, a number of frustrating aspects to it. Several elements of the plot were glaringly improbable, which made the characters harder to empathise with, and the movie harder to take seriously. The musical score was almost comically ominous and melodramatic. A narrator suddenly popped up halfway through the movie and only appeared twice more - a needless, distracting and frankly baffling gimmick. One strand of the plot fizzled out and proved ultimately irrelevant.
In summary, this movie is worth seeing if there's nothing else on. There are some interesting ideas, some great scenes, and its emotional, passionate nature would appeal to the romantics of this world. The cast is also superb. There were, however, several problems with it, which served to exasperate me.