Tag Archives: French cinema

life and fiction (film: Histoires parallèles – Asghar Farhadi, 2026)

One of the key scenes in Asghar Farhadi‘s ‘Parallel Tales‘ brings together two legends of French cinema on screen: Catherine Deneuve (in her only scene in the film) and Isabelle Huppert. Deneuve plays an editor, while Huppert portrays a novelist … Continue reading →

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Ozon’s ‘Stranger’ (film: ‘L’étranger’ – François Ozon – 2025)

Albert Camus’s ‘The Stranger‘, published in 1942—one of the works that earned the author the Nobel Prize in Literature—has been adapted into a stylized film, co-written and directed by François Ozon. While Camus is, of course, credited as the source … Continue reading →

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controlled emotions (film: Hôtel du Nord – Marcel Carné, 1938)

‘Hôtel du Nord‘ (1938) is the middle film in a trilogy created by Marcel Carné during the late 1930s and early 1940s—a trilogy that established him as the master of the ‘poetic realism’ genre. As in the other two films … Continue reading →

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vaudeville on screen (film: Amoureux de ma femme – Daniel Auteuil, 2018)

I couldn’t resist the temptation to watch a film that brings together such a formidable cast—Gérard Depardieu, Sandrine Kiberlain, and Adriana Ugarte, alongside Daniel Auteuil, who also directs. The screenplay is penned by the successful French playwright and screenwriter Florian … Continue reading →

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Raskolnikov in Paris (film: Pickpocket – Robert Bresson, 1959)

1959 was a year of great changes in French cinema. François Truffaut and Alain Resnais shook up the Cannes Film Festival with ‘The 400 Blows ‘and ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour‘, respectively; Chabrol won the Golden Bear in Berlin with ‘The Cousins‘; … Continue reading →

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the great Catherines (film: Sage femme – Martin Provost, 2017)

The 2017 ‘Sage femme‘ (the title of the English distribution was ‘The Midwife’) by Martin Provost was a pleasant surprise and it is not clear to me why the film was underappreciated at the time by part of the public … Continue reading →

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liaison dangereuse (film: Loulou – Maurice Pialat, 1980)

I had several good reasons for choosing to watch Maurice Pialat‘s 1980 film ‘Lolou‘. Maurice Pialat came late to film directing. He was 43 in 1968 when he made his first feature film. The peak of the French Nouvelle Vague … Continue reading →

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musketeers in love (film: Un éléphant ça trompe énormément – Yves Robert, 1976)

Exactly half a century after its release, the French comedy ‘Un éléphant ça trompe énormément‘, directed by Yves Robert (who also co-wrote the screenplay), was the perfect entertainment for a hot summer day. How can we explain the agelessness of … Continue reading →

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between Luis Buñuel and Wes Anderson (film: Le testament d’Orphée – Jean Cocteau, 1960)

Those who are, like me, admirers of the cinematic style practiced by Wes Anderson in the last decade, of fantasies with a surrealist touch, bringing together on screens formidable casts in stories where reality melts into legends and imagination, will … Continue reading →

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a quality film de papa (film: Les orgueilleux – Yves Allégret & Rafael E. Portas, 1953)

Yves Allégret, the director of the Franco-Mexican co-production ‘Les orgueilleux‘ (known in English distribution as ‘The Proud and the Beautiful’) was in the 1950s one of the preferred target of the critics of future French New Wave filmmakers. He directed … Continue reading →

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