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Member Run Boards >> Film, Television and Radio >> French cinema
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Message started by bogarde73 on Jul 26th, 2017 at 10:47am

Title: French cinema
Post by bogarde73 on Jul 26th, 2017 at 10:47am
I'm a big fan and have been for decades.
There used to be at least 3 cinemas in Sydney CBD back in the 50/60s which showed exclusively foreign movies, mainly French & Italian. Whatever happened to all that? TV I guess mainly. So this is one thing we have to be grateful to SBS for, that and soccer coverage, though I've lost my frenetic love for that.

French movies have a mood about them that is different from the realism or romanticism of the UK and certainly the infantilism of the USA.
I watched one last night - "Wild Grass" from the great director Alain Resnais. Made in 2010, it wasn't highly regarded by critics but who cares. I've enjoyed it twice.

And another thing that gets me about French cinema is that the female characters are women of substance, beautiful from the inside, not just your boobs & pretty faces.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by issuevoter on Jul 27th, 2017 at 1:56pm
I'd say French and Italian movies are some of my favourites, but good Australian film is right up there too.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by bogarde73 on Jul 27th, 2017 at 1:59pm
Yes, agree, but the heyday seems to be over don't you think.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by Grendel on Jul 27th, 2017 at 7:59pm
Mmmmm, French, not my favourite.

But there are a few: Delicatessen, Beauty and the Beast, Leon:The Professional, Un Monstre a Paris, The City of Lost Children, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, The Fifth Element, The Red Balloon, Lucy, Ultraviolet.
Some are not strictly just French.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by Wolseley on Aug 13th, 2017 at 10:54pm
I have seen quite a few French and Italian films (and some Spanish ones too) over the years, all of them, as far as I can recall, at one of the Palace (Verona or Norton Street) or Dendy Opera Quays or Newtown) Cinemas.

Come to think of it, we haven't been to a foreign language film this year (although, as my wife is Italian, I don't think that an Italian film would strictly speaking be foreign in our household).  Time to see another one.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by Rhino on Aug 13th, 2017 at 11:01pm
I used to like the Monsieuir Hulot films. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsieur_Hulot

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by bogarde73 on Aug 16th, 2017 at 10:20am
Another one I watched last night. Would have been on SBS during the last week.
"Two days and One night" or was it the other way round.

Very good I thought. It was about a woman fighting to keep her job. She had been sick with depression and the employer had said the workers could decide between getting their bonuses of 1000 euros or keeping her on, the firm couldn't afford both.

Very human stuff in a France obviously economically depressed and a situation I imagine is playing out in many places around the world right now.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by bogarde73 on Oct 15th, 2017 at 6:37am
I've seen a few Audrey Tautou movies and enjoyed them mostly.
But not Delicately (La Delicatesse ?).
It had some good moments and Tautou was proficient but it lacked that spark. It was no Amelie.

It could have been good. The story concept might have been turned into something great but for me it never got there.
And I'm all for "slice of life" movies but you have to have a resolution you can imagine. This just hit a brick wall.
And the male lead was just a blank wall.
Very disappointing.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by bogarde73 on Oct 15th, 2017 at 7:16am
Another French movie I've been watching in instalments recently is called "The Queen's Reader".
Very good I thought and the lead actress extraordinarily sensitive.
It's set in the last days at Versailles for Marie Antoinette before she is forced off to imprisonment in Paris and eventual execution.
It conveys very well the atmosphere of the collapse of a system and the panic and despair of the  people, especially the servants and courtiers, who depended.on it for their existence.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by bogarde73 on Jan 14th, 2018 at 12:40pm

bogarde73 wrote on Oct 15th, 2017 at 7:16am:
Another French movie I've been watching in instalments recently is called "The Queen's Reader".
Very good I thought and the lead actress extraordinarily sensitive.
It's set in the last days at Versailles for Marie Antoinette before she is forced off to imprisonment in Paris and eventual execution.
It conveys very well the atmosphere of the collapse of a system and the panic and despair of the  people, especially the servants and courtiers, who depended.on it for their existence.


For some reason this movie came into my mind as I sit here with a glass of wine.
Among other things, I was thinking a lot of people probably would say these bastards - the court hangers-on, minor aristocracy etc - deserved everything that was coming to them.
But I take another view. These were like people anywhere, doing what they did, carrying out whatever mindless function, to make the best of life that was available to them.
The ideas were really only in embryo stage that the entire system their country operated on was corrupt, cruel, oppressive and the rest of it.

So watching the movie, if you ever get the chance, and it seems to have stuck with me, needs to be in the context of an understanding of all of that . . . .but I suppose you need to know the history reasonably well.

Title: Re: French cinema
Post by Frank on Jan 14th, 2018 at 6:19pm
As Depardieau was getting fatter French movies were getting more and more 'French', inauthentic. There are still some gems but  they are rare.

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