did you by chance see their latest - L' Enfant(The Child), heard it's excellent

No, but I'm dying to see it. Can't wait for it to hit theatres in March.

I was kind of hoping it to be featured at this year's EU film festival here in DC, (currently happening). Since they premiered The Son in 2002 (and even after critically praise no DC theatre ever booked this film for exhibition in 2003 when it got domestically released - go figure, I really hate this city when they do this kind of crap, DC never ever saw a release of the critically acclaimed Ratcatcher from director Lynne Ramsay either, nor David Gordon Green's George Washington for that matter. Okay I'm digressing but on the whole for a major urban cultural city, the film scene is so ass backward, half the time we rarely get to see the real cinematic finds that other film markets get).

anyway here's what is being represented from Belgium at the AFI's 2005 European Union film Festival:

dir. Frédéric Fonteyne's GILLES' WIFE [La Femme de Gilles] (a 2004 film BTW)
dir. Dominique Deruddere's THE WEDDING PARTY [Die Bluthochzeit]

did anyone enjoy Amelie? I know it's really cutsy and bubbly, but I really liked it.

-in reference to my cat being named after a line in Fantastic Planet (the dubbed one) on the previous page:

“What a little terror. I think I’ll name him Terr.” (Even though my cat’s a she, she really was a whirling, slashing terror as a kitten. Think young Yoda with claws. She flew around the room, no joke.)

We now return to the thread at hand. Already in progress…

I enjoyed it.

Wow, thanks for all of the suggestions I probably never would've heard of most of these films had I looked at various articles, Criterionco.com, sensesofcinema.com, etc. kind of sites about French cinema.

Monica Belluci. Now she's got a couple of nice things that have come out of French cinema.

I'm not trying to sound snarky, but why don't you just watch a few instead of simply reading about them? See for yourself.

There's a WEALTH of fantastic French cinema waiting to be explored, many of which has been presented in this thread. I would also add the sublime artistry of Jean Cocteau, especially the fantastic Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and the simply magical Beauty and the Beast.

That's why I'm asking cinephiles about movies beyond the popular mainstream and nouvelle vague films :-P I'm not going to collect a bunch of movies and shoot in the dark "Just because they're French and they're there in the mainstream" when I could find films that are suggested by film buffs who've dug into the genre.

A good place to start: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945). Robert Bresson directed in his usual ascetic manner but thanks to the influence of Jean Cocteau's theatrical flair - Cocteau wrote the script from an episode found in Jacques Diderot's "Jacques le Fataliste", an 18th century satiric novella - the tone is wordly and engrossing. The photography and editing are prescient of many noir movies to come. The actors are all excellent and the production values even bankrupted the film company [the film flopped at the box office]. It has been excellently restored and is available on Criterion. A good introduction to Cocteau and Bresson.


For the record, Les Triplettes de Belleville is a France-Belgium-Canada-UK coproduction, usually billed as Canadian. The director Sylvain Chomet is French. Most of the animation work was done in Montreal and the art director Evgeny Tomov is Russian-born. The city of Belleville is a mixture of Montreal and Manhattan. The Dardenne bothers are from Belgium and their films are co-produced with France. It doesn't matter anyway as the history of French cinema has incorporated many foreign elements. Billy Wilder, Luis Bunuel, Roman Polanski and Fritz Lang all had their French period and many French directors and filmmakers (music, photography) have plied their trade in the UK and the US: Jean Renoir, René Clair, Jacques Tourneur, Julien Duvivier, Georges Auric, Delerue, etc.

Wow, no one has mentioned Clouzot? I highly recommend Wages of Fear for a grand spectacle. Amazing film. I love many of his other films as well.

I think that Betty Blue, La Femme Nikita, Subway and Fantastic Planet are great French films.

haven't seen it (yet) - but I've heard Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Heine is great

You could always rent a few first to see if you like them... and man oh man if you haven't seen Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants you are in for a treat, that's an incredible film and a great place to start.

come to the DC area the AFI's been showcasing a lot of French cinema on the big screen lately, they are about to do a big retrospect of Malle's films including "Au Revoir Les Enfants"

I'm a fan of Patrice Leconte, and you might enjoy Ridicule (1996).

WHAT?!

That is just absurd. Either you're playing devil's advocate or Godard must have personally insulted you.

You guessed it. Godard has repeatedly insulted my intelligence throughout his long career with his tragically trendy Maoist politics, his intellectually-(de)based endorsement of terrorism, his blasé, derivative, and self-referential search for shock value and new tests of the viewer's patience, his sterile academic arguments posing as a substitute for structured entertainment and quality, his slip-shod time-killing filler work and his hatred of women.

The difference between a genuinely good film and a Godard film is that the Godard film is usually made up of a series of posters of a good film with a trashy heroine posing suggestively in front of them between random, meaningless encounters with equally misguided and humourless protagonists discussing Kirkegaard's impact on modern birth control. I really liked Pierrot le Fou because most of the characters have at least the decency to die in the end.

You could say Godard deconstructed world cinema. He just forgot to put it together again when he was done with it.

Well, I liked "Le Pacte Des Loups"...Its a wonderful, fun movie.

Whether its considered grand or not, I dont know.

I thought 36 Quai des Orfèvres was pretty good

Director: Olivier Marchal
Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, Andre Dussolier, Valeria Golino

and of cos Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

Check out a major bunch of Criterion DVDs like Le Samourai, The Rules of the Game, Rififi, Jules & Jim, Le Trou (one of the best films I've ever seen!) and others. I have picked up more French stuff and even "American" stuff directed by French directors (Just grabbed Night and the City directed by Jules Dassin).

Jules Dassin is American.

And the Dardennes are Belgian filmmakers.