Guy Ferrandis
La Vénus électrique (2026)
Pierre Salvadori’s “La Vénus électrique” may be the most exhilarating Cannes opener in recent memory: a wholly original, exquisitely engineered period romantic comedy whose emotional buoyancy never comes at the expense of formal rigor. Though screening outside competition, the film possesses the assurance and tonal sophistication of a major contender. It recalls the kind of unabashedly romantic popular cinema that contemporary filmmakers rarely attempt anymore, much less pull off with this degree of elegance.
Continue reading “Body Double” »
Ben King/Pathé Distribution
MOVIE REVIEW
The Three Musketeers: Milady (2023)
In “The Three Musketeers: Milady” there’s a very early shot of Eva Green in chains, a standard of excellence it regrettably never achieves again. This follows an extensive recap of the complex plot of “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan” which only came out in May. That movie was a better success than this one, in that it was about the merry gang of musketeers, Athos (Vincent Cassel), Aramis (Romain Duris) and Porthos (Pio Marmaï), becoming the best of friends with new recruit D’Artagnan (François Civil) through various complicated intrigues requiring their combined fighting skills. But those adventures are a bath-time book compared to this movie, which contains so many disparate elements our fab four barely have any screen time together. This is a mistake as great as the treatment of Milady (Ms. Green), who here is more weepy damsel in distress than world-class spy.
Continue reading “Commend Me to Satan” »
Atelier de Production
MOVIE REVIEW
Daaaaaalí! (2024)
Quentin Dupieux is completely insane; and this is meant as an extreme compliment. His movies are utterly unpredictable, to the point where it’s permanently impossible to guess what will happen from one moment to the next, and generally acted in a deadpan style of extreme normality even in the most incongruous or hilarious situations. You can hear the glee of the people who decided to screen at this at the London Film Festival from here. On the surface, “Daaaaaalí!” is about the attempts of a young journalist named Judith (Anaïs Demoustier) to interview the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí (played interchangeably by Edouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Didier Flamand and Pio Marmaï) for her first documentary film. In reality, it is a surrealistic dreamscape about dreams coming true, priest-killing cowboys, car accidents, cowboy-killing priests and whether a former barista can ever leave her past behind. It is almost indescribably strange and that makes it wonderful.
Continue reading “The Persistence of Documentary” »
Pathé Films
MOVIE REVIEW
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023)
The swashbuckling appeal of four Frenchmen fighting with swords or guns against various dastardly villains has stood up to plenty of adaptations, with the most recent English-language one back in 2011. That was kind of a mess – if you need Mads Mikkelsen to demonstrate his villainy by tying a busty blonde to the front of a C.G.I. flying sailing ship, you are almost certainly trying too hard – but it was also a comedic romp. Director Martin Bourboulon has a background in comedy, but with “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan” he decided to get as serious as a gun stuck in your face. With this movie France has made a blockbuster adaptation for itself and doesn’t care whether audiences elsewhere will like it. Of course, this story is as close to a guaranteed smash hit as you can get, but they do it justice.
Continue reading “Hazardous Adventures” »
Carole Bethuel
MOVIE REVIEW
The Divide (2021)
The English title implies something that’s grown apart, while the original French title means something which has broken, which is more appropriate. This slice-of-life story, set in a Parisian emergency room on a day of the Yellow Vests protests, manages to excoriate French society at all levels while also being a kind, clear-eyed metaphor of how a nation handles its suffering.
Continue reading “L’état d’urgence” »
IFC Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Happening (2022)
Something at which French cinema excels is the feeling of living inside a body. It’s the slow accretion of details: people putting coins into a phone box, ordering beers at the bar of a sweaty student dance, or frowning over their books in the park as their friends chatter around them. Audrey Diwan’s “Happening” is about only the physical experience of being pregnant when you don’t want to be, and somehow is a tactile experience. It won the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Ms. Diwan herself has been nominated for a BAFTA, and all these awards are incredibly well deserved. A young woman trying to regain control of her body from an indifferent world is proven here to be something extraordinary.
Continue reading “Pregnant Pause” »
