Although nearing the end of his film-making career, Renoir still managed to deliver this
charming satirical comedy. Whilst the film lacks the punch and intensity of the
great director’s earlier films... [More...]
With this respectable adaptation of a well-known James Hadley Chase thriller novel, Julien
Duvivier offers a credible homage to the American B-movie and manages to impose on the
genre his own distinctive style... [More...]
One of Claude Chabrol’s most bizarre films, Landru is an extraordinary
off-the-wall black comedy which allows the director to combine his flair for comedy and
thriller to create something which is both original... [More...]
Borsalino, one of the most lavish French thrillers
of the 1970s, sees rival actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon (at the time, the two
most popular actors in France) sharing the limelight... [More...]
Judging by the end result, hallucinogenic drugs probably had a part to
play with the conception and realisation of La Rupture, one of Claude Chabrol’s
weirder films... [More...]
Marcel Carné’s penultimate fictional film is a superlative
example of the kind of gritty political thriller that would become
highly popular in France in the mid to late 1970s... [More...]
It is a rare that a sequel to a popular film is anywhere near as good as the original
and Borsalino and Co. proves the point with (literally) a vengeance... [More...]
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s first film is this subversive black comedy, a thoughtful and engaging
satire on the absurdity of war and the injustice of colonisation... [More...]
Despite some rather awkward attempts to bring it up to date (the all-pervasive disco culture,
the viscerally realistic killings, etc.), Le Solitaire is a crime thriller in the
classic French polar mould... [More...]
Élisa is a clumsy but well-intentioned variation on the Lolita theme.
The suggestion of incest earned the film a certain notoriety on its initial release in
France... [More...]
The first years of the new millenium have marked something of a revival for the French
New Wave, with Nouvelle Vague directors Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette
all releasing major works which achieved both... [More...]
If there is a French film that has caused more purple prose to be
splattered across film review pages than any other in recent years it
is Arnaud Desplechin’s latest flamboyant spectacle of self-indulgence
and... [More...]
