French Movies -new DVD releases

La Vie en Rose
Directed by Olivier Dahan with Marion Cotillard and Jean-Paul Rouve.
The passionate but tumultuous life of famous French singer Edith Piaf

Lady Chatterley
Directed by Pascale Ferran with Marina Hands and Hippolyte Girardot
Winner of five major prizes, including Best Film and Best Actress at the 2007 César Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscars®, this very sensitive, poetic and sensual film is based on the second of three versions of D.H. Lawrence's tale about an innocent yet subversive passion between Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper. Beautiful movie... cf. post on Paris In New York, June 14th, 2007

Moliere
Directed by Laurent Tirard with Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Elsa Morante
22-year-old, Moliere is not yet the recognized writer of Tartuffe or Misanthrope. His Illustrious Theatre Troupe founded the previous year, is bankrupt. Hounded by creditors, Molière is thrown into jail, released, and then swiftly imprisoned again. When the jailors finally let him go, he disappears. The combined efforts of historians have unearthed no trace of him before his reappearance, several months later, when his troupe begins touring the provinces - a tour that will last for thirteen years, and culminate in Molière's triumphant return to Paris in 1658.

Blame it on Fidel
Directed by Julie Gavras with Nina Kervel-Bey and Julie Depardieu

Caught up in the political revolution sweeping France in the early 1970s, Fernando (Stefano Accorsi) and Marie (Julie Depardieu) reject the comforts of their bourgeois life and dedicate themselves full time to radical activism. This comes as a shock to their precocious nine year-old daughter, Anna (Nina Kervel), who struggles to understand her parents’ newfound ideals.

Paris je T'aime
A series of eighteen short vignettes about Parisian living by 21 directors like Gus Van Sant and Cohen Brothers and actors like Steve Buscemi, Nick Nolte, Fanny Ardant, Juliette Binoche, Gerard Depardieu or Natalie Portman...
Made by a team of contributors as cosmopolitan as the city itself, this portrait of the city is as diverse as its creators' backgrounds and nationalities. With each director telling the story of an unusual encounter in one of the city's neighborhoods, the vignettes go beyond the 'postcard' view of Paris to portray aspects of the city rarely seen on the big screen.

My Best Friend
Directed by Patrice Leconte with Daniel Auteuil and Dany Boon
Catherine refuses to believe that her business partner, the unlikeable François, has a best friend, so she challenges him to set up an introduction. Scrambling to find someone willing to pose as his best pal, François enlists the services of a charming taxi driver to play the part.

4
( La poine Courte, Cleo de 5 a 7, le Bonheur, Vagabond)
Directed by Agnes Varda
Agnès Varda used the skills she honed early in her career as a photographer to create some of the most nuanced, thought-provoking films of the past fifty years. She is widely believed to have presaged the French new wave with her first film, La Pointe Courte, long before creating one of the movement s benchmarks, Cléo from 5 to 7. Later, with Le bonheur and Vagabond, Varda further shook up art-house audiences, challenging bourgeois codes with her inscrutable characters and effortlessly beautiful compositions and editing. Now working largely as a documentarian, Varda remains one of the essential cinematic poets of our time and a true visionary.

Pierrot le Fou
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina
Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir, and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, the last romantic couple.

To order, www.amazon.com

Comments

[Louis Flores]

I loved "Paris, je t'aime." My favourite segments in the film were about the mimes (la Tour Eiffel, VIIe arrondissement)and the one about the American tourist (XIVe arrondissement. Thanks for writing this blog.