Arnaud Desplechin’s Les Fantômes d’Ismaël kicked off this year’s Cannes Film Festival with a whimper rather than a bang. The film is a patchwork of ideas pulled from the director’s previous work and feels uneven despite excellent performances from the three main leads – Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marion Cotillard. Are the references to Desplechin’s…
The organisers of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival have unveiled this year’s contenders for the much coveted Palme d’Or. With a jury headed by Pedro Almodóvar, a festival regular who has had six film in competiton over the past few years without ever winning the top prize, the festival kicks-off with Arnaud Desplechin‘s Marion Cotillard-led Ismael’s Ghosts. Desplechin’s Trois…
Un plus Une – Claude Lelouche. After the disappointing Salaud On t’Aime with ageing rocker Johnny Hallyday in the lead role, veteran director Lelouche goes further afield for this love story between forty-somethings Antoine (Jean Dujardin) and Anna (Elza Zylberstein). Premiered at the Festval du Film Francophone d’Angouleme, Jardin plays a famous film score…
It’s taken 83-year-old Cyrano de Bergerac director Jean-Paul Rappeneau 13 years to produce a follow-up to his war-time drama Bon Voyage. Belles Familles is a drama of a different order centred around the efforts of a bourgeois family to sell their magnificent family home and move on with their lives. It has a top notch…
Marguerite – Xavier Giannoli. In competition at the Venice Film Festival, Marguerite marks the return to the big screen of the remarkable Catherine Frot (La Tourneuse de Pages, Le DÎner de Cons) after a three year absence. She plays Marguerite, a tone-deaf socialite who dreams of fame as an opera singer. Set in the…
Fans of French director Arnaud Desplechin will be delighted by his return to form with Trois Souvenirs de Ma Jeunesse after his previous film Jimmy P was almost universally hammered by critics at last year’s Cannes film festival. Perhaps to avoid similar disappointment, Trois Souvenirs… was not included in the main competition this year, but…
With just over two months to go before the 68th Cannes Film Festival kicks off, the rumour mill is now in full swing with films by Abdellatif Kechiche, Gaspar Noé and Jacques Audiard touted as possible entries in this year’s competition. 2015 is forecast to be a bumper year for European and Asian films. And while…
After taking Best Director’s prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival with the burlesque On Tour, actor/director Mathieu Amalric is back on La Croisette with an adaptation of fellow Belgian Georges Simenon’s La Chambre Bleue (The Blue Room). Simenon himself was no stranger to the festival. He was président of the jury in 1960, but is…
Sophie Fillière’s Arrete ou Je Continue is an overlong dissection of the dying embers of a relationship pulled out of the ordinary by a witty script and stellar performances from the two leading actors. Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos are Pierre and Pomme, a couple in their late forties, who have been together for an eternity. Are…
L’Amour est un Crime Parfait is a psychological thriller based on the novel Incidences by Philippe Dijan whose work has already provided a rich source of material for some of France’s best-known directors include Jean-Jacques Beineix with Betty Blue and André Téchiné with Unforgivable. And the Larrieu brothers had their work cut out bringing this dark, complex novel to the big…