Tag Archives: France

The Witches / Le streghe (1967) Mauro Bolognini, Vittorio De Sica, Silvana Mangano, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Comedy, Drama, Romance

The Witches (1967)
Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman’s honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he’s not as romantic as he used to be.
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Subway (1985) Luc Besson, Christopher Lambert, Isabelle Adjani, Richard Bohringer, Comedy, Drama, Thriller

Subway (Luc Besson, 1985)
Helena, the beautiful young wife of a wealthy businessman, invites a stranger Fred to her party. Fred repays her by stealing compromising documents from her husband’s safe, with the aim of blackmailing the couple. Pursued by police and the henchmen of Helena’s ruthless husband, Fred goes on the run, taking refuge in the Paris metro. Here, he meets other social misfits, including a roller-blader the police have been hunting for several months. Whilst Helena realises that she has fallen in love with Fred and makes every attempt to contact him, Fred occupies himself with forming a band by recruiting buskers. Meanwhile, the police and Helena’s husband are getting closer to their target…
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La rupture / The Breach (1970) Claude Chabrol, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Michel Bouquet, Thriller, Drama

La Rupture
Hélène Régnier walks out on her drug-addicted husband Charles after he brutally attacks their infant son. She stays in a run-down hotel whilst her son convalesces in hospital and she files for divorce. Charles’s wealthy bourgeois father is adamant that Hélène will lose custody of her child and, to that end, he engages a former business associate of Charles, Paul Thomas, to discredit her. When Paul fails to uncover any incriminating evidence against Hélène he concocts a scheme that will destroy her reputation. Things do not go quite as planned…
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MADO (1976) Claude Sautet, Michel Piccoli, Ottavia Piccolo, Jacques Dutronc, Drama

MADO (1976)
Middle-aged businessman Simon Léotard finds his future in jeopardy when his partner Julien commits suicide after having accumulated a mass of debts. Simon’s unscrupulous business rival Lépidon offers to save him from bankruptcy by buying his company, at a discount rate. Reluctant to fall into Lépidon’s trap, Simon decides to resolve the crisis himself. A prostitute, Mado, provides him with the solution to his problems…
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Docteur Popaul / Scoundrel in White (1972) Claude Chabrol, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Mia Farrow, Laura Antonelli, Comedy

Scoundrel in White (1972)
Dr Paul Simay is a lady’s man who claims to prefer ugly women. He makes his point by winning a bet that he can sleep with the most ugly women in a year. He therefore has no qualms about marrying Christine, a paraplegic with buck-teeth, especially when her father is a wealthy doctor who can advance his career. His views change when he meets Christine’s beautiful sister, Martine. When she realises that Paul has been cheating on her and has given her sister a child, Christine decides to extract a cruel revenge…
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TANGUY (2001) Étienne Chatiliez, Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier, Éric Berger, Comedy

TANGUY (2001)
Edith and Paul Guetz are so happy with the birth of their son Tanguy that they promise he can live with them forever. Twenty-eight years later, Tanguy, a cultivated intellectual, is still ensconced in the family home – and his parents can hardly wait to see the back of him. When Tanguy reveals that it will be at least another year before he can complete his doctoral thesis and start looking for a full-time job, Edith’s nerves finally give way. She persuades her husband that the time has come to drive their stay-at-home son away, by whatever means possible..
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A Nous les Petites Anglaises (1976) Michel Lang, Rémi Laurent, Stéphane Hillel, Véronique Delbourg, Comedy, Romance

A Nous les Petites Anglaises (1976)
En 1958, deux lycéens, Jean-Pierre et Alain, ont lamentablement raté leur Bac. Leurs parents respectifs décident donc de les envoyer en séjour linguistique en Angleterre, à Ramsgate, pour qu’ils se perfectionnent dans la langue de Shakespeare. Préférant nettement leurs habituelles vacances à Saint-Tropez, les deux amis se disent que le plan n’est pas si mauvais, compte tenu de la réputation peu farouche des jeunes Anglaises. À peine arrivés, Jean-Pierre et Alain partent en chasse. Mais les grandes manœuvres amoureuses ne se révèlent pas aussi faciles que prévues car les demoiselles ne semblent pas immédiatement sensibles au charme des french lovers.
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CHAOS (2001) Coline Serreau, Vincent Lindon, Catherine Frot, Rachida Brakni, Comedy, Drama, Crime

CHAOS (2001)
Contrary to her husband, Hélène devotes herself to help an French-Algerian prostitute, Malika, who seeks to escape from her abusers. As the film begins, Paul and Hélène, a wealthy Parisian couple, are preparing to go out for the evening. While driving, they see three men chasing a prostitute down the street. She begs them to save her by letting her into the car, but Paul locks the doors and drives away as the three men beat her, leaving her unconscious in the street. He refuses to let Hélène phone an ambulance, afraid of being charged with not helping a person in danger (which is a crime in France). Hélène cannot forget the incident, and the next day she goes to the hospital, where she finds the prostitute, Noémie, in a coma. Moved, Hélène stops work and leaves her family responsibilities to stay with Noémie throughout her recovery, aiding her as she regains mobility and helping her to communicate since she can’t yet speak. When one of the pimps returns to threaten Noémie, Hélène follows him out of the hospital, knocks him unconscious, and leaves him for the police to find.
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Novo (2002) Jean-Pierre Limosin, Eduardo Noriega, Anna Mouglalis, Paz Vega, Drama, Comedy, Romance

Novo (2002)
Those who loved Graham yesterday shouldn’t count on today. Those who love him today risk being heartbroken tomorrow… Suffering from recurring memory loss, Graham is restricted to a limited short-term memory. He forgets most things after only a few minutes. He no longer recognizes his wife Isabelle nor his young son Antoine nor his best friend Fred. Since each day is a new day, Graham copes with life by referring to the details of his little notebook, the defining key to his identity. He works as a photocopy clerk under the close watch of his sexy boss Sabine, who uses him to his libido’s advantage. Pretty new temp Irene can’t help falling for Graham’s spontaneous charm. But how can Graham really fall in love with her when he sees each time as the first time? Irene is about to experience all new ways of romance. She’ll just have to remember everything for the both of them. Everyone around Graham has their reasons why he should or shouldn’t fully recover…
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Congorama (2006) Philippe Falardeau, Olivier Gourmet, Paul Ahmarani, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Comedy, Drama

Congorama (2006)
Michel is a Belgian inventor. He cares for his father, a paralysed writer, is married to a Congolese woman and is the father of an interracial child whom he reassures as to his parentage. He discovers at the age of 41 that he was adopted, actually having been born in Sainte-Cécile, Quebec. In the summer of 2000, he travels to Quebec, supposedly to sell some of his inventions. While on a near-impossible quest to find his birth family in the town where he was born, he crosses paths with Louis Legros, son of another inventor, in a meeting which will change their lives…
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Les Biches / Bad Girls (1968) Claude Chabrol, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacqueline Sassard, Stéphane Audran, Drama

Les Biches (1968)
Frédérique is a rich and beautiful woman who picks up a female street artist called “Why”. It is December and they go to her villa in Saint Tropez, which is inhabited by a couple of odd gay men. Both women fall for the local architect Paul Thomas. However Why says that she is not interested in him, so Frédérique invites him to move into the villa.
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Un singe en hiver (1962) Henri Verneuil, Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Suzanne Flon, Comedy, Drama

Un singe en hiver (1962)
A young man, Gabriel Fouquet, arrives in a coastal town in Normandy to visit his daughter, who is staying in a boarding school. He ends up lodging in a guesthouse run by the aged Albert Quentin and his wife Suzanne. To forget his troubles, Gabriel hits the bottle, not realising that the teetotal Albert was once a heavy drinker. Twenty years ago, the latter pledged never to touch alcohol again if he and his wife survived the war. Through his friendship with Gabriel, Albert becomes nostalgic about his past, recalling his time as a sailor on an expedition to China. To drown their sorrows, the two men embark on a drinking binge which quickly gets out of hand…
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Era notte a Roma / It Was Night in Rome (1960) Roberto Rossellini, Leo Genn, Giovanna Ralli, Sergey Bondarchuk, Drama, War

Era notte a roma (1960)
During WW2, in Rome , a trio of escaped Allied POWs find themselves in limbo as they try to avoid re-capture and reach their dispersed units. Michael Pemberton is a British Major, Fyodor Aleksandrovic Nazukov is a Soviet Sergeant and Peter Bradley is an American Lieutenant. A beautiful young Italian woman, Esperia Belli, agrees to give them shelter. She knows that despite Italy’s efforts to break with Nazi Germany and join the Allies there are some Italians who are Fascist sympathizers and would gladly denounce Esperia to the German authorities. Hiding enemy soldiers or escaped POWs is punishable by death. Esperia hopes to get in contact with the Italian anti-Fascist resistance which could help the three escaped Allied POWs rejoin their respective armies. Until then, the fugitives are stuck in Esperia’s attic.
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