Tag Archives: french

Saving Grace (2000) Nigel Cole, Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson, Martin Clunes, Comedy, Crime

Saving Grace (2000)
Unexpectedly widowed, prim and proper housewife Grace Trevethyn finds herself in dire financial straits when she inherits massive debts her late husband had been accruing for years. Faced with losing her house, she decides to use her talent for horticulture and hatches a plan to grow potent marijuana which can be sold at an astronomical price, thus solving her financial crisis. Grace and her gardener’s efforts to hide their illegal enterprise from the quaint and curious townsfolk and market their product comprise the remainder of the film.
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La Facture (1975) Pierre Sabbagh, Viviane Gosset, Jean Barney, Jacqueline Maillan, Comedy

La Facture (1975)
Noëlle Alban est une femme à qui tout, depuis sa naissance, sourit. C’est une “chanceuse”, c’est une veinarde ; mais c’est une veinarde qui s’inquiète. Elle s’inquiète parce que, selon la “Théorie des Compensations” d’Azaïs, elle devra ensuite payer et supporter une égale période de malchance. Impressionnée par cette idée, Noëlle, pour se débarrasser de cette dette morale envers le destin, décide de se provoquer, à elle même, des ennuis. Mais elle échouera dans toutes ses tentatives et elle finira par se résigner au bonheur en pensant qu’elle le paiera, désormais, à chaque minute par peur de le perdre.
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Eyes of Laura Mars / Les Yeux de Laura Mars (1978) Irvin Kershner, Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Les Yeux de Laura Mars (1978)
Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a fashion photographer who specializes in stylized violence. In her luxurious Manhattan apartment, she has a nightmare that Doris Spencer (Meg Mundy) is viciously murdered with an ice pick, her eyeballs stabbed. Laura wakes up and looks through a soon-to-be-published coffee table book of her photos, titled The Eyes of Mars, which Doris had edited. In it, there is a picture of Doris…identical to an image she had in the dream. Laura calls Doris but she gets no answer. That evening, she attends a reception at the Elaine Cassell Gallery in SoHo for an exhibit of her work. A controversial figure, she is besieged by questions from reporters about whether her photos glorify violence and are demeaning to women. A handsome stranger (Tommy Lee Jones) questions the work as well. The success of the exhibit is disrupted by the news that Doris has been found dead, in the same manner that she was murdered in Laura’s dream…
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Double Messieurs (1986) Yves Afonso, Carole Bouquet, Jean-François Stévenin, Drama, Comedy

Double Messieurs (1986)
After 25 years, François, a modest businessman, is reunited with his childhood friend Léo, a film double. It’s a reunion which affects both men profoundly, and immediately they discover their adolescent sense of fun. François proposes that they meet up with the third member of their childhood band, Kuntchinski. But when they break into the latter’s house, they are surprised by his wife, Hélène. Unsure what to do, François and Léo make a snap decision to fake an abduction. Hélène hasn’t any other plans, so she plays along with the kidnap…
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The WIZ / Le Magicien d’Oz (1978) Sidney Lumet, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Le Magicien d’Oz (1978)
A Thanksgiving dinner brings a host of family together in a Harlem apartment, where a 24-year-old schoolteacher named Dorothy Gale lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry . Extremely introverted, she has, as Aunt Em teases her, “never been south of 125th Street”, and refuses to move out and on with her life. While Dorothy cleans up after the meal, her dog Toto runs out the open kitchen door into a violent snowstorm. She succeeds in retrieving him, but finds herself trapped in the storm…
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Série noire (1979) Alain Corneau, Patrick Dewaere, Myriam Boyer, Marie Trintignant, Bernard Blier, Crime, Drama

Serie noire (1979)
Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris’ suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who’s been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal… A very gloomy movie, exuding dispair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.
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The Tenant / Le locataire (1976) Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Thriller, Drama

The Tenant (1976)
In Paris, the shy bureaucrat Trelkovsky rents an old apartment without bathroom where the previous tenant, the Egyptologist Simone Choule, committed suicide. The unfriendly concierge (Shelley Winters) and the tough landlord Mr. Zy establish stringent rules of behavior and Trelkovsky feels ridden by his neighbors. Meanwhile he visits Simone in the hospital and befriends her girlfriend Stella. After the death of Simone, Trelkovsky feels obsessed for her and believes his landlord and neighbors are plotting a scheme to force him to also commit suicide.
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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 Haine / Hate (1995) Mathieu Kassovitz, Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui, Crime, Drama

La Haine 1995
This film follows one day in the lives of three unemployed young men who live on a housing estate in a deprived suburb of Paris. They are Vinz, a Jew busting with pent-up anger, Saïd a talkative Arab obsessed with “getting laid” and Hubert, a well-built black man who dreams of being a professional boxer. They mull over the events of the day before, when there was a violent confrontation between police and rioters, which arose after a young Arab was brutally attacked by a policeman. Vinz swears that if the Arab dies, he will find a policeman and kill him. He reveals that he managed to purloin a loaded gun during the riot. The three young men spend the evening in Paris, killing time and generally making a nuisance. When they return home the following day, they are picked on by the police, with disastrous consequences…
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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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