Tag Archives: France

Une chambre en ville / A Room in Town (1982) Jacques Demy, Dominique Sanda, Danielle Darrieux, Richard Berry, Drama, Musical

Une chambre en ville (1982)
A film musical in which every line is sung. The frame is about workers during a strike. They also prepare and perform a demonstration. Two personal relations develop against this background. François abandons his pregnant girlfriend Violette. She feels treated even more unjust when he tries to defend and excuse his behaviour. He had met a very beautiful over-class girl, Edith, and both were immediately overwhelmed by genuine and reciprocal passion. Edith lived in a very unsatisfactory marriage. She was the daughter of the widow from which François rented his room. Nevertheless, he met her in the street, where she just opened her fur coat and was starch naked under it. They will be together in great passion for just one night and day. At the demonstration François is shot by the police and dies in Edith’s arms. – The music is closer to opera than in any other film musical by Jacques Demy. But the greatest difference is that he has devoted much more effort to the task of instructing the…
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La bûche / Season’s Beatings (1999) Danièle Thompson, Sabine Azéma, Emmanuelle Béart, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Comedy, Drama

La buche (1999)
Christmas, family, and infidelity. Yvette’s husband has died, and her grown daughters join her at the grave: Sonia, wealthy, bourgeois, and generous; Louba, living with their dad Stanislas, singing at a Russian restaurant, penniless, the mistress for the past 12 years of a man who will never leave his wife; Milla, the youngest, acerbic, lonesome. Christmas was when they learned their parents were divorcing 25 years ago. Over the next few days, yuletide depression, Louba’s pregnancy, Sonia’s crumbling marriage, Stanislas’s overtures to Yvette, and Milla’s attraction to the man who’s her father’s rent-free lodger lead each one to re-examine self, family, and hopes. Is renewal possible?
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The End of Violence (1997) Wim Wenders, Traci Lind, Rosalind Chao, Bill Pullman, Drama, Thriller

The End of Violence (Wim Wenders, 1997)
Mike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action films. His ignored wife Paige is close to leaving him. Suddenly Mike is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener’s family for a while. At the same time, surveillance expert Ray Bering is looking for what happens in the city, but it is not clear what he wants. The police investigation for Max’s disappearance is led by detective Doc Block, who falls in love with actress Cat who is playing in ongoing Max’s production.
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The Spy I Love / Coplan prend des risques (1964) Maurice Labro, Dominique Paturel, Virna Lisi, Jacques Balutin, Action, Drama

The Spy I Love (1964)
This is a low-to-the-ground espionage story shot in the style before James Bond made the splash heard ’round the world in Dr. No, even though it was made two years later. The simple story, about a stolen nuclear rocket propellant called the SR 712, is told in a nuts-and-bolts manner and the low key hero will barely register on those brought up on the larger than life Bond.
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