Walerian Borowczyk’s second feature was just as original as his first. Almost entirely live action this time, it is situated on the archipelago of Goto, which has been cut off from the rest of human civilisation by a massive earthquake and has consequently developed its own arcane rules. Melancholic dictator Goto III (Pierre Brasseur) is married to the beautiful Glossia (Ligia Branice), who in turn is lusted after by the petty thief Gozo (Guy Saint-Jean) as he works his way up the hierarchy.
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Tag Archives: french
Hélas pour moi / Oh, Woe Is Me (1993) Jean-Luc Godard, Gérard Depardieu, Laurence Masliah, Bernard Verley
Romance about Simon Donnadieu and his decision to leave his ever-loving wife Rachel.
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Tous peuvent me tuer / Everybody Wants to Kill Me (1957) Henri Decoin, François Périer, Peter van Eyck, Anouk Aimée
The holdup of the bank is a success. All happened according to plan. Now, Cyril Gad and his four accomplices must secure an alibi. What better place than a prison cell? As a result the five gangsters have themselves arrested on minor charges and start waiting until they are released. Unfortunately three of them die mysteriously, another one is openly murdered. The only man still alive, Tony, is scared.
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Coup de torchon (1981) Bertrand Tavernier, Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran
1938, in a French african colony. Lucien Cordier is the cop of this village, populated with blacks and a few whites (usually racialist and lustful). He is a washout, everyone (including his wife Huguette) humiliates him. He never arrests anyone and looks at elsewhere when a dirty trick occurs. But one day, he turns into a machiavellian exterminating angel.
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Ce jour-là / That Day (2003) Raoul Ruiz, Bernard Giraudeau, Elsa Zylberstein, Jean-Luc Bideau
A father (Michel Piccoli) is scheming to have his slightly mental daughter from an earlier marriage (Elsa Zylberstein) killed by allowing a murderous psychopath (Bernard Giraudeau) to be released from the asylum and led to his house. However, the psychopath and the daughter fall for each other.
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Thérèse Raquin / The Adultress (1953) Marcel Carné, Simone Signoret, Raf Vallone, Jacques Duby
Therese has a boring life. She married Camille, her cousin, a sickly haberdasher, fully dominated by his mother (who lives with them). She dreams about passion. One day comes a truckdriver, Laurent… and of course they fall in love. But they will be pursued by fate.
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Je l’aimais / Someone I Loved (2009) Zabou Breitman, Daniel Auteuil, Marie-Josée Croze, Florence Loiret Caille
One night, Pierre decides to reveal his painful secret to his daughter-in-law, who’s just been abandoned by her husband. Pierre’s secret is about his secret love to Mathilde, the woman he left to instead follow an easier path in life.
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À nous la liberté (1931) René Clair, Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand, Rolla France
A famous left-wing satirical comedy about two ex-convicts, one of whom escaped jail and then worked his way up from salesman to factory owner, where he oversees a highly mechanized operation where the workers are reduced to mere automatons. Fearful of being exposed over his past, at first by his friend and later by another gangster, the owner chooses to give his factory to the workers, then escapes with his friend to the freedom of the open road. The production company for “A Nous la Liberte” was for more than a decade embroiled in a lawsuit claiming that Charles Chaplin had seen their film and plagiarized many ideas from it as he developed “Modern Times.”
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La 317ème section / The 317th Platoon (1965) Pierre Schoendoerffer, Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Fabre
In 1954, the Indochina War begins to come to a close following France’s defeat by the Viet Minh at the deadly Battle of Dîen Bîen Phû. French forces are in full retreat and risk being overrun at every turn — including the 317th Platoon, a unit of French soldiers and Laotian allies who are led by the idealistic but inexperienced sous-lieutenant Torrens and adjutant Willsdorf, a former soldier in the German Wehrmacht during WWII. Their survival depends on completing a trek through the dense, jungle-laden, expanse of enemy territory that stands between them and the safety of the nearest French outpost.
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L’enfer dans la peau / Sexus (1965) José Bénazéraf, Willy Braque, Yves Duffaut, Annie Josse
A beautiful heiress is kidnapped and held hostage until her wealthy father comes up with a ransom. The heiress develops an attraction to one of her kidnappers, but another member of the gang tries to rape her, leading to a deadly triangle.
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