French films are shit. Porquoi?

(which is Hors Satan, not Hor, yes, I know)

Christian iconography was mined to bits in the scenes depicting the manner in which the girl would rest upon the man's shoulder.

Great title...well it depends on how your read the Jesus story - he was a man, after all, capable of kindness but also moments of impatience and cruelty.

Yes. I came out of thinking: "maybe this is actually close to what the historical Jesus was like".

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-jeanne-moreau-85

Maybe a last job in a Bruno Dumont film?

what is Moderato Cantible like?

i'd never heard of it

I feel like Duras is the great lost French auteur of the 60s and 70s, had no idea she had another script job (and one of her own novels too). Genuinely intriguing.

and Moreau played her in a film!

I've seen nearly all of Maurice Pialat's features, but Under Satan's Sun for the first time today, and I somewhat empathize with the booers at Cannes. Maybe I'm just getting a low tolerance for minimalist spiritual melodramas, even with self-flagellation. (Exception: Gerard Depardieu is rather amazing in a pivotal miraculous scene.)

I quite liked Demy's Model Shop. (More than the two musicals I'm supposed to like...Rochefort was OK.) I can see why the guy who made L.A. Plays Itself had good things to say about it--it really is as much about driving around L.A. as anything else (plus the two main characters express their love for the city). Loved seeing Fred Willard and Spirit--Ed Cassidy even gets a line. (Thought another character was Robbie from My Three Sons, but no.) Lockwood's blonde girlfriend, Alexandra Hay, reminded me of Mena Suvari in American Beauty. Checking her name, I realize I know her from the universally celebrated The Love Machine. If you can look past the same language stiltedness that you find in Zabriskie Point and Fahrenheit 451--weird, because it's mostly English people speaking English--it's a great looking film, with other good stuff too. Thinking that the model shop scenes may have influenced Paris, Texas.

Watched Sexual Chronicles of a French Family the other day.

I wasn't amazed by it - watchable, more or less documentary style study of, well, what it says in the title. You see private lives of the parents, grandfather and young adult sons and daughter, and their various boyfriends and girlfriends. The position that it occupies – of liberal-progressive-middle-class openness about sexuality – seems like an assimilation to me, as if there were something lost in practical acceptance.

However, precisely because of that, I thought it was interesting as an example of a film that almost definitely wouldn't get made in Britain, and interesting how that cultural divide is still there (this no longer a question of direct censorship but of culture). Over here, attempts by Guardian relationships columnists (insert other relevant strawmen here) to be laid back and chill about sexuality, partaking of the same spirit as this film, don't seem to hold much sway against the spirit that informs The Sun's 'relationship photo stories'.

as for Demy, he's getting a 2-week NYC retro in October.

Jacques Becker's Antoine and Antoinette is recirculating (beginning in NY today) -- a romantic comedy with a really slight lottery-ticket plot, but the leads are very sexy and have great chemistry, and the unglamorous Paris locations and ensemble players give it juice.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-jacques-beckers-antoine-and-antoinette

A poll of the 100 best French films. I have never made it 30 minutes into #1, and dislike #2.

http://www.lesinrocks.com/2014/03/05/cinema/top-100-plus-beaux-films-francais-11468683/

Great showing on #9 there.

Morbs u should try #1 again. Eustache is all that he's said to be and more.

Director I clearly need to investigate a little further: Jacques Rozier.

Is this list the French equivalent of the IMDB top 250? It looks like critics picked, and The Intouchables isn't listed, so maybe not.

Richard Brody's twitter stream has the major complaints

only 18 critics

http://www.lesinrocks.com/2014/04/01/cinema/plus-beaux-films-francais-les-tops-des-critiques-11493878/

I see that Sans soleil, with just 1 vote, was in the 60s or 70s on this list, so a very small sample, et al.

I fancy a Eustache now and then but that poll is ridiculous

ahem, "poll" as in, "i polled my friends at this bar table..."

I'm all for gay pr0n in the top 20 or so.

All top 20 slots should probably be gay secks, actually.

Finally saw one of my Holy Grail films: Alain Jessua's Life Upside Down. (Everyone has their own list--films either out of circulation for ages, or that require paying way too much for bootleg copies over the internet.) I first became interested in it 35 years ago because of a great review in Stanley Kauffmann's A World on Film. A friend had it on VHS, so now that my player is hooked up, I was able to borrow her copy (a traded bootleg).

Similar to Shoot the Piano Player, but without the pathos--as the film progresses, it moves closer to something like Safe (how I remember it anyway, it's been a while). It does achieve a kind of small-scale perfection. Memorable final shot. Not sure why it disappeared, or why Criterion or somebody doesn't make it available.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/life-upside-down/w448/life-upside-down.jpg?1289469325

anyone have firsthand opinion of Jacques Rozier, or Maine Océan in particular?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/02/jacques-rozier-odd-man-out.html

http://www.fiaf.org/events/spring2014/2014-05-27-cs-maine.shtml

Never seen it.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18vsxg_master-class-de-arnaud-desplechin_shortfilms?start=802
oh! france and their integration of anglicism

un autre que je vais voir "en ligne" étant donné que j'ai eu de la misère à le télécharger: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xi7u6w_la-master-class-d-agnes-varda_shortfilms : elle le dit d'emblée "master class? ne lui plait pas :-)

Anyone like That Man from Rio (1964)? Hardly "great," but often very funny and Belmondo zips through it like an heir to Cary Grant, Harold Lloyd and Jerry Lewis (doing a number of great fight/chase/plane stunts).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceB4bqJVEYg

Definitely interested to see. Is it still playing?

two more days at FF

now held over

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/The_Mother_and_the_Whore.jpg

Does anybody else like this film, "The Mother and the Whore" (1973)?

219min of following an idealistic slacker played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. It's a pretty light affair, but one I love to watch as a comfort film, plus beautiful black and white paris.

I can't understand why it's not on DVD yet. I have a taped copy, but no longer have a working tape player

I've tried to watch it twice, hated the first 20 minutes both times. (Library videocassette from New Yorker Films.)

it's 'Pourquoi ?'

My favorite Eustache film, i've been lucky enough to see it in a fine 35mm print, is Le Cochon. To me there is no doubt he was a better at make short films.

there is doubt

I can't understand why it's not on DVD yet. I have a taped copy, but no longer have a working tape player

Eustache's son Boris controls the rights to his father's films. Restored versions toured about six years ago, but as I understand it, the reason they didn't come out on disc was that Bluray happened, and the elements would have to be rescanned yet again to be brought up to snuff. Add to that Boris' desire to license the films in toto to one distributor, who must pay him a reportedly sizable sum for access to the films before figuring how much $$$ it'll cost the licencee to remaster everything for HD. So, we're gonna be waiting awhile.

That's interesting, if a bit depressing. I transferred my UK VHS copy of Mother and the Whore to DVD a couple of years ago - it's the same New Yorker print that did the rounds of rep cinemas here about ten years or so ago. I see that people are now asking absurd prices for this tape on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/La-Maman-Et-Putain-VHS/dp/B00004CXG5

A couple of years ago, a pretty complete Eustache season toured round a few UK rep cinemas, and while I enjoyed the short films, M&W is still the jewel in the crown for me - and the intensity of the final scenes makes me quibble with it being described as 'a pretty light affair'. It's people cutting each other to pieces, showing themselves raw and naked; Leaud seems to be physically shaking by the end of it.

There's a great HD transfer of La Maman made for French TV floating around the t0rrents.

about the "light affair" comment, I think that's just the cynic in me. I found Léaud's character, as well as the whore's, to be unreliable. The whore seemed to be on drugs for most of the film, and Léaud seemed to always be convincing himself that he felt deeply about things. So then I saw the drama at the end as sort of self-serving. I'm sure that's mostly me, and the reason my friends don't like going to films with me.

The whore seemed to be on drugs for most of the film

?!

She was so blase about everything for most of the film. Maybe I read too much into her lack of expression.

There's a great HD transfer of La Maman made for French TV floating around the t0rrents.

There's also a Japanese dvd out there, although it is subject to typical Japanese censorship (primarily digitally blurred full-frontal shots--ironically this is the version Mr. Skin uses for their screencaps from the film).

Oh hai, vhs rip on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3-NHGcUYM

IN SPANISH

ENGLISH SUBS HERE: http://youtu.be/Q12zgo39ovg

The Little Loves w/subs: http://youtu.be/DYnzr_wVn9s

Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes w/subs: http://youtu.be/Xfo7o5TcJ1k

It's a pretty light affair

are you high

In a 2007 interview in Les Inrockuptibles, she discussed the film’s devastating real-life context. The interviewers, Jean-Baptiste Morain and Serge Kaganski, asked her whether she “knew during the shoot that the film was very inspired by [Eustache’s] own life.” Lafont answered:

Of course, since Françoise Lebrun was his ex-girlfriend. And the girl whose role I was playing killed herself after the first screening. It was Catherine, at whose home we were shooting and who was the makeup artist. But it was transposed, it was “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” in the twentieth century, it wasn’t cinema-vérité. But it was still almost embarrassing because it was so painful for Catherine. At a given moment, I told Eustache that I didn’t feel up to doing it, it was too heavy. He said, “Oh, if you don’t do the film, I’m not doing it!” So I had to do it. But it wasn’t cheerful and it brought about the total drama, as we know. It was very hard for him. But it was a radical era. It was after ’68, people left for utopias.… There were social suicides.

She was so blase about everything for most of the film. Maybe I read too much into her lack of expression.

Or maybe she played it with her emotions shut, a numb-ness to protect herself? That doesn't becessarily mean "on drugs".

Any excuse for a re-watch. Lumiere tend to re-screen this now and then thankfully.