French films are shit. Porquoi?

do they just have to say something or do they have to say something new?

to earn the kinda raves The Class has been getting, new.

jsut fyi doctor in the director's cut it turns out that souleman was actually a bank robber and he and jason stathom get into a car chase through the streets of paris and then the cars explode and they fight their way up the eiffel tower using an explosive laden-soccer ball as a weapon

i thought that was a pretty new visual methaphor for social alienation tbh

lol @ my typing

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518B5i364hL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

watched this again recently btw one of the greatest french movies ever imo

"...It's easier to home now."

'go home"

my girlfriend and several of her friends, all of whom are teachers of one kind or another, said The Class was the only authentic representation of teaching they've ever seen on a screen.

to be fair morbs you don't ever really say anything (here) either other than talk about how films were received by critics or to dismiss other peoples opinions of them (this is easy) rather than saying why you actually liked or disliked them (this is more difficult).

it said quite a lot to me about teaching and about shifting power relations. about the daily extreme difficulty of doing the job and, by extension, of balancing fears and prejudices in everyday life in order to just get along with people. about how we repress our prejudices and how those prejudices come out involuntarily, unexpectedly. i was floored by the final scene in the classroom where that quiet, polite, mid-ability, student points out to the teacher that he hadn't asked her what she learned over the course of the year. it stops stone dead and it suddenly becomes the whole point of the film is that she doesn't speak until that point, she's just forgotten by the teacher and by the audience but her concerns are every bit as important, as crushing, as Souleymane or Esmeralde's which the whole film has been caught up with. i was moved almost to tears by this scene.

TH, if a film engages in 'realistic' social observation, then they have to "say something" to be above average.

Hence the overall shittiness of the overrated Dardennes' films.

Eric, have you seen anything besides The Child? I didn't think you had.

xp: I hope I made it clear I liked The Class Those points were present, jed, but I didn't find em revelatory.

points out to the teacher that he hadn't asked her what she learned over the course of the year.

Wait, doesn't she just say she learned nothing? Didn't believe the scene. Also thought the lead character was almost as annoying a showboat as Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson.

anyway, seen lately: Claire Denis' 35 Rhums, portrait of 5 characters in a not-quite family headed by a Paris train engineer, w/ her usual collaborators (Agnes Godard, Alex Descas, Gregoire Colin, Tindersticks). A-minus, no general US release yet.

I started The Son and turned it off.

Also thought the lead character was almost as annoying a showboat as Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson.

Yahbut at least French guy is taken to task for it a bit more; students call him out on it, anyway.

(Also seen Rosetta in bits and pieces, but nothing hooked me to watching it in full.)

The Son is easily in my top 10 of the '00s.

(also, Belgian)

Eric, you have to watch The Son at least til you find out what the deal is.

Rosetta kinda stinks.

(French-language. Looked like more of the same. If you're going to ape Bresson, at least be seamlessly formal about it.)

Also thought the lead character was almost as annoying a showboat as Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson.

i dont remember half nelson that well but cmon the class movie totally calls him on his bs. and i think its true if that matters the way it made his teaching seem like performing

i saw Naissance etc and was like hmm it's Fucking Amal all over again.
soundtrack had a great Boards of Canada vibe though.

(hmm Half Nelson is great) haven't seen the Class yet.

last French film i saw:
http://www.prixdvd.com/dvd_video/realisateurs/malle_louis/photos/zazie_dans_le_metro_.jpg
http://www.filmtotaal.nl/images/newscontent/f08572e.jpg
awesome and incredibly tiresome at the same time.

I don't find the D-Bros ape Bresson, but it's a kinda rich accusation coming from a Brian dP booster...

Do you really think in terms of "seamlessly formal" when you react to something? No wonder you like dance pop.

xp

ie, that they diverge from Bresson is a strength.

Jesus christ no it is not.

Everything the Dardennes is shallow, arrogant, pretentious shit is how they diverge.

Sorry, "everything the Dardennes DO"

we gotta get our own podcast, dude.

would you rather they xeroxed Bresson like BdP did w/Hitchcock? (sometimes; when he doesn't I often like him, ie Femme Fatale, Blow Out, Carlito)

plus now The Wrestler stands accused of aping the Dardennes

I loved Naissance des Pieuvres/Water Lillies - and foudn teh comparisons ton Fucking Amal a bit superficial. In any case, as said upthread, the photography is amazing and makes the film. The eerie emptiness of French suburban "new towns" is spot on.

at the Subjectivisten we're always looking for "doppelgangers" anyway, in Naissance, the "fat" girl either looks like Angela Merkel or Rita Verdonk (a hopelessly right-wing dutch politician)

as for the Dardennes:
le Fils is awesome. i'd say their best, but haven't seen Rosetta yet. I thought L'enfant was dissapointing, best (and saddest) part in L'enfant is when the poor boy needs to hide in the cold water for the cops. i forgot what the new one was called, ah yes Silence de Lorna, not that good either i thought. Liked some of the haphazard cuts though.

I don't really see Merkel

http://www.commeaucinema.com/images/news/150_81143.jpg

you don't ever really say anything (here) either other than talk about how films were received by critics or to dismiss other peoples opinions of them

i disagree, jed, but no i don't write film reviews here, i'm not nabisco.

morbs my feeling is that if a film can "say something" about its own characters' relationships to each other that seems true to the inherent difficulties of being a human being, in whatever social circumstances the film presents, that that is a big enough artistic job for anyone and a real and rare accomplishment

yes, and The Class was better than most, but not extraordinary. but y'know, Oscar Oscar Oscar, so it's all you guys wanna talk about.

As since it's almost 2 weeks since I saw it, this is my most vivid memory the mature Upper West Side audience at the Lincoln Plaza: when they're discussing Souleymane's father sending him home of he's suspended, a dowager behind me pipes up, "Would that be the WORST thing in the world?"

i don't write film reviews here, i'm not nabisco.

fair enough. it may not say anything to you but it's clearly said a lot to quite a few of us and since it's so tied to the times and the specific setting while, imo, opening out to talk about all difficult relationships then comparing it to a 40 year old film, while useful (i'll check the film out) is sort of ignoring how vital and current the films concerns are.

i agree with tracer on "that is a big enough artistic job for anyone and a real and rare accomplishment". it's exactly how i feel.

I thought ending w/ Teach and Dean (or whatever the French call him) playing football w/ the kids was a big shrug.

Would really go for 'the class'; I enjoyed 'Half Nelson', and who can resist season four of Wire (might be interesting to compare that TV series to 'The Class')

Anyone have any tips for the Nouvelle Vague fest at the nft? Gonna use it to investigate more Left bank stuff (that means => Varda, the one Chris Marker doc and 'Muriel'). would like to catch any golden nuggets on this.

the slightly shaky handheld thing you see now in TONS of films I blame on fucking TV like NYPD Blue, The Wire, Homicide. So irritating.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/april_seasons/nouvelle_vague

interesting program, lot of stuff i don't know.

The 400 Blows: i tend to like the other Doinel movies better..
Breathless: worth watching for Seberg. (i bet you've seen this one though)
Une femme est une femme: really nice movie, might be my favourite Godard
Hiroshima mon amour: hated this one
Lift to the Scaffold: Malle's debut, very amusing Hitchcock/film noir stuff, lot of plot holes though, but i thoroughly enjoyed it.
La Peau douce: weaker Truffaut, adultery drama.
Shoot the Pianist: awesome Truffaut, one of his best.
Zazie dans le métro: see up thread, you might get a headache.

if i had to recommend 2 from this list it would be Une Femme est Une Feme and Shoot the Pianist.
more leftfield choices (much cooler in away) would be Lift to the Scaffold and Zazie.

i'd recommend 'chronique d'un ete' and 'muriel'.

i want to see 'la joli mai', 'la pointe courte', and 'la pyramide humaine'.

don't have it in me to see kast, leenhardt, etc, to see if they are worth the effort :/

you can safely avoid rohmer and chabrol (and truffaut rly) imho.

Rohmer rules imho

Showing clips and talking with his usual passion about his life and the movies, both his own and those of others, Tarantino was anything but dull.

For instance: he has an unexpected passion for the delicate films of Eric Rohmer, with the exception of Rohmer's big hit, "My Night at Maud's."

most french people i'm met have a healthy disinterest in the new wave, they're like yeah, they're pretty good but they're really old now wtf is the hullabaloo

i think we get too much of them, though with this season they have made sure to extend 'the new wave' beyond the five main cahiers guys... although there is then a danger it just means 'french filmmaking from the mid-50s to the mid-60s'.

there's still a lot to discover in the left bank group -- they were not much shown here at the time (nor in the US) and it's still hard to see their shit. case in point marker. but it's getting easier: william klein had a box-set, and the dvd of 'muriel' is plain essential.

chabrol-rohmer-truffaut seem to me to belong to a pretty dim and distant past -- they're pretty conservative dudes -- but the left bankers still feel 'culturally relevant'.

but what do they like? glossy romances? are any of the talked-about newer directors (Assayas, Desplechin) big hitmakers or widely discussed?

xp

"conservative," eat it

well argued

Of the ones I've seen on that list, Chronique d’un été and Cléo de 5 à 7 are probably the two can't-miss ones.

arguing w/ enrique is so "conservative" it's pointless

Some very great filmmakers are conservative, so I don't see the problem.

when the films are mostly about relationships between men and women (truffaut, rohmer) and the filmmakers' attitude towards women is uh 'unreconstructed' then it is a problem.

there's not much exciting going on in their films in other respects, is the other thing; whereas there definitely is with rivette and godard.

i'd say 'ma nuit chez maud', 'le boucher', and '400 blows' are worth seeing, but i've seen most of their 50s/60s ish and wouldn't recommend others to do likewise.

just watched army of shadows. loved some of the aesthetics but didn't really care for the film.

I love Jean Pierre Melville, especially Le Samurai and Le Circle Rouge, but I saw Army of Shadows at the cinema last year and I came out making a bad face. I'm struggling to remember just what I disliked so much about it, but I think it felt like the events and scenes were morally strained, forced rather than natural, rather than the beautiful existential clarity of, say, Le Samurai. Although it is also pleasingly opaque, he concluded lamely.

First time on this thread, so I just want to rep old French films like La Regle du Jeu (vicious and merciless) and pour scorn upon horrid bourgeios crap like I've Loved You So Long (more middle-class crisis pap).