Any French movies to recommend?- Page 2

[ahhrealmonsters]

Posted: 4/9/11 at 1:02am

La Boume

[Aswatrowinkenbo]

Posted: 4/9/11 at 4:25am

A favorite of mine is "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" (À la Folie... Pas du Tout)

It's available for online streaming on Netflix if you have it.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/9/11 at 1:18pm

Ones even French film fans might have missed:

AN AFFAIR OF LOVE...sweet, melancholy, sexy, romantic.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE...genuinely haunting horror film from the late fifties.

IRMA VEP...totally unique Olivier Assayas film about the making of a movie, with Maggie Cheung, totally charming as herself.

TWO ENGLISH GIRLS...One of Truffaut's best, yet few people have seen it. Also: SMALL CHANGE.

FORBIDDEN GAMES...one of the most heart-ripping movies you will ever see. An anti-war classic, seen through the eyes of children. Hailed as a classic when it was first released in the fifties, its gone strangely unheralded since.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/11/11 at 8:49pm

Dans Paris is another great one! Especially Louis Garrel.

[Yawper]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 12:10am

Ponette
The Two of Us (Le Vieil Homme et L'enfant)

Don't limit yourself to French films if you're looking for a change from Hollywood/American fluff.

Christ Stopped at Eboli
Cinema Paradiso
Stalingrad
City of God (Cidade De Deus)
Babette's Feast
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Smiles of a Summer Night (this is the basis for A Little Night Music)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 12:28am

Yeah, thanks...Spanish language movies are next on my quest! The Broadway version of Women On The Verge makes me want to see the original... Pedro Almodovar, here I come.

[musical_ash_09]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 12:42pm

8 Women (Huit Femmes)
Seducing Dr. Lewis
The Last Metro
Cyrano De Bergerac (Depardieu)
Amelie

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 1/27/12 at 12:08am

By now, I've ticked quite a few of these off my list (thanks!) - but seeing as nobody mentioned it, I just wanted to say that THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED is so worth watching.

[picturetaker9211]

Posted: 1/27/12 at 12:18am

Les Choristes is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's probably doesn't have that kind of distinct French-ness to it that people see in other French films. Clearly I'm having a hard time explaining it. Regardless, I just love it. The music is gorgeous, which is a plus!

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 1/27/12 at 12:20am

Jaques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Rochefort were already recommended, but his third musical with Legrand and Deneuve, Peau D'Ane (Donkey Skin) is absolutely charming--and weird. It's a Perrault fairy tale musical but also a homage to Cocteau (including some casting) with a gorgeous score and weird adult moments--and a few stars from the earlier musicals besides just Deneuve. Une Chambre en Ville his 80s musical (that Legrand was meant to do the score for but found the sex and violence too graphic) is hard to find in English but worth it.

Some good recent (gay themed) Quebecois cinema too, besides the earlier Lilies which is pretty well known, are C.R.A.Z.Y. (which Weinstein is making an English remake of but I don't see how that will work) as well as current Quebecois "it" boy Xaviar Dolon's two films J'ai Tue(accent egue) ma mere (I killed my mother) and Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats).

I'm also a huge fan of everything Francois Ozon does - though aside from the already mentioned, campy Sirkian Deneuve musical 8 Femmes, his earlier works (and short films) are the best. He's probably best known here for his English film Swimming Pool. Potiche was also mentioned which I found one of his weaker films, but it's worth watching. But See the Sea, Sitcom, the homoerotic mix of Natural Born Killers and fairy tales Criminal lovers, Water Drops on Burning Rocks and Under the Sand are all masterpieces. the short films Le petit Mort and A Summer Dress are also worthwhile. I'd avoid Ricky, and, while interesting, save his big English costume drama Angel for last if you find you're really a fan.

[canmark]

Posted: 1/29/12 at 10:07am

A couple of other French-Canadian films worth mentioning:

Les invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2003. Trailer (try to ignore the horrible voiceover): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH6v62yp29Q

Starbuck, a comedy about an irresponsible, but irrepressible 42 year old man who discovers he has fathered (via sperm donations he had made many years ago) 533 children. Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jkBPYPiWTw

[AC126748]

Posted: 1/29/12 at 10:14am

The Barbarian Invasions is a perfect film as far as I'm concerned--I really love it. I'd recommend anyone who watches it also watch its "companion" film, The Decline of the American Empire, as well as Arcand's excellent Jesus of Montreal. He's probably the best Canadian filmmaker alive.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/29/12 at 10:33am

Just a slight correction from the above recommendation. "Babette's Feast" is actually a Danish film, not French. I highly recommend it, though. One of my favorite foreign language films of all-time.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/29/12 at 2:21pm

M. Hulot's Holiday
Mon Oncle
Playtime
The Illusionist (Jacques Tati's unproduced script becomes a tribute to him in animated form, I would recommend watching this last to appreciate it. By the same people who gave us Triplets of Belleville).

A Christmas Tale (A more recent Deneuve film, probably more for the holiday season)

Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le Fou, and Vivre Se Vie by Godard
-If you think getting a Deneuve kick was bad wait until you see Anna Karina

Films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Le Havre is a recent one that I quite liked

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 1/29/12 at 11:05pm

Age of Darkness by Arcand is the third film in his loose trilogy with Decline and Barbarian and worth checking out if you liked those. I think he CAN be a brilliant director but has a number of misfires (stay away from Stardom, although I do like his English film adaptation of Canadian gay playwright Brad Fraser's Love and Human Remains a lot though it seems to divide fans).

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 1:32am

Marcel Carne - Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
Raymond Bernard - Les MIserables (by far the best film version of Hugo's novel)
Agnes Jaoue - Look At Me
Claude Chabrol - La Ceremonie, Story of Women
Francois Truffaut - The Story of Adele H., Jules and Jim, etc., etc.
Francois Ozon - Under the Sand, Swimming Pool, Eight Women
Jean Renoir - The Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion
Fritz Lang - Liliom
Henri-Georges Clouzot - Diabolique
Luis Bunuel - Belle de Jour
Alain Resnais - Night and Fog, Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Max Ophuls - The Earrings of Madame de...

[dented146]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 1:56am

Not much has been left out. But if you are interested in a couple of very funny films I'd suggest Tatie Danielle a dark comedy about a very elderly bitch and La Chevre a classic which was remade in the US, but not nearly as well, with Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardu.

Updated On: 1/30/12 at 01:56 AM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 3:15am

Tatie Danielle! I'd forgotten all about that. Being in French Immersion it was a movie we got to watch as a treat at school when I was 8 or 9--I think we were delightfully shocked about the graphic humour (which I can't imagine our teacher knew about in advance...).

Another one that probably was mentioned that we watched in school, and traumatised me (in a good way) was Malle's pretty gut wrenching Au Revoir Les Enfants.

And one I forgot somehow, but a favorite film is André Téchiné's Roseaux Sauvages (Wild Reeds), which should be easy to find in the US as it was a big 90s art house hit. Set during the end of the Algerian war in France I guess it can be desccribed as a coming of age film four three boys and one girl, dealing with their sexuality, friendship, etc. It's a pretty much perfect film with great performances (though I admit it probably meant particularly a lot to me when I first saw it dealing with my own issues of sexuality).

[LaurenB]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 3:30am

Not sure if anyone mentioned the trilogy by Kieslowski - Three Colors: Red, White, and Blue.

I have to wholeheartedly second A Man and a Woman - make sure to get the original French version. The dubbed version is horrendous.

Also, not sure if anyone mentioned La nuit de Varennes

[AC126748]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 7:49am

I went through this thread and realized that no one has mentioned Agnes Varda, the widow of Jacques Demy and probably the most visible female director of the Nouvelle Vague. She's had a long and productive career and is still making films today, in her early eighties. Some of her best films:

CLEO FROM 5 TO 7
SAN TOIT NI LOI (English title: VAGABOND)
THE GLEANERS AND I
THE BEACHES OF AGNES

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 9:11am

Being a bit Demy obsessed and having sat through even some of his more... difficult movies, I really need to see more Varda. I've seen and love Cleo, and otherwise think I've only seen her documentary on her husband (which is great but "conveniently" leaves out the fact he was gay and the truth of their relationship though I suppose that's fair enough, at the time she was just upset that his films were falling out of vogue and understandably wanted more attention on them--I'm still surprised how few are available here).

[AC126748]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 10:16am

If you haven't seen The Beaches of Agnes, do. She speaks rather candidly about their marriage and his death from AIDS. (I think it would be more accurate to describe him as bisexual)

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 3:20pm

The only thing I remember about The Barbarian Invasions was being extremely bored. I want to say that there was a juggernaut film that year that seemed a shoo-in for the Oscar that somehow didn't even get nominated, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was. To me, it was one of those WTF wins like Burnt By the Sun, The Lives of Others, Mondays in the Sun and The Secret in Their Eyes. I may have liked the films, but I was stunned by their wins.

I tried numerous times to watch Water Drops on Burning Rocks and could never get through it. Probably for the same reasons I can't get through anything by Neil LaBute. Just not my thing.

[AC126748]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 3:30pm

There were several notable foreign films from 2003 that were not nominated, including Afghanistan's OSAMA (which won the Golden Globe), Germany's excellent TAG LENIN!, and a haunting but little-seen Russian film called THE RETURN. All of these films were their country's nominees but didn't make the short list. In my personal opinion, THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS bests all of them, except perhaps THE RETURN, which I need to rewatch. (I remember being extremely shaken after seeing it in the theatre). I believe it was also the clear favorite going in, with a lot of support behind it (it also received a Screenplay nomination).

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/30/12 at 4:24pm

Osama may be the film I'm thinking of. I never saw Goodbye Lenin (I assume that's the film you're referring) or The Return (just added it to my Netflix queue). Perhaps I'll revisit Barbarian Invasions. I just remember watching it and not seeing anything extraordinary. Same thing with The Lives of Others, though its win actually pissed me off. Gah!