Ciné Lumière

A Room and a Half

Alphaville

One of Godard's most sheerly enjoyable movies, a dazzling amalgam of film noir and science fiction in which tough gumshoe Lemmy Caution turns inter-galactic agent to re-enact...

Ander

‘BrokeBasque Mountain’, anyone? Though truthfully, this rustic romance from Spain's northern fringes owes a lot more to quiet American indies like ‘The Station Agent’ than to Ang Lee’s...

As God Commands

Bellamy

Expecting a comedy about a third-wheel almost-hero learning to cope with Cary Grant's barbs? Think again, Ralph fans. This Bellamy is a police commissioner, and he's played by Gérard Depardieu....

Hadewijch

Like its predecessor 'Flanders', this is watchable enough and an improvement on the wretched 'L’Humanité', but it still feels bogus in its Bressonian aspirations and mechanical in its...

Leaving

Like a trashy Mills & Boon page-turner tastefully tucked inside the dust jacket of an edgy, cerebral thriller, this cautionary family break-up drama tells us why it's perhaps advisable for...

Lola Montès

A biography of the celebrated 19th century adventuress, but not a biography in the conventional sense: the lady's life is chronicled in a highly selective series of flashbacks, framed by scenes in...

Mascarades

Mon Oncle

Tati's first film in colour. Yes, his contrast of the glorious awfulness of the Arpels' automated Modernistic house with Hulot's disordered Bohemianism is simplistic. Yes, Hulot as champion of...

My Greatest Escape

If you have ever wondered about the impact of 17 years in high-security solitary confinement then Frenchman Michel Vaujour is your man. This film, a document of this lengthy period of suffering, is...

Séraphine

Martin Provost, director of the biographical Séraphine, has little use for pretty pictures....

The First Day of the Rest Of Your Life

The classic French family drama gets a modern reboot in this unstoppably entertaining saga of life, love, death, pop music and an ongoing battle to cut down on the ciggies. Director Rémi...

The French Kissers

The Last Days of Emma Blank

The country house as a hermetic stage-set for class-based satirical jibes may have fallen out of favour since 'The Party and the Guests' and 'La Grande Bouffe', but Dutch director Van Warmerdam is...

The Portuguese Nun

Grand things have been claimed for Green’s admittedly (and appropriately) odd foray into Portuguese culture, but it must said it’s an uneven affair: elegant, witty, perky, but also sometimes...

The Sea Wall

This stuffy, snail-paced period yarn from Cambodian-born, French-based writer-director Rithy Panh (‘S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing...

Villa Amalia

Jacquot’s fifth collaboration with Huppert begins almost in noir thriller mode – her nighttime drive to check out marital infidelity – and for the fillm’s first half, it at least sustains a...