Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie, or, Only the Beginning
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
Category: French Cinema
Dance · French Cinema · Interviews · Music & Musicals
GROVER DALE! An Interview with the Dance Legend
Dancing in the streets of Rochefort was the best performing experience I’ve ever known. Reacting to real sunshine, breezes, cafés, and streets was miraculous. My emotions suddenly became as accessible[…]
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Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
Fathoming the Phantom: On Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty
The question becomes: is it worth trying to be free? Is the struggle fruitless? Why can’t we escape our servitude to the past, to society, to others? * * *[…]
Actors & Personalities · French Cinema
Delphine Seyrig: The Eternal Return
“Seyrig is capable of stopping an entire film with one decisive physical gesture, one smile, one glare, one sound from her smoky, murmuring voice.”
Books · French Cinema · Thrillers & Action
Book Review: Gemma King, Jacques Audiard
Gemma King, Jacques Audiard. Manchester University Press, 2021. * * * In the first book-length exploration of the controversial director’s filmography, part of Manchester University Press’s French Film Directors series,[…]
French Cinema · Literature and Film · Philosophy · Writers & Critics
The Invention of Marienbad: Resnais, Robbe-Grillet, Morel, and Adolfo Bioy Casares on the Left Bank
Tout le film est en effet l’histoire d’une persuasion. (The whole film is the story of a persuasion.) – Alain Robbe-Grillet1 En fait, je pense qu’on a tout à fait[…]
No Control: On Eduardo de Gregorio’s Short Memory (1979)
Within this tightly composed spiral of compounding blackmail, which implicates a high-ranking South American diplomat and resembles the byzantine schemes in Merry-Go-Round, de Gregorio catalogues a litany of sins: lust,[…]
The Big Sigh: Exploring the Lost Continent of Classic French Film Noir 1932-1966
Expanding and redrawing Ginette Vincendeau’s incomplete map of French film noir * * * Let it be said here first: I come to praise Ginette Vincendeau,1 not to bury her.[…]
Essays · French Cinema · Romance
Any Time, Any Place: Plot as Pretext from Renoir to Rohmer
What will become of Camilla? A character who is unsupported by theatrical context must cease to exist; when the curtain falls, the characters are unleashed from aesthetic dimensions. Renoir makes[…]
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