Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-4 of 4
- Three years after simultaneously parting with a philanderer husband and experiencing a dramatic fall during a horse jumping contest, Alexandra Balzan (Mathilde Seigner), a Parisian architect, regains an appetite for life and love after a chance encounter with an aging misanthrope of a master horseman (Sami Frey) and his horse, in a dilapidated and deserted riding school near Beauvais. Miguel (Jean-François Pignon), the only lad to have stayed in the riding school out of faithfulness to the master and his values, is at the same time a stuntman for movies, and suffers from the disregard of film crews for the risks he has to take. Those three, in spite of their life-inflicted wounds, are legatees of an ancient equestrian science and know-how inherited from generations of master horsemen. The movie is about how the three make use of this science and know-how to redress the training of a magnificent horse, a training which has been sabotaged by a previous ignorant and careless owner. The success of this common endeavor brings back self-esteem to this woman and two men, but the movie makes clear that their scars are not healed and their difficulties in life are not ended. But - quite simply - they have lived together a period of equestrian fulfillment.
- This film is a labor of love, delicious to watch and full of tenderness for General de Gaulle as a person. Made for TV, (two episodes 1 hour 3/4 each), it retraces some of the most salient events in the General's life, from the start of WW II up to his assuming power in 1959, events which are evoked through family conversations or meetings with his close companions, i.e. his supporters through his political career. There are also actual newsreels from these events. But the standpoint of the film is not primarily historical - a knowledge of the period's history being almost a prerequisite to fully understand the film's niceties -; the standpoint is mostly personal: an effort to recreate what it felt to live close to this great man. There are frequent flashbacks to de Gaulle's role during WW II, his dealings with Reynaud, Churchill, Roosevelt (and Gen. Giraud - his onetime American-backed rival). The second part of the film describes, no less interestingly, his life through the IVth Republic. Born in 1944, having lived in France through the post-war political turmoils and the Algerian "events", also most interested in the history of WW II, I have found this film very credible. The dialogues in French (or broken French in the case of Churchill), delivered by excellent actors, literally recreate the "look and feel" of those times. The film is such that the dialogues can be savoured primarily by fluent French speakers. I do not know of the version in English - which may nevertheless be of interest to those seeking a French viewpoint on de Gaulle's life. __ .
- He is a sales rep. She is a secretary. They live in the suburbs but she works in Paris. They don't see much of each other and spend much of their time in commuter trains. They try desperately to change job locations to be more often together, but... The plot is not the important thing in the film ; what makes it emblematic of the early and mid-seventies is the insouciant atmosphere. The '74 oil crisis had not yet morphed into a recession, and life was good - even though it was as hard as ever to find a home near one's workplace (or the reverse) ! Marthe Keller and Jacques Higelin are both excellent. The movie is not an all-time great, but it captures the "zeitgeist" of French life in the Seventies. _.
- The title "Fiesta" is that chosen by Villalonga for his book, which this film closely follows; but it is a deliberate misnomer: "Fiesta" is about civil war and its horrors. An aristocrat landowner wants his 18 year old son, Rafaël, to do his duty in the Spanish civil war of the late '30's. So he fishes him out of college and - to avoid his son being killed out of inexperience or, worse for an aristocrat, being cowed at the first sight of bloodshed - he sends him to an old comrade-in-arms of his, Coronel Masagual. To toughen Rafaël, the Coronel assigns him to the firing squad which, after a summary judgement from a Military Court, executes Republicans caught arms in hand. Rafaël unflinchingly does his duty, but his sense of honor makes him balk at the other 'dirty war methods' of the Coronel, such as using a young girl as bait to lure her father, the local Republican commander, into a trap. _.