Tag Archives: New Wave
Les Biches (The Does)
Claude Chabrol’s take on sexual ambiguity in 1968 is mischievous. Stéphane Audran plays the resplendent Frédérique, nouvelle vague’s colonialist of female lust and control. She’s the wealthy dominatrix who wants power over those she desires, and she pursues them with … Continue reading
Festival du Film Francophone d’Angoulême 2017
The Film Francophone d’Angoulême represents everything I love about French cinema. A cinema which focuses on characters unafraid of their reactions, and endings determined by their emotional truth, rather than a neat moral tidy-up. French cinema is considered by some to … Continue reading
Le Boucher (The Butcher)
A disturbed butcher falling for a small-town schoolteacher forms the blood and bones of Claude Chabrol’s classic 1970 thriller. Set in the heart of the Dordogne close to one of the region’s prehistoric caves, Popaul (Jean Yanne) is a needy … Continue reading
Les Biches (The Does)
Claude Chabrol’s take on sexual ambiguity in 1968 is mischievous. Stéphane Audran plays the resplendent Frédérique, nouvelle vague’s colonialist of female lust and control. She’s the wealthy dominatrix who wants power over those she desires, and she pursues them with … Continue reading
Les Amants (The Lovers)
Louis Malle turns the table on femininity and ennui by placing Jeanne (Jeanne Moreau), a bourgeois late-fifties housewife, at the centre of a masterful triad of Polo, the driving car and a soundtrack by Brahms. They narrate her journey from … Continue reading
Pauline à la Plage (Pauline at the Beach)
Summertime fascination, Eric Rohmer-style, is a gentle flirtatious breeze, one that carries early-eighties sexuality and casual connections on the shore of a wild-Atlantic heart. Third in the ‘Comedies and Proverbes’ series, Pauline à la Plage follows fifteen-year old Pauline (Amanda … Continue reading
