Smart Words About Cinema
Do the French make jokes about “French movies?” Roll their eyes at yet another film about young people chatting their way through a procession of cafés and love affairs? I hope not, because there are those of us who pray the “French movie” will never wane, that the garrulous spirit of Masculin-Feminin and The Mother [...]
Vivre Sa Vie (Criterion) Jean-Luc Godard’s fourth film marked a significant new direction for young turk director, away from the impassioned sketchiness of his furiously directed first films and into the realm of carefully composed scenes and formal visual strategies. Developed to showcase his wife and muse Anna Karina (they were on the verge of [...]
The complications and tricky negotiations of family, as siblings grow up and leave to establish their own lives and their own families, was a central theme of numerous films at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Two of the best films from that festival, Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours (L’heure d’ete) and Hirozaku Kore-Eda’s Still Walking, [...]