Smart2Nesmith43 wrote:sam_I_am wrote:SuperDeluxe wrote:I'm still on a French movie kick. My latest two "finds" are "L'enfer" (known in English both as "Torment" and "Hell") from 1994, and "La belle Époque" (2019). About that last one, a viewer wrote on Letterboxd, "The kind of film that turns up out of nowhere and completely affirms every positive belief I've ever held about cinema." Spot on.
First-class acting and directing (both movies).
Have you watched the show Lupin? It’s one of my favorite foreign TV series and French.
The young beautiful actress from the Swimming Pool is in it. She and the director of the Swimming Pool made another movie together called 8 Women which I remember liking a lot. It’s kind of like Knives Out or Clue where everyone in a house is a murder suspect. Neither is great IMO but we’re critically acclaimed at the time.
Lupin is only like 15 episodes so it's not that much of a time commitment compared to other series and it avoids the faults of a lot of (mainly US) series that go on and on long after they have ran out of ideas just to milk the audience. If you have any interest in heist movies/series, it's definitely a fun watch. Though, if you only have time to watch one Omar Sy project I would recommend Intouchables. Certainly the french movie from the 21st century I enjoyed the most.
Hopefully you can fit La grande illusion into your French movie kick. It is hands down the best French movie ever made.
I'm not sure how accessible it is outside of France because it took decades to reconstitute the entire movie after the Nazis tried to wipe it out of existence and by that point a black and white film about POWs during WW1 who speak a combination of French, English and German was never going to appeal to a mass audience but if you can find a way to watch it, I promise it will be worth it.
Just added "La grande illusion" (available here in Canada on Kanopy). And yes, "Intouchables" is a cool movie (I watched it about 10 years ago, but it's on my watchlist again). Thanks!
