Jacques Audiard's dishevelled remake of Fingers improves on James Toback's all-thumbs rendition. Not hard to do. The unglittering star, Romain Duris, is ugly-handsome in the Belmondo mold, his teeth barely fitting into his mouth; and he manages to make the protagonist — a man torn between a life of petty …
Wealthy French lawyer Paul Exben (Romain Duris) wanted to be a photographer, but instead wound up an overworked, almost frenetic career man, pouring money into his family and telling himself that everything is okay. But of course, everything is not okay: his wife feels stifled in her role as suburban …
An underground subway system was all architect Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) proposed for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. Stepping into the light, he designed a metal tower 300 meters high, to be built where everyone can see it. What could have been a towering bore offers up a CG …
Tony Gatlif, the maker of the musical documentary Latcho Drom, pursues the subject of gypsies into the world of fiction, in the company of an extrovert Frenchman who treks to Romania in search of a legendary folk singer named Nora Luca. The quest and the movie soon stagnate in a …
Commercial French comedy ideal for a Hollywood remake. A professional breaker-upper, with strict principles, takes only cases of unknowingly unhappy women and never stoops to sexual relations to liberate them. The focal case is atypical: the woman by all measures seems happily engaged, and her rich handsome devoted fiancé is …
A French economics student goes to study for a year in Barcelona, shares an apartment with six other nationalities (a "Euro Pudding"), has plenty of spare time for tourism and amour. Cedric Klapisch communicates something of the richness of the experience, no thanks to the manic gimmickry of his direction. …
Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) directs this fantasy romance in which a man attempts to find a cure for his lover's illness. With Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou.
For those unfamiliar with the appealingly dark acts of perversity François Ozon (Swimming Pool) has previously taken delight in putting audiences through, this is probably as subdued (though not entirely safe) a point of entry as any. Ozon had me with the virtuosity of his opening nine-minute encapsulation of a …
Multiple storylines encircle many facets of the French capital. The city looks splendid; the not very compelling characters (the brink-of-death Romain Duris excepted) keep getting in the way. Several liberating bits of dance, strictly gratuitous. With Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, François Cluzet, and Mélanie Laurent; directed by Cédric …