REVIEW: Spring Blossom (2021)
Spring Blossom (2020) is the directorial debut of young Suzanne Lindon and it is sure to have people commenting on whether sexual mores have evolved at all in France. It’s been in the media because it’s so controversial and its director/star is unusually young. That…
REVIEW: Slalom (2021)
Affection or attention can easily be misconstrued as representing love, especially to those who are seemingly lacking these basic fundamentals. This can be seen for Lyz (Noée Abita), a fifteen year old skiing protégé undergoing an intensive training program in the French Alps, far away…
REVIEW: My Donkey, My Lover and I (2021)
The main character named Antoinette (Laure Calamy) is in a conversation with her lover’s wife, who is also the mother of one of her students. She is recounting how she got lost and had to spend her previous night alone in the woods. The other…
REVIEW: Keep An Eye Out (2021)
French Filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, DJ turned director, has made a name for himself in his native France with quirky surrealist films. His film Rubber encapsulated his hard-to-discern style and unorthodox approach to the world of filmmaking. His latest, Keep An Eye Out (released in France…
REVIEW: Simple Passion (2021)
One can’t help but wonder whether Simple Passion is meant to be set in the modern world. It feels like the sort of film that would have been made in America or Britain during the 1970s. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) immediately came to mind as an…
REVIEW: Two of Us (2021)
Time is a fickle beast. Throughout Two of Us, the passage of time is consistently referred to; two young girls counting to 30 while playing hide and seek, a clock heirloom on the mantlepiece, or some gradually burning eggs left waiting on the stove top….
REVIEW: Le Choc du Futur (2020)
Synth music is perhaps now taken for granted, so ingrained is its presence in both contemporary pop music and film scores, spearheaded by the likes of Vangelis and John Carpenter and countless others since. French musician and producer Marc Collin makes his directorial debut with…
REVIEW: Summer of 85 (TIFF 2020)
Falling in love for the first time is a right of passage. There’s no correct way to know it’s happening and no way to prepare — it’s just a part of growing up. Summer of 85, François Ozon’s newest feature, looks at two young men’s…
REVIEW: Savage State (Fantasia 2020)
There’s nothing like the perspective of a cultural outsider to make you see things differently. When Italian director Sergio Leone began making his spaghetti westerns, he breathed new life into a genre that many felt had grown stale. Savage State, made by French director David…
REVIEW: Les Misérables (2020)
Les Miserables is a fervent fury essential for our times. Writer and director Ladj Ly’s feature debut follows Sergeant Ruiz who is assigned to a team of unethical police veterans working the Parisian suburb of Montfermiel. This vital film began life as a Cesar-nominated short, inspired by…
REVIEW: A Mermaid in Paris (Fantasia 2020)
Of all the mythical creatures spread across the world throughout history, the legend of the mermaid is probably one of the most ubiquitous. The mercurial half-fish, half-woman whose intoxicating beauty and hypnotic voice lures sailors to their death – just another example of mythology teaching…
REVIEW: The Truth (2020)
Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda has been working steadily since the early 1990s and is internationally critically-acclaimed. He is a particular favourite of the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 for…
SUNDANCE INTERVIEWS: Cinematographer and Composer of ‘Jumbo’
With one of the most high-concept premises of Sundance 2020, Jumbo is certainly a film that had audiences intrigued and lining up to see what it was all about. The film is directed by Zoe Wittock and stars Noemie Merlant (fresh from the critical success…
