Suggest some very good French movies.

Cafe Society
1

Was a French Lit major in college. (No money in it, so I ended up going to night school in A/C Refrigeration and that’s how I made a living.)

Anyway I still remember a lot of French. The problem is I was a Lit major, so mostly I just read French, and my reading ability in French is much better than my aural or my spoken French.

I can understand spoken French if is spoken slowly and without a lot of slang. Problem I have had on my rare visits to France is that i have a hard time understanding what is spoken fast…Parisians are the worst. Talk as fast as New Yorkers.

Would like to improve on that by watching French movies from Netflix. Problem is most French movies are boring as hell…at least for an American.

So name me some outstanding French movies, movies that will blow my socks off…

S’il vous plait.

2

Off the top of my head:

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring (basically, two parts of one story).

The Wages of Fear (although you might find the ending a bit too over the top).

3

Well yes, you’ll find most French films boring. They are very much into the more intellectual, philosophical films with little action and a lot of thinking. If that’s not your cup of tea, you’ll be missing out on many good French movies. But anyway, here is a short list of the ones I have seen:

-Amelie: a must-watch. Truly beautiful film; it’s very hard to describe the plot but I haven’t met anyone who didn’t like it.

-L’Illusionniste (the Illusionist): a short animated film. It is French and it is a great film, BUT there is no dialogue, and it is set in Scotland. So you won’t learn much about France or its language.

-Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly): I actually discovered this one on Netflix. It’s about the former editor of Elle magazine who suffered from lock-in syndrome. His brain functioned perfectly but all of his body - apart from his eyes - was paralized. I loved it, but once again it’s a very intellectual, action-less film. Very experimental too.

-La Haine: A classic from the 1990s, it deals with the situation in the French banlieues, full of immigrants and devoid of economic development. Despite the depressive environment, it’s quite entertaining.

-Les invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions): This one is not French, but Canadian. But the language is French. It’s a sequel to a previous film, but can be watched on its own. I thought it was a fantastic film about the issue of mortality, and even I could understand the beautiful Quebecois French.

-Entre les Murs (The Class): set in a French public school, also full of immigrants and plagued by all sorts of problems. It focuses on one teacher and his relationship with one class; I found the interplay of all the different characters to be excellent. However, don’t expect understandable French - these are teenagers spouting slang word after slang word.

OK, that is all I have for you. Enjoy!

4

If you like thrillers the French do them very well.
Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One)

Monsieur Hire

Caché (Hidden)

and

De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)

are all pretty good.

And they’ve made plenty of good action movies.

La Femme Nikita

Dobermann has great car chases
Le pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf) is a pretty good weird werewolf movie.

5

Luis Bunuel, a Spaniard, made lots of great movies in French, like The Phantom of Liberty, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Belle de Jour.

Less art-snobby are some wonderful animated films, like Fantastic Planet and The Triplets of Belleville. La Femme Nikita was a kick-ass action film that only got art-snobby at the very end.

6

I’d say it was a witty French take on the conventions of the American superhero/action hero genre, right down to the faithful Indian companion.

7

There’s been some good French prison/gangster films recently.Un Prophète (A Prophet) is one, and the two parts of Mesrineare another. Both are far from boring, and compare favourably to American films in the same genre.

Something completely different I saw recently was Dans La Maison (In The House), which is a somewhat arty comedy, and very French, if than makes sense. Pretty entertaining though, and rather though-provoking.

8

I always loved The Return of Martin Guerre (Le Retour de Martin Guerre). I don’t think it’s available on Netflix, though, which is odd.

9

While you wait for Netflix to get its act together with the film I just mentioned, do enjoy The Hole (Le Trou), a gripping 1960 prison escape film (which also shows how the French know how to eat well and look cool even in a jail cell…at least they did back in 1960!).

10

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis is very funny, though you’ll need subtitles to understand some of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais accents.

I liked La bûche too, about a somewhat dysfunctional family at Christmas.

And there’s nothing to beat Jacques Tati’s movies, though they don’t have a lot of dialogue.

For less serious comedies, you could watch some of the Asterix movies: I’ve seen Astérix & Obélix contre César and Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre, but there are two later ones that I’d like to see.

11

If you are feeling a bit snobby, go for some Godard. My favorites are À bout de souffle and Bande à part. If you find them boring, you can just forget about the plots and just stare at Jean Seberg and Anna Karina, respectively.

Also, no one should miss out on Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy (although the middle one is mainly in Polish, the first and third are in French). Again, if you’re bored, just zonk out and stare at Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy and Irène Jacob.

12

Jésus de Montréal is an outstanding film.

Le déclin de l’empire américain is another great film by the same director, Denys Arcand. It is the film to which 'Les Invasions Barbares is a sequel.

Le Confessional is a wonderful, convoluted story that is partly an hommage to Hitchcock, and partly Robert LePage’s interesting view of present day Québec.

Speaking of which, Les Boys is a great romp through the adventures of a Québec amateur hockey team.

13

These are three of my favorite French directors. Melville and Malle are all time greats, and Assayas is current. Watch all of these guys’ films. :

Other movies:
Tomboy (2011)
Time Out (2001)
Enter The Void (2009)
L’Enfance Nue (1968)

All that should get you started! That list doesn’t include a lot of the bigger names (Resnais, Renoir, Tati, Godard, etc) on purpose. After the US, I believe the French have the largest collection of great films. Some could argue more.

14

I’m a fan of the more dark, fantastic, or absurdist stuff, so I’d suggest Man Bites Dog, City of Lost Children, and Delicatessen. “Man Bites Dog” is simply one of my favorite movies: to sum it up, it’s a mockumentary of a serial killer; think Spinal Tap meets American Psycho.

15

And I would absolutely second this. The order is Blue, White, and then Red. Just try out Blue to see if it speaks to you. But if you go on, I would continue seeing them in order, even though White is mainly in Polish (though there is some French in it.)

16

Wow. Fast response. Too many to write down. Will just print this out.

Merci.

17

I really like many of these suggestions - I will add two:

  • Ridicule - set in the time of the Sun King, I believe, it shows how over-the-top French society was and how one man who is trying to do good for his town and comes to Paris for governmental support has to deal with all the soap-opera silliness that was a fact of the ruling class.

  • Henri, le chat noir (mobile link): Henri - YouTube c’est magnifique! :wink:

18

If you watch Amélie and find yourself having the hots for Audrey Tautou and/or Jean-Pierre Jeunet, I’ll also recommend A Very Long Engagement.

19

“Elisa” with Vanessa Paradis and Gerard Dépardieu.
“Noce Blanch” whith Vanessa Paradis.
“La Fille Sur Le Pont” Vanessa Paradis & Daniel Auteuil.

“Nathalie” - Fanny Ardent, Emmanuelle Béart, Gerard Depardieu.

From the same source as “Three Colours”:
The “Heaven”, “Hell” and “Purgatory” trilogy.
“Heaven” is actually in Italian (Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi). “Hell” is in French (Emmanuelle Béart, Marie Gillian)
“Purgatory” - unfortunately there only appear to be some Polish ‘bootleg’ copies as it was never finished due to the death of Krystof Kieslowski.

“Jacquou Le Croquant” with no-one you ever heard of - intentionally, although Gaspard Ulliel supposedly recieved some wider recognition later and Bojana Panic is well known in modelling circles.
“Giorgino” with Jeff Dahlgre, Mylène Farmer, Joss Ackland. Made by Laurent Buttonat, as is the previous one.
He made his name along with MylèneFarmer for producing the most amazing music videos toaccompany Mylène’s songs, for which he also writes most of the music.
All available on YouTube.
Try Sans Logiqe

And to second the suggestion of “Jean De Florette & Manon Des Sources”. Excellent films both.
La Femme Nikita was very much better than I expected too. Incomparable to the American series.

20

There are also some excellent French silent films now available–not that they’ll help you improve on spoken French, but they can help refresh your mind on the written variety. Flicker Alley has just released a collection of five from the Albatros company:
http://www.flickeralley.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=107&Itemid=56

As for talkies, there are of course the René Clair musicals–Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million, À Nous la Liberté. Also Marcel Pagnol’s Fanny trilogy–Marius, Fanny, César. And La grande illusion.