Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu | The Rules of the Game (1939)

The beginning of La Règle du jeu shows a quotation from Beaumarchais's Le Mariage de Figaro, and although this play is undoubtedly an influence, Alfred de Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne (1833) is more so. The film was made a very short time before World War II and its depiction of an animal (particularly rabbit) cull as sport is a prediction, or a cinematic metaphor of, the atrocities to come, as are the dancing corpses in La Fête de la Colinière (Robert's country retreat in Sologne), and Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre played on the Pianola belonging to Robert, Marquis de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio).

Robert is the husband of Christine (Nora Gregor), who is also loved by André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) and Octave (Jean Renoir), who is also an old friend of André: obviously, Robert is unable to control humans, so he delights in clockwork treasures not only such as his Pianola, but also his mechanical fauvette (warbler), and – la pièce de résistance – his orchestrion.

This remarkable film (without the necessity to repeat what others have said so many times) concerns love (or lust), class differences,  the multidude of lies told by every conceivable source, the ability of rulers not only to triumph but to triumph over their triumphs. There is no hope, we just continue.

Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern's Aaltra (2004)

Aaltra is the opposite of a buddie movie because the protagonists hate each other. Furthermore, it's a very different road movie because it's played out in wheelchairs. It was the directors' first feature, and has become something of a cult film.

Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern play the unnamed characters in this film: they are neighbours, and Delépine can't stand his agricultural worker opposite, and when he motors over to his combined harvester for an argument, they both end up under the machine and lose their legs. They decide to make a spurious complaint to the head of the agricultural firm, which is the Finnish Aaltra company.

And so, saying very little to each other, they embark on a journey from Belgium to Finland, most of the time hitching a lift in their wheelchairs. They experience a little discrimination, such as a lorry driver stopping for them, then pulling off at the last moment and calling them 'enculés' ('fuckers'), but the novelty here is that these two handicapped individuals don't at all come across sympathetically, quite the reverse: they mug people as they're begging, steal an electric wheelchair, and treat a welcoming family as their servants, for instance.

But the twist comes when they eventually reach Aaltra, where they are expecting a huge compensation for their injuries: it is a very modest factory where only the handicapped are employed, and the cherry on the cake comes when the boss (in reality the Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki), in his wheelchair, takes them aside for a drink of vodka and gets them to agree to work in the factory. A great beginning for the directors.

Alain Resnais's Nuit et brouillard | Night and Fog (1955)

Nuit et brouillard comes from the German name given to the deportees to the concentration camps, NN (Nacht und Nebel), the oblivion of night and fog. The screenplay of this short is by Jean Cayrol, who survived Mauthausen, and the footage is black and white archival, and (then) presentday colour of the remains of the Holocaust. In a sense, it's a forerunner to Claude Lanzmann's monumental nine-hour Shoah (1985), which is largely a great number of accounts of people's experiences of the Holocaust, without archival footage. Arguably, Resnais's film is more harrowing as it shows the starving Jews, the murdered Jews kicked into pits, the use of dead Jews' hair to make mats, of their skin to make a kind of paper to draw on, of their bodies to make soap, and on and on. Along with Lanzmann's film, this should be compulsory viewing, so that we never forget the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, so that such obscenities never happen again.

Raphaël Balboni and Ann Sirot's Une vie démente | Madly in Life (2021)

Under the circumstances, in many respects this is a strangely amusing film. Noémie (Lucie Debay) and her husband Alex (Jean Le Peltier) have decided to have a child, and are obviously anxious to ensure that all goes well. However, the odd behaviour of Alex's mother Suzanne (Jo Desure) will put the event on hold for a while, and cause a large amount of trouble, pain and general frustration for them.

The first thing Noémie and Alex notice is that when Suzanne comes to visit them she parks in the space allocated to the handicapped: nothing much to cause a fuss about there. Then when they're preparing a family meal in the kitchen and Alex asks his mother to pass the colander she ignores him: again, there doesn't seem to be any great cause for concern. But then when Alex notes that his mother, quite casually, steals a cigarette lighter from a shop, things begin to get worrying. Next, Suzanne has trouble with her credit cards when a terminal in another shop registers that she has no funds, which she 'knows' to be untrue. It's only when Alex sees what a mess she's making of her accounts, and – much more seriously – that she falsely declared herself retired two years before, although she's been working and collecting a five-figure sum under false pretences, that Alex realises that she has a real problem.

The diagnosis is the onset of Alzheimer's, and when Alex sees that she's switched off her fridge and left rotting food in it, he recognises that she'll have a home help. After a few interviews, this is found in the shape of the very knowledgeable and affable Kevin (Gills Remiche).

Meanwhile, any movement on the baby front has to be postponed, in fact left to vegetate: we see Alex and Noémie in bed with computer and a book, both with the same green, floral patern which matches the sheets, pillows, curtains, lampshade, etc. It is, of course, an image of madness, but it can only get worse because Suzanne's illness is degenerative.

In addition to this problem, Suzanne is hyperactive, makes a great deal of noise, at one point enters a stranger's house and begins having a meal at the kitchen table until she's discovered by the nonplussed occupants, so Kevin has to work hard to keep her under a kind of house arrest without actually making a prisoner of her.

Anti-psychotic drugs have the effect of turning her into a cabbage until the dosage is reduced and she regains some semblance of normality. And we finally see her in a role reversal: as she sits at a table on the lawn next to her son's baby, Noémie feeds it while Alex feeds his mother. Crazy this film certainly is, although this tragi-comedy strikes a healthy balance by treating a serious terminal illness in a mature way.

Élie Wajeman's Médecin de nuit | Night Doctor (2021)

Vincent Macaigne was over forty when he had to lose 25 kilos and pass his driving test before he could take the lead role as night doctor Mickaël is this film, which he describes as a kind of homage to the New Hollywood films of the 1970s.

Mickaël's partner is Sacha (Sarah Le Picard) and they have two children in Paris, although he is also having an affair with Sofia (Sara Giraudeau), the 'fiancé' of his cousin Dimitri (Pio Marmaï), who's a pharmacist. And Dimitri relies on Mickaël to keep the pharmacy in good financial order, because Mickaël deals in the rather shady business of supplying Subutex to the many drug addicts who flock around increasingly as word gets around. But Mickaël had integrity, and in spite of his knowledge that much of this stuff ends up on the black market at hugely inflated prices, he won't in any way prescribe Fentanyl: he knows how many deaths the drug has caused, and won't listen to Dimitri or any of the addicts who ask for it.

Add to his problems he's being threatened by the medical establishment with an investigation and he wants out, he wants to get away from the addicts, maybe escape with Sofia? She'd be willing, although she knows he won't do it: he's too attached to Sacha and his family in general. As the addicts become more demanding the violence escalates, and much of it is coming from Mickaël's side: and as Dimitri increases the pressure for him to prescribe Fentanyl and tells lies about his situation, how much Mickaël and his family's life are in danger if he doesn't step up the prescriptions, Mickaël realises that he now has to carry a gun in the car.

And although Mickaël only uses the gun once as a threat, it's already too late and the doctor is the one who needs an ambulance, but it looks as if that will come too late as well.

Diane Kurys's Après l'amour (1992)

If we take – and there's no reason why we shouldn't – Jean Eustache's La Maman et la putain (1973) as marking in cinema the end of the sixties, the end of the soixante-huitard mentality, in which sexual experimentation is staunchly called to question, then the title of Diane Kurys's Après l'amour fits into place, even if the only (incidental?) mention of the actual title 'après l'amour' applies to a whollly different period, to Pompeii.

Après l'amour was shot over twenty years after '68, more than twenty years after the sexual revolution, but what we have here is not the defeat of that revolution – paradoxically, far, far from it – but the continuation of the sexual revolution, a sexual revolution that never in fact died but florished under a very different ideology: a consumerist one: the world we witness in this film is very bourgeois, apart from the, er, romantic night in the run-down Eden (!) Hotel.

The film is in the present time, and was released in 1992. Gone are the revolutionary political posturings, but entrenched in the new ideology is an extension of the sexual mores of 1968: with mixed behaviour in terms of the male-female divide, where feminist attitudes appear to have eroded, become very confused. Lola (Isabelle Huppert) is the one who has ridden the wave, become her own self, is now financially and psychologically independent, or so it seems. But she's in relationships with two married men: architect David (Bernard Giraudeau) and (the unconvincing) rock musician Tim (Hyppolyte Girardot), whose wives are Marianne (Lio) and Elizabeth (Laure Killing) respectively, and both have children. Being a 'free spirit', Lola has no wish for children.

One problem with being free, of course, is that you are never free, and Lola's main problem, perhaps, is that as a novelist her emotional situation makes it impossible for her to write her next book: the white page predominates as the screwed-up pieces of paper accumulate around her.

So we are living in the aftermath, the heritage, of the sexual revolution, where now everyone is free to have who they like sexually, free to do as they please in theory, although there are two major problems: women haven't evolved equally, many of them are still tied financially to men, many of them don't accept the supposed new standards set over twenty years ago, but more importantly surely: men haven't evolved, they've always wanted double standards throughout history, and even especially now that, er, women are free. Of course, that's not saying anything about where children stand in this confusion, this whole shit, and oh, Lola's pregnant now and wants to keep it? This is evolution? To what?

Alain Resnais's On connaît la chanson | Same Old Song (1997)

This is a monster film for Alain Resnais, even if it's not his best: but then what could be this hugely important director's worst? Time, and in some respects memory, are inevitably important here, in what can (very liberally) be described as a quirky (and brilliant) musical. Resnais dedicates this to Denis Potter, who died a few years before, and is most famous for the lip-synching of such television plays as 'The Singing Detective' and 'Lipstick on your Collar'.

Here though, it's not whole songs that are heard, but snatches of them, in total thirty-six in forty-seven interventions. They represent private thoughts sung by the original performers but mimed by the actors, and can represent an emotion clearly manifested in the film but more likely represent private, secret thoughts known only to the actor or the audience. But the songs spread over a wide period of time, and it is highly unlikely that many (if any) even French viewers recognise all of the songs, which stretch over seventy-three years, ranging from Albert Préjean's 'Je m'donne' (1921) through to Michel Sardou's 'Déjà vu' (1994), passing by Édith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, Serge Gainsbourg, Léo Ferré, Sheila, Alain Bashung, Téléphone, etc. 

Certainly any French person – or any lover of Francophone popular music – will recognise a number of these songs, although the internationally known Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel or Georges Moustaki aren't represented. What they'll recognise is their own history, their own memories through the time they've lived, grafting many more personal stories onto this particular one.

For all that, the general narrative is fairly simple: Claude Lalande (Pierre Arditi) is married to Odile (Sabine Azéma) who wants to move to a new dream apartment through estate agent Marc Duveyrier (Lambert Wilson); Odile's younger sister is Camille (Agnès Jaoui), who is coming to the end of seven years studying 'Les Chevaliers paysans de l'an 1000 au lac de Paladru' for a doctorate but is also working as a tour guide; Odile's former lover hypercondriac Nicolas (Jean-Pierre Bacri), who is married and has been living in England, has just returned to Paris to find work and bring his family over; Simon (André Dussollier) works as a clerk with Marc as boss, writes radio plays more as a hobby than a source of revenue, and is secretly in love with Camille, following her tours when time permits; Marc is an egotistical womaniser who is Simon's boss, and whose latest conquest is Camille.

History is not only important via the songs or the characters' past but through other things: Camille lectures her ever-changing groups on such things as France's Nazi past, le Parc des Buttes-Chaumont with its Temple de la Sibylle and Pont des Suicidés, the house of the Marquise de Brinvilliers (on whom Simon has written a play), the Cimetière du Père Lachaise (where the famous erection of Victor Noir is scrupulously avoided, probably because too well known therefore a cliché), and so on. Obviously the sights here are off-centre, and even the sculpture near the estate agent, la Fontaine des Polypores in the 15e arrondissement, built in 1983, is hardly on the normal tourist circuit.

Through this web of relationships lie a tangle of lies, half-truths, misunderstandings, inaccuracies, etc. Nicolas is pretending not to be a humble chauffeur, Claude has a much younger lover, Simon pretends to have a profession as a playwright and not also a lowly estate agent clerk, when he meets Camille Marc goes along with the pretence that he was crying and snivelling over a relationship rather than a cold, but most of all he lied by omission because Odile and Claude's wonderful flat with its superb view will soon have the view wiped out by what looks like a horrendous HLM.

All will come out in the house-warming, but particularly Marc's lie by omission, which is not the only thing to cause electric, poisonous atmosphere by the appearance of the jellyfish, but the ending is quite cataclysmic. A superb film.

From Wikipédia, the songs:

Joséphine Baker : J'ai deux amours (Götz Burger)

Dalida et Alain Delon : Parole parole (Jean-Pierre Bacri et Sabine Azéma)

Charles Aznavour : Et moi dans mon coin (Pierre Arditi)

René Koval : C'est dégoûtant mais nécessaire (Sabine Azéma)

Simone Simon : Afin de plaire à son papa (Sabine Azéma)

Gaston Ouvrard : Je n'suis pas bien portant (Jean-Pierre Bacri)

Albert Préjean : Je m'donne (Lambert Wilson)

Jacques Dutronc : J'aime les filles (Lambert Wilson)

Michel Sardou : Déjà vu (André Dussollier)

Gilbert Bécaud : Nathalie (André Dussollier)

Maurice Chevalier : Dans la vie faut pas s'en faire (Lambert Wilson)

Arletty et Jean Aquistapace : Et le reste ? (Agnès Jaoui et Lambert Wilson)

Édith Piaf : J'm'en fous pas mal (Agnès Jaoui)

Alain Bashung : Vertige de l'amour (André Dussollier)

Sheila : L'école est finie (Sabine Azéma)

Serge Lama : Je suis malade (Jean-Pierre Bacri)

Léo Ferré : Avec le temps (Jean-Pierre Bacri)

Henry Garat : Avoir un bon copain (André Dussollier)

Jane Birkin : Quoi (Jean-Pierre Bacri et André Dussollier)

France Gall : Résiste (Sabine Azéma)

Henry Garat : Amusez-vous (Lambert Wilson)

Charles Richard : La tête qu'il faut faire (Lambert Wilson et Sabine Azéma)

Alain Souchon : Sous les jupes des filles (Sabine Azéma)

Eddy Mitchell : La Dernière Séance (Jean-Pierre Bacri)

Sylvie Vartan : La plus belle pour aller danser (Lambert Wilson, Sabine Azéma, etc)

Serge Gainsbourg : Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais (Pierre Arditi)

Eddy Mitchell : Je vous dérange (André Dussollier)

Téléphone : Ça (c'est vraiment toi) (Pierre Arditi et autres acteurs)

Dranem : Quand on perd la tête (Sabine Azéma)

Johnny Hallyday : Ma gueule (André Dussollier)

Pierre Perret : Mon p'tit loup (Pierre Arditi)

Claude François : Le Mal-aimé (Lambert Wilson)

Michel Jonasz : J'veux pas qu'tu t'en ailles (Jean-Pierre Bacri)

Julien Clerc : Ce n'est rien (André Dussollier)

Claude François : Chanson populaire (Pierre Arditi)

Eddy Mitchell : Le Blues du blanc (Lambert Wilson)

Alain Resnais's Cœurs | Private Fears in Public Places (2006)

This comedy drama is light years away from the early films which gave Resnais his hallowed name in cinema history: in fact on occasion it very nearly, but not quite, tips into farce. Still constant are some intrusive thoughts from memory, and the ending is a very long way from the traditonal comedy.

Everyone in the film is discontented with his or her current situation and strives escape from it. And if it's largely about loneliness, it's also about sex. Interestingly, and although this is in no way a sequel, Thierry (André Dussollier) is an estate agent as he was in On connaît la chanson nine years before, but Charlotte (Sabine Azéma) works there too. Thierry, who lives with his much younger sister Gaëlle (Isabelle Carré) is sexually frustrated and lusts after Charlotte: particularly after this supposedly devout woman lends Thierry two VHS tapes (yes, in 2006) she's recorded religious programmes on, but inadvertently forgotten to erase scenes of herself cavorting sexily in front of the screen in her underwear.

Then there's the couple Nicole (Laura Morante) and Dan (Lambert Wilson) who are having trouble finding a suitable flat, with Dan insisting that it has room for his office: this recalls Nicolas (Jean-Pierre Bacri) giving Dussolier's character problems in On connaît la chanson. But as we are made to probe a little deeper, the relationship between Nicole and Dan is not what it seems: he's been kicked out of the army for some unknown reason, drowns his sorrows frequently at the local bar attached to a hotel and comes home drunk. Nicole is sick of him because, whereas she has a job, Dan doesn't seem interested in getting one. In fact it irks her so much that she throws him out and he's forced to temporarily stay at the four-star hotel. The barman Lionel (Pierre Arditi) advises him to write a small ad for the paper, and quite by chance (yes, I repeat that it's 2006) also mentions the internet, although we see nothing of it here, not even a mobile phone.

Meanwhile, Gaëlle is secretly going out at night to meet potential partners, although she's not having much success with the lonely hearts columns. Surprisingly, when she meets Dan they really strike it off: not only does she like to get drunk too, but she'll meet him the following night at the bar attached to the hotel.

And so we come to Lionel, who's had a bad time with life and is now looking after his cantankerous father Arthur, who we never actually see, although we hear the voice of Claude Rich. But Lionel now needs someone else to look after his father while he works nights at the bar, and who should come along as a nursemaid but Bible-wielding Charlotte? She receives plates and food thrown at her, gets exasperated, but finds a way to soothe him by parading into the bedroom in her underwear.

The end of the film is one of the most pessimistic as possible. Nicole feels really bad about throwing Dan out, but when she comes to see Dan at the bar Gaëlle sees them and runs back to her brother. And Arthur has been sent to hospital and is telling scarcely believable tales about his homehelp. The result is that everyone is trapped inside his or her loneliness. Bleak indeed, but it appears (reading Wikidedia's synopsis of it) to adhere pretty strictly to Alan Ayckbourn's play Private Fears in Public Places (2004) on which it's based.

Claude Chabrol's Une affaire de femmes | Story of Women (1988)

Made ten years after Violette Nozière, this, along with the previous film, can be seen as a kind of diptych. Both are inspired by real-life criminal cases. The main differences lies in the historical and political backcloth within which they were set, and this is occupied France in 1943.

Class is also a difference, and here we have the barely literate Marie Latour – Isabelle Huppert again, this time representing Marie-Louise Giraud – determined to make as much money as she can for her family. She's married to Paul (François Cluzet), and although she has two young children her relationship with him is clearly sinking and she avoids sex.

One way she can earn extra money is by letting a room out to her friend the prostitute Lucie (Marie Trintignant), although her real earnings are coming from her business performing illegal abortions – she's a faiseuse d'anges – and for a time she's able to keep the knowledge of these activities from Paul.

But it's not long before Paul realises that Marie has a lover, Lucien (Nils Tavernier), and in fact she becomes not too secretive about the fact: with the result that Paul makes a letter to the authorities made out of cut-out letters from newspapers, and soon Marie is arrested. And not only that: as a measure of the gravity of her offence she's sent to Paris.

As this is Paris during the Vichy régime, and Pétain's portrait adorns one of the rooms where Marie has a talk to her lawyer, and as abortion is seen not just as a crime but a crime against the state, justice is extremely harsh with Marie: she receives the death sentence, which will never be commuted to life imprisonment. It is evident what Chabrol thinks about this gruesome farce of a verdict.

Claude Chabrol's Violette Nozière (1978)

Violette Nozière is one of Chabrol's films concerning women and is set in the early thirties at the time of increasing fascism. It is inspired by a fait divers, about an eighteen-year-old woman (Isabelle Huppert acting for Chabrol for the first time) still at school who regularly secretly leaves the petit bourgeois parental home at night to prostitute herself. When the doctor diagnoses her as having syphilis, she somehow manages to convince her parents (Jean Carmet as Baptiste and Stéphane Audran as Germaine) that she has inherited it from them.

Then she falls in love with Jean Gabin (Jean-François Garreaud), an opportunist for whom she hands over the profits from her (occasional) prostitution and money she steals from her parents. She forges doctor's prescriptions and poisons her parents, although, 'respecting' her mother, she gives her a lower dose and Germaine survives.

Violette Nozière claimed that her father has repeatedly raped her, although she was nevertheless given the death sentence. This was later commuted to a life sentence, and in August 1945 de Gaulle pardoned her, she married the prison clerk, had five children by him, and died in 1963 a fully pardoned woman.

Jean-Jacques Beineix's La Lune dans le caniveau | The Moon in the Gutter (1983)

As this was available for viewing and Beineix died just ten days ago, I thought it appropriate to watch this, which I discover is one of only six non-documentary feaures that he made. It certainly does have much of the cinéma du look about it, although I'm not sure about the 'triumph of style over content' slur that people used to make: this is addictively watchable, and not just because of the presence of the main stars.

The sister of Gérard Delmas (Gérard Depardieu) has been raped and kills herself as a result, and Gérard determines to find out who did it. Gérard is a docker living in a slum with his father and his partner Bella (Victoria Abril), although as he's on his search Loretta (Nastassja Kinski) rolls up in her flash sports car and takes a distinct liking to him: it's probably the macho working-class difference which appeals to this rich young woman, but Gérard only seems to have a passing interest. His main interest is tracing the killer of his sister Catherine.

The whole atmosphere of the film is bathed is dreams or nightmares, but although Gérard survives Bella's hitmen employed to kill him when he decides to leave and she thinks he's being unfaithful to her, by the end of the film he's still no closer to finding the murderer.

Elsa Rysto's Love Hurts (2020)

Love Hurts has one of those annoying English titles that directors are increasingly giving French language films: the logic is of course that an English title attracts more people because many more people speak English than French. And certainly there's the excuse that this thirty-two minute film is inspired by American movies, the soundtrack is laden with American songs from the sixties, and 'Love Hurts' is the title of one of them, but not played in this film. Fine, but all the same...

Elsa Rysto's favourite film is Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, her second favourite is A Clockwork Orange, and although these two films are wildly different in content and style, etc, a definite logic follows from this when we watch Love Hurts: Sam (Noée Abita) is one of the two main characters, Troy (Andranic Manet) the other, and this is a movie about gratuitous violence – and love.

When the shy, easily impressionable Sam first meets Troy he takes her aside in a woodland setting and at first frightens her, then frightens her some more by asking her to hit him, but hard, as he can't feel pain. She asks if he's high on pain-killers, but no. And she gets bloody knuckles as he asks for more and shows no reaction to the hit he takes.

This, all right, is adolescence and kids have to go through everything, have to experience extremes in growing up, and hey, that's part of growing up itself. But Sam goes though various emotions, as kids do, and although the rest of the school know that Troy has been expelled for violence, and it's said that he beat a guy into a coma, she still sides with him, fights for him, is him, because that's what love's all about: no? Psychotic? What?

Patrice Leconte's Dogora : Ouvrons les yeux (2004)

During a French interview, Patrice Leconte said that the film he regrets making is Circulez, y'a rien à voir as it was one comedy too many. He likes Dogora more than any of his other films because hardly anyone has seen it. I'd not even heard of it, so set about rectifying that situation: it's available on YouTube and has been for five years, although so far the link has received less than six thousand views, and I can guess that many of those people don't hang around to watch the whole film. The reason for this is that there's no dialogue, but a large number of generally non-sequential scenes set in Cambodia only with the music of Étienne Perruchon on the soundtrack. Occasionally there are 'words' spoken as a chorus to this music, although this is in 'Dogorien', an imaginary language 'invented' by Perruchon.

Leconte's film, which is unlike anything he's ever done before, is a homage to the country and its people. It shows both urban scenes, mainly of the roads and the people and transport passing, and many scenes of the rural area, harvesting the fields, collecting the sap from trees to make rubber, etc. It is intensely poetic, and although the music blends in harmoniously with the scenes – loud and fast for busy street scenes, softer and slower for the calmer areas – I found it a little too intrusive, and I can sympathise with anyone thinking that these 'European' sounds are out of synch with what we see onscreen.

Sam Karmann's Omnibus (1992)

As a director, Sam Karmann is perhaps best known for the cult feature Kennedy et moi (1999), an adaptation of Jean-Paul Dubois's novel of the same name. That was his second film and his first feature, although before that he made a humorous eight-minute short into which a number of events are crammed, the final one being even more absurd than the rest.

There are no names mentioned, but the ticket inspector (Jacques Martial) on a train asks a passenger (Daniel Rialet) for his ticket, which he nonchalently does, but the inspector says it's insufficient. This the traveller doesn't understand as he's always caught the same train to Cateau-Cambredis. The inspector replies that the train has now changed schedule and goes direct to Desvres without stopping at Cateau-Cambredis. The traveller follows the inspector and tells him that his job, his livelihood and his family will be put in danger if he can no longer get to work, and he becomes distraught and starts to cry.

The inspector says it's nothing to do with him but the driver (Christian Rauth), and introduces the man to him. The driver says he can't stop at Cateau-Cambredis because it's not in his schedule, so the passenger repeats his tale of woe. In the end the driver says he won't stop there but he'll drive very slowly through the station so the man can jump out, which he does. But just as the passengers on the train are applauding him, a burly man on the end carriage grabs the man back on the train, thinking he's about to miss catching it.

Jérôme Bonnell's Les Hautes herbes (2021)

This is my first Bonnell, which isn't the cinema production the director intended but a television mini-series split into three parts for Arte. It seems that this is a slight deviation from his usual love tangle in that it is also a policier, or thriller.

Eve Merrieu (Emmanuel Devos) is a fortysomething woman having a 'break' away from men and living in a house near the village of Vernou-sur-Brenne, Touraine, where everyone knows each other. She falls from her step-ladder while picking plums to make jam, and the obliging young Mounir Sefaoui (Raphaël Acloque) is just riding by on his bike and strides over the fence to help her. After acertaining that there's no damage, she invites him into her house for a drink and they talk.

This is far from such large cities as Paris, although there's a local gilets jaunes demonstration about the closure of a local factory, and farmers are finding it difficult to maintain a living, particularly as their children are very reluctant to take over the reins of a failing business so migrate to the large cities. For this reason, although it angers Eve, farmers set on often foreign workers (and Mounir is Algerian) for no money, just food and lodging. While talking to Mounir, Eve notices a kind a talisman around his neck and asks him about it.

Around the same time, the mother of the ten-year-old Jules (Antonin Chaussoy) is effectively made homeless as his mother has had a scooter accident and is in a coma: he goes to stay at the home of a couple, the wife being, we later discover, the daughter of Eve: Lucille (Louise Chevillotte) and Glenn (Jonathan Couzinié). Jules is quite a presence in the film because, although he says virtually nothing (apart from to the loving Lucille) his eyes are everywhere and he misses nothing: much of the action is seen through his eyes.

And then Eve finds out that Mounir has disappeared, been gone for a few days without saying a word. She even finds the necklace and begins to be very suspicious: he doesn't seem to be the type of person just to leave like that. But the farmer isn't interested and neither are the police: he's an adult and free to come and go as he pleases, and anyway they don't want to waste time and money searching for someone who hasn't disappeared under circumstances which can't be classed as suspicious. Only the lowly rural cop Maud Lefort (India Hair) shows any interest, and says she'll look out for anything she thinks might look odd.

Meanwhile Jules integrates a little more with his temporary family and Glenn saves him from a bully: in retrospect it looks as if he's going to strangle the bully, but he just lets him go. And Jules is forever vigilant, eager to learn what's going on around him: that's how he comes to learn that Lucille's having an affair with Cyril Belhomert (Clément Bertani), meeting him for sex in a deserted barn. Jules says nothing but is worried, and the relationship between Lucille and Glenn is perhaps not what it should be?

Meanwhile Eve continues to find out things about Mounir, although if he's been murdered any character in the village could be responsible as they're all a little odd and/or secretive. And then it happens: Cyril disappears and the village is swarming with cop cars. Lucille doesn't want to speak to her mother so doesn't answer the cellphone. And Glenn has taken Jules to a funfair, where Jules notices that Glenn has Cyril's lighter.

Now, OK, the depressed and quite possibly disturbed Glenn might have a motive for killing Cyril, but where does Mounir fit in this? Lucille won't answer the phone, so Eve will go to her house and show her something her investigations have dredged up: a photo of Mounir lying lovingly with Lucille: the missing motive.

Meanwhile Glenn knows that Jules knows that he's the killer, and takes him to a deserted house where he's buried the two bodies: as he says, like Jules, his eyes are everywhere. And it looks like a third murder coming up, only Maud turns up and grabs the gun before a distraught Glenn can kill himself. I'll have to see more Bonnell films: he chooses to take long scenes, lingering over expressions, examining the emotions, etc.

Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (1992)

I've already written about Marguerite Duras's novel L'Amant (1984) – of which this is an adaptation by a French director but in English – and I noted that the Goncourt-winning book isn't her best work: in fact to be honest it's far from it. But although a film version is necessarily different, Duras, having spoken to Annaud a few times before the film was completed, found it 'bizarre' that he thought it was his film: Annaud must have found Duras's attitude bizarre too, and he'd formerly had no problems adapting Umberto Eco's novel Il nome della rosa to the screen, and Eco certainly spoke of his novel and Annaud's film: two distinct entities. Duras had previously called her novel 'shit' and said she was drunk when she wrote it: so she wrote another version of her autobiographical story which was published in 1991 as L'Amant de la Chine du Nord, although Annaud didn't bother to read it. Duras's verdict: 'Rien ne m'attache au film, c'est un fantasme d'un nommé Annaud' ('I have no relation to this film, it's a fantasy by someone called Annaud'.)

Annaud also had problems finding the two protagonists, although he first found Tony Leung Ka-fai as the fifteen-year-old girl's lover, but the girl herself was a problem. Eventually Annaud's wife spotted a model, Jane March, in a fashion magazine, and this was her first role as an actor: she was in fact just eighteen, although she in parts (particularly before the deflowering) just about passes for fifteen.

What can we say of the film? Certainly the choice of the two actors is a good decision as both play very well, and as I remember it this seems to stick closely to the book, although – for obvious commercial reasons – there does appear to be an over-emphasis on the erotic side: the French Wikipédia entry for Jane March (but not the English version as I write) correctly states that March was dubbed 'the sinner from Pinner' (she was born in nearby Edgware and apparently attended school in Pinner). This year, of course, marks the film's thirtieth anniversary.

Guillaume Brac's À L’Abordage (2021)

Édouard (Édouard Sulpice) is a BlaBlaCar driver in his mother's car, and supposed to be picking up two women to drop off at Die (Drôme) before going to his mother's. But he's very surprised, in fact annoyed, when two guys appear (and very late at that): Félix (Éric Nantchouang), who's on his way, he believes, to give a pleasant surprise to a young woman he danced with and spent an innocent night with on the banks of the Seine, Alma (Asma Messaoudene), who took the train earlier in the day to Die, where her parents have a house they spend the summer in; and Félix's best friend Chérif (Salif Cissé).

Félix works as a homehelp to the elderly, and Chérif has rather clumsily taken a week's leave from his job in a small supermarket. The pair are very different from each other: Félix is black, hot-tempered, handsome, tall and slim, whereas Chérif (also black) is very calm, quite chubby, and a fair bit smaller – in fact, he's far removed from the neurotypical, as he seems to have an unusually large knowledge for someone of his poor education and job status, he prefers to read literary classics rather than his cellphone, and he avoids sports activities, saying he has otitis.

The three don't get on well at first. Félix makes fun of Édouard for his mother phoning him and calling him 'chaton' ('kitten'), and Édouard objects to him eating crisps in his mother's car. When they stop off at a motorway aire, Édouard shouts at them for talking amongst themselves and ignoring him, saying this isn't the etiquette of co-voiturage. He's even more annoyed when he's persuaded by Félix into having a look at the town before taking them to the campsite, and he reverses into a heavy object in a narrow street and makes it with difficulty to the campsite to afterwards learn at the garage that it will take 'une grosse semaine' ('at least a week') for parts to come for the wheel bearing to be fixed.

So Édouard is forced to sleep in the same tent as the snoring Chérif, although the two learn to relate to each other in the multi-lingual campsite also inhabited by the English and the strongly Francophile Dutch. And as Édouard and Chérif (who don't have partners at home) watch the mild loveplay of Félix and Alma in the river, Chérif concludes that they are both 'galériens' ('losers': the Americanised sub-titling translates this as 'washouts'!)

Although this modernised Rohmerian tale is essentially a light psychological study in diversity, showing how (often very different) people can come together, jump in and join (the title À L’Abordage isn't for nothing), it also highlights how arguments can come close to the surface, often caused indirectly by unrelated psychological trauma: examples of this are the fight during the canyoning episode, or Félix – who has just split up with Alma largely because his inappropriate, over-enthusiastic behaviour turns her off – suggests that Chérif is gay because he passes so much of his time with unavailable women. And this comment in turn has a knock-on effect with Chérif, who turns down the suggestion by Héléna (Ana Blagojevic) that he look after her baby Nina for two hours while she has a massage to relieve her tension.

Chérif's obviously disinterested attentions to Nina have been an example of his difference: while the others have played sports or love/sex games, he's spent much of his time as a casual babysitter, a substitute father as Héléna's partner – whom she only once mentions (and only as 'il') has been called away. Furthermore, this relationship between Chérif and Héléna is another example of the meeting of different classes, although they have a geographical similarity: Chérif comes from La Courneuve, Héléna grew up in adjoining Stains and they both remember the same supermarkets.

Towards the end there's a scene in which Chérif and Héléna, having left the rather weird staff member Nicolas (Nicolas Pietri) – who is now off duty with a sprained arm, is terrified of the end of the world, and whom Alma sees as a slit-your-throat pessimist – in charge of Nina while they go to the camp bar for a drink. They're met by Édouard, who invites Chérif to sing karaoke, but he's shyly very reluctant until everyone in the bar joins in chanting 'Chérif!' and Héléna encourages him to join her in singing: à l'abordage! Héléna chooses 'Aline', a 1965 summer hit by Christophe, which is appropriate because it's about sand, beach and lost love (although Félix is absent).

In the morning we find Chérif and Héléna staring lovingly at each other in bed naked, Édouard cleaning the shower block mirror as he's changed places with Nicolas and needs money for car repairs, and Félix being lulled awake by a young woman playing the guitar and singing: she turns out to the clown the trio saw amusing kids when they went on a visit to Die. A delightful film.

Kamir Aïnouz's Cigar au miel | Honey Cigar (2020)

This is 1993*, and seventeen-year-old Selma (Zoé Adjani) (the niece), of French and Algerian nationality, lives in Neuilly-sur-Seine, no less, with her lawyer father (Lyes Salem) and gynaecologist mother (Amira Casar), and their home not only screams wealth but Algeria. She's just entering the ECIP business school and has to undergo a gruesome, sex-obsessed hazing ceremony. And it's a good job her parents don't know about it as they have strict views, although religion holds a back position here, and they have a Christmas tree. Not that religion can hold such a position in Algeria in those times, and the television set frequently announces the latest activities of l'État Islamique. (But the cigar reference isn't phallic: it's an Algerian delicacy, which Selma nevertheless does eat with her relatives in Algeria in, I thought, a rather suggestive way.)

The guys she mixes with at the school come from the HLMs, such as Julien (Louis Peres), who wants to sleep with her, and at one point asks her if she's a virgin as she's held him off for so long. But she's made it clear enough before that she isn't, although of course she's lying. To save face, though, she loses her virginity to a cucumber. Obviously her parents want to see her married off so they think of the highly respectable businessman Luka Toumi (Idir Chender), who's so respectable that he invites her for dinner, which she never gets, although she does get raped by him. Such is life, the traumas of which, of course, she has to live with.

She also sees Julien kissing a young woman at Julien's year's post-grad party, and this adds to the trauma. Very briefly, Julien drifts into her life again, but is due to leave for Singapore, never to be seen again. By this time her mother has moved her consultancy to Algeria, and Selma must of course soldier on in Paris.

*In the circumstances, it seems appropriate that we hear Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries singing 'Zombie' ('With their tanks, and their bombs', etc) when Julien and the then virgin Selma are dancing to it, although there's a slight anachronism here: 'Zombie' wasn't released until the following year: 1994.

Rémi Chayé's Calamity, une enfance de Martha Jane Cannary (2020)

Calamity is a harmless but charming cartoon love story to the Wild West whose director is so careful about the use of language that he even goes out of his way to (on several occasions) avoid this film even getting a PG certificate: a nasty person is referred to as 'bouse' ('dung') rather than 'merde'!

This is the partial, and much imagined rather than researched, tale of Martha Jane Cannery, who is of course more familiarly known as Calamity Jane, probably from the highly sanitised 1953 David Butler film starring Doris Day. It's a kind of coming-of-age story of a convoy of pioneers heading west for Oregon in 1863 by wagon train. The Cannary family without the mother (who's dead) is the last to join, and as a poor family is seen in a poor light.

But when the father falls ill young and rather 'masculine' Martha steps in, and although she is green at first she soon learns how to steer the family out of trouble, and in fact chases after Samson, who appears to have stolen many items from the train, retrieves them, and becomes the train scout for her knowledge and her heroic actions. (Inevitably, there's a shot of Monument Valley, made very famous in John Ford/John Wayne movies.)

Delphine Lehericey's Le Milieu de l'horizon (2019)

This Swiss-Belgian film is set in an unnamed place in 1976 and adapted from Roland Buti's 2013 novel of the same name. It's entirely set in a rural context, mainly in and around a farm during a period of severe drought in which animals are dying, crops are rotting through lack of water, and a farmer has killed himself due to the situation. Jean (Thibaut Evrard) took his farm over from his father and it now looks as if he's facing ruin.

But Le Milieu de l'horizon is seen exclusively through the eyes of Jean's thirteen-year-old son Gus (Luc Bruchez), who's obviously obsessed with sex, steals soft porn magazines from the local store and gloats over them, even ogles the breasts of his mother Nicole (Laetitia Casta), gets upset when he sees his older sister Léa (Lisa Harder) kissing her boyfriend, etc. So sex in some way or other is his main interest when he's not helping his father and his mentally handicapped cousin Rudy (Fred Hotier) collect up the dead factory-farmed chickens, milk the cattle or whatever.

But at the heart of this film, and really at the heart of the drama (and this is in part what makes the movie so interesting and unusual) is the presence of the new arrival to the film for a few days: Nicole's friend Cécile (Clémence Poésy), who like Nicole appears to be fanatical about a book club they're in. And although we see Cécile handing Nicole a book over the dining room table, we don't actually hear either of them talking about books. Some time later, after Gus's sort-of girlfriend Mado (Sasha Gravat Harsch) and of course Gus himself has discovered the real nature of the relationship, he (in a mixture of embarrassment and disgust) tears out the f.e.p. of a copy of Romain Gary's (here as Émile Ajar) La Vie devant soi. On it was Cécile's confession of undying love to his mother.

And that's a good title to choose: what kind of life does this family have in front of it with a failing farm and a lesbian mother? At the dinner table again, Léa is probably joking innocently when she says Gus is sulking because 'Il est jaloux, il a plus sa maman maintenant' ('He's jealous because he's lost his mother now'). But it's at this same table that Jean will angrily storm at Nicole about her contact with Cécile, and soon the whole village is talking about it and it's going to cause, directly or indirectly, quite an amount of violence. This is a highly watchable psychological thriller certainly shot on a low budget.

Diane Kurys's À la folie (1994)

Diane Kurys dedicated her first feature film, Diabolo Menthe (1977), to her sister, adding that she still hasn't returned the orange pullover she lent her. As dedications go, this may be slightly unusual, although on the surface at least it's perhaps by no means as cryptic as some. But the interesting thing here is that Kurys's films often involve the family, and we know that Kurys has a love-hate relationship with her sister.

À la folie may generally be considered less autobiographical than others of her films for a number of reasons, although two sisters are present, as well as children (initially). I certainly don't intend to draw any analogies between autobiography and fiction here, although everyone writes from experience,  sometimes second-hand (through books or stories told, etc). The title of the film obviously relates to a common expression. What is the playful answer to the statement 'Je t'aime'? 'Un peu, beaucoup, à la folie, pas du tout ?' For all the three main characters, all of these answers can be applied at least once, often more, maybe on each of these occasions.

À la folie not only received negative reviews, but was generally panned by almost the whole press, and even to find any non-professional review is very difficult. Obviously it's normal to love or hate a work, but this one seems to have been greeted with general incomprehension. I'm feeling my way around Diane Kurys's films, and this is only the second I've viewed after La Baule-les-Pins, which – in spite of a the occasional quirkiness – seems (initially at least) far less complex than this film which came out four years later. Not only more complex, but far weirder.

First we have two female actors – the sisters Anne Parillaud (as Alice) and Béatrice Dalle (as Elsa), both of whom have appeared in leading roles in what was known as the 'cinéma du look', Luc Besson's Nikita (1990) and Jean-Jacques Beineix's 37°2 le matin (1986) respectively; then Elsa's husband Douglas (Alain Chabat), by whom she has two children, and who as an actor was more noted for comedies; and then there's the far less known Patrick Aurignac (here as Franck), who had (in real life) spent many years in prison, and directed just one film: Mémoires d'un con, made just two years after À la folie and who shot himself dead in the same year as his badly-received film was released.

Elsa leaves her adulterous husband and her two children – about whom she seems to mention no more - on the pretext of buying milk, and yet she takes the coach for Paris in her slippers and Douglas's raincoat to see Alice, the sister she's not seen for two years, and who doesn't seem too interested in their parents. Alice is a budding artist who tells her agent Sanders (Bernard Verley) that she doesn't feel professionally ready for New York and the cultural hike; and then her boyfriend Franck moves in with her, fridge and all, without prior warning; and then the unwanted cherry on the unwanted cake: Elsa turns up suddenly on her doorstep (or near, but that's another point), having left her family.

What existential horrors are there for Alice alone? She's professionally far from certain that she wants NYC at the moment, her lover (an amateur boxer) has dumped himself on her, as has her not-too-familiar sister. What ensues is an odd ménage à trois, with conflicting but constantly changing loyalties, hell seen as other people, minor violence (or threat) being the norm.

But what are we to make of this hotchpotch? Things we don't expect to happen in fact happen: Franck, at the risk to his life, goes on top of the high story of the apartment to rescue the life of a pigeon stuck to the pantry grill, and which he feeds in the apartment; how much, if anything, that we see is in fact real? Is Alice's (symbolic?) enchainment to the radiator really an excuse for Elsa to have sex with Franck and not an attempt to restrain her from killing herself?

All three people here are trapped within their own minds, but also within those of the other two, but there is humour here. Initially, Franck is for Elsa moving, asking her how long she's staying, Alice says as long as she likes, and Franck walks off, ironically saying 'On va rigoler !" ('We're gonna have a blast!'). The most humorous moment (in its surreality) is when Douglas comes looking for Elsa, who is hiding under Alice's bed, but Douglas sees this, shoves his face down from the bed to talk to her and then joins his wife under the bed and attempts a conversation while they're on their bellies on the floor. Franck asks while he's down there if he wants a beer but he says whiskey; Alice tells Franck to drive Thomas back to the train station (La Gare de Lyon). But what of the crude drawing of the dog Elsa had originally slid under Alice's door? It's a dead one with a cross on it. When they lived at home, their father said that Alice had 'du chien', which could mean she was cute? What of this and its relation to a dead dog?

Well, in the final scenes Alice is about to break through as an artist, is now in New York with a new boyfriend, so all's OK? Not quite, as Alice gets another dead dog drawing shoved under her door. Real, or just meaning that you can't go home again as you never left? If shit sticks, that includes dogshit, and you can never be free? Just thinking aloud as it were, but I adored this film.

Diane Kurys's La Baule-les-Pins (1990)

This is 1958 and the Lorskie family are spending their holidays in La Baule-les-Pins, Loire-Atlantique, only this year it's different because divorce is looming, and Kurys investigates the question both from the point of view of the parents and the children. Léna (Nathalie Baye) and Michel (Richard Berry) and their daughters, Frédérique (Julie Bataille) and Sophie (Candice Lefranc), stay with Léna's sister Bella (Zabou Breitman) and her husband Léon (Jean-Pierre Bacri), who have four children. This time, however, Léna joins the group some days later, as does Michel separately.

The main difference though is that Léna's lover Jean-Claude (Vincent Lindon) has surreptitiously come to La Baule and is 'secretly' but increasingly obviously meeting Léna. The, er, climax is when Michel loses his temper with Léna and would have no doubt seriously injured her if Fréderique hadn't intervened.

Jean Boyer's Coiffeur pour dames (1952)

Mario (Ferdandel) is a highly sought after women's hairdresser in a small shop in Provence who works with Gaëtan (Manuel Gary). But Gaëtan is shunned by most of the women because Mario has the magic touch with women's hair, turning his job into an art form. And although he's married to Aline (Blanchette Brunoy), all the women find him sexually attractive, and on one occasion he's forced out of bed with Edmonde (Arlette Poirier) onto the cold balcony in pyjamas hiding from Edmonde's married lover M. Brochant (Georges Lannes), who's unexpectedly turned up at her apartment.

But Mario dreams of moving to Paris where he can exercise his skills in an expensive environment, and fortunately his cleverness with a pair of scissors is matched to his psychological cunning: he's able to manipulate women's minds as well as their hair, his craftwork soon brings M. Brochant and Geneviève (Renée Devillers) back together, and as she's stinking rich he soon has a thriving salon on the Champs-Élysées.

However, he's the victim of his own success, and his women are falling over themselves for his favours. And such is his overweening egotism that he thinks he can divorce from Aline and marry the Brochants' twenty-year-old daughter Denise (Françoise Soulié). But he soon realises he's being stupid, risking his health and decides to go on a second honeymoon: with Aline in Provence!

A light comedy as irresistable as women find Mario, although I can't help thinking that this is aimed at Ferdandel's own egotism, or is there some self-parody that he's playing to?

Olivier Dahan's La Môme | La Vie en rose (2007)

This biopic – and biopics can be hellishly diffcult to represent – is obviously designed with an international audience in mind, particularly those who at least know a little of the great Édith Piaf: it has, after all, a different title in the English version, in French no less, but of course named after one of the most famous of her songs. And there are, of course, many more songs in the movie. What positive things can I say about this film? Marion Cotillard's acting is superb, and somehow she's not only managed to convincingly show Piaf at various stages of her life, but also get round the question of her small height: a truly magnificent performance.

But the film itself? Oh. It weaves in and out of different periods for no apparent reason, it's a stew of scenes that not only don't follow from each other but seem sewn together with meaningless logic. If this were intended to be a cinematic version of a patchwork quilt it would be brilliant. As it is though, it's a hopeless failure. I was waiting for an appearance of someone acting Moustaki to give a tiny hint of redemption but no. And even a little humour wouldn't have gone amiss, such as the time in 1961 when she tried to seduce Johnny Hallyday – to his horror! Or wasn't that occasion generally known at the time of the film's release? Whatever – even Marion Cotillard can't save this turkey.

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

As so many people have seen this film, and as the plot is so intricate, it seems pointless to spend a huge amount of time on detail: it's perhaps enough to say that this doesn't take place in France (where Anderson has a home in Paris, and is fascinated by the country) but mainly in Germany, notably Görlitz, where the 'hotel' seen is in fact a disused department store: the exterior shots of the place show a model. Stefan Zweig was an inspiration behind the tale.

In a madcap, fast-action film that in some respects reminded me of something that might have come from the brains of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, this is a story within a story. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a book and the narrator (Tom Wilkinson) meets the elderly owner of the run-down hotel, Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), who tells him of the hotel in the 1930s, and of how he came into possession of the building.

Zero was a mere bell boy receiving instructions from Gustav H. (Ralph Fiennes), a gigolo concierge whose speciality was attracting elderly women to repeat visits there. That's how Gustav came into possession of a priceless painting at the hotel, in fact of the hotel itself. And although the concierge is murdered by Nazis and so unable to enjoy his wealth, Zero inherited it.

François Truffaut's Domicile conjugal | Bed and Board (1970)

This is the fourth film in the Antoine Doinel series, and of course he hasn't grown up, or maybe doesn't want to grow up, or is an insensitive Aspie. Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud as always) is now married to Christine (Claude Jade): he works for a florist, and she teaches violin. And she's proud to be married, although he still exhibits the same immaturity/awkwardness/Asperger sydrome traits as in previous films.

Christine becomes pregnant and Antoine begins to work (by default and misunderstanding) in Paris for an American research company: Antoine's main job is showing foreign visitors the hydraulics of miniature boats. There's a clash: Christine wants to call the child Ghislain, although Antoine officially registers him as 'Alphonse', after (it seems) Daudet (or could it be Benjamin Constant's nouvelle?. And then Antoine falls for, and has a relationship (largely instigated by Kyoko (Hiroko Berghauer)) with a Japanese visitor. As in Baisés volés, they also exchange messages while the other is there, and soon Christine has had enough because she realises what's going on.

But then it's not long before Antoine too has has enough of Kyoko's speechlessness and various 'foreign' ways, and at a restaurant with Kyoko, bored with her because she says nothing to him, Antoine phones Christine three long times. He returns to find Kyoko gone with an insulting note, and goes back to Christine and Alphonse, or Ghislain.

Odd things to note in the film: at Christine's parents Antoine mentions their 'striglias' plants, which he says are often confused with 'oubiglias': neither of these plants exist, although his parents-in-law don't react; nor do they to react to Antoine telling them that Mothers' Day is a Nazi invention. There is also a scene in which a distinct caricature of Jacques Tati waits at a métro platform and then boards a train. Maybe not the best of the saga, but still interesting.

François Truffaut's Baisés volés | Stolen Kisses (1962)

The third part of the Antoine Doinel story begins and ends with the Charles Trenet song 'Que reste-t-il de nos amours ?', which contains the words 'baisés volés'. Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) has left the army, is in love with Christine (Claude Jade) and for a short time gets a job working at night in a hotel  reception. Until, that is, he's duped by a private detective into uncovering an adultery, meaning that he has been indiscreet and opened a door he shouldn't have: it's difficult to tell if it's a mixture of immaturity, difficulty with handling social situations, shyness, awkwardness, or something else. Doinel was created more than sixty years ago, and perhaps today he'd be diagnosed at a minor level on the autistic spectrum. Certainly a number of his problems in these more enlightened times could be put down to Asperger syndrome.

So he's now set on as a private investigator, although he isn't good at that either. Engaged to seek out exactly what shoeshop owner Monsieur Tabard's (Michael Lonsdale's) problems are with people, his stalking is so evident that a woman tells a cop she's got a guy following her. Plus, Antoine has fallen in love with Tabard's wife Fabienne (Delphine Seyrig), and of course although he never openly confesses this to her, everyone (apart from Tabard who has his own problems) is aware in the shop of Antoine's love.

Balzac, as might be expected with Truffaut, is in there, and the book in question is Le Lys dans la vallée, which Fabienne realises. She visits Antoine when he's in bed, tries to put him straight on the novel, and tries to ease his sexual problems in a few hours. Result: Fabienne is forgotten and Antoine is once again free to be with Christine. But, of course, he can't directly communicate his feelings to get the thing going.

Antoine is now a TV repairer, Christine (much like most of Doinel's women) has to be the one to make the first move, and she takes advantage of this by sabotaging her own TV, or rather her parents' TV while they're away. And they end up in bed. Over breakfast, it's difficult to use words, so (again directly but not directly, even Aspie-like) the couple pass a number of post-its to each other, instantly reacting by writing back. The viewer doesn't see these notes because they're private, but it's clear from their faces that he's asked her to marry him and she's agreed.

François Truffaut's Antoine et Colette (1962)

Antoine et Colette is the second – but short (thirty-minute) – appearance of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) after the first feature Les Quatre cents coups (1959) and before the other three features: Baisés volés (1968), Domicile conjugal (1970) and L'Amour en fuite (1978). Antoine et Colette was part of a series of five shorts by different directors gathered as 'L'Amour à 20 ans': it was originally entitled 'Paris'. It is of course autobiographical and Jean-Pierre Léaud is to some extent modelled on Truffaut.

There is even a self-referential scene here taken from Les Quatre cents coups, where Antoine's very young friend René Bigey (Patrick Auffay) – with the equally young Antoine hiding – is caught misbehaving and smoking by his father M. Bigey (Georges Flamant). But the film begins with a view of Paris streets, and then to a seventeen-year-old Antoine waking up to Guy Béart singing on the radio:

Le matin, je m'éveille en chantant

Et le soir, je me couche en dansant*.

Antoine (like Truffaut) has had parent problems and leads an independent existence, working in a record factory. This has its advantages as he is given free tickets to free concerts, and invites his friend René (still Patrick Auffay) along with him to one. And it's there that he sees Colette (Marie-France Pisier) and can't stop looking at her. And soon they start going out.

Antoine meets Colette's mother (Rosy Varte) and her step-father (François Darbon), he appeals to them, and they are soon inviting him to dinner. Antoine is very happy with this arrangement, and soon moves into a room opposite Colette. However, he is young for his age, a little shy and perhaps rather wimpish: Colette is soon tiring of him and begins to go out with the more rugged and self-assured Albert (Jean-François Adam).

The concluding music, sung by George Delerue, has the same title as this the series of films: 'L'Amour à 20 ans'.

*In Jamais la même chose : Chroniques 2015 - 2017 François Morel says of Guy Béart, who died in 2015, that when people like him die, a person tends to 'faire son Perec', and continues by listing things he (mainly) remembers about Béart in imitation of Perec's 'Je me souviens...' fashion. The problem is that in his second line Morel has him going to bed not dancing but singing!

Barbet Schroeder's Maîtresse (1975)

The pronunciation of the 't' in 'Barbet' is entirely optional, although the watching of this film without cuts was strictly limited to a very few people right up to 2003. Why? Well, we might wonder because the sexual content of this film – essentially a fictional exploration of sado-masochism, pain and pleasure, seems very tame fare today, but of course it takes time for legal processes to come into practice.

Here is a young and naive Olivier (Gérard Depardieu) freshly arrived in the centre of Paris, joining his mate with whom he intends to stay until he gets himself fixed, and they're off doing door-to-door sales of art books. But they don't have much luck until they come upon Ariane (Bulle Ogier) in her plush apartment. On learning that the apartment downstairs is empty, Olivier's pal (rather reluctantly on Olivier's part) decides that they should see what's on (robbing) offer downstairs.

But they're caught in the act because the lower apartment belongs to Ariane too: as a prostitute not of her own body but the exploitation of others' via sado-masochism, this is her den that the duo have stumbled on. And soon Olivier is casting his chum aside for the luxurious pleasures that Ariane has to offer: he's by no means taking advantage of her though, because he's hopelessly smitten. And so is Ariane, who finds it difficult to cope with mixed sensations: after all, Olivier is her lover and has no part in the sado-masochistic side of things.

In fact, apart from the nailing of genitals (which we don't actually see) the most disturbing part of this film is the (obviously real) stunning and bleeding of a horse for the purpose of meat: Olivier used to work in an abattoir. And this banned film is in fact a tender love story, almost ending in the deaths of the two main characters in an instance of orgasm and car crash, following Olivier's discovery that the mysterious Gautier (Holger Löwenadler) isn't in fact Ariane's pimp. I enjoyed this far more than Schroeder's More and La Vallée, and it seems almost a criminal offense that the viewing of the full version of Maîtresse was disallowed for such a long time.

Jean Rollin's Le Frisson des vampires | Shivers of the Vampires (1970)

Le Frisson des vampires is Jean Rollin's third film, following Le Viol du vampire and La Vampire nue, but although it's another vampire film it's a little more subdued than the two former ones. The marriage between Ise (Sandra Julien) and Antoine (Jean-Marie Durand) isn't yet consummated, and just before their honeymoon they leave for Normandy to visit Ise's cousins Hermann (Michel Delahaye) and William (Jacques Robiolles), who live(d?) in a former fortress near the sea. But although the couple are informed of the recent death of the cousins, that's not quite true, and of course we're in vampire territory again. It would take far too much time to go into further details, but suffice to say that this is Jean Rollin some time before his porno period. But still erotic? Well, according to the definition of the seventies, yes.

Henri Verneuil's Mayrig (1991)

Robert Guédigian's grandfather in Germany was immensely proud to learn that his grandson hadn't, unlike like the earlier Charles Aznavour and Henri Verneuil (both of Armenian descent), Gallicised his Armenian name. But this is a huge celebration not only of Henri Verneuil's ancestry, but of the dedication of his parents and close relatives and their friends to his success as a result of their efforts. By extension, it's an enormous love letter to surviving Armenian culture.

The film has as an introduction the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the murder in Berlin in 1921 of Talaat Pacha, one of the principle leaders of the Armenian genocide by the Turks, which as I write this is still only officially recognised by thirty-one countries. Although clearly guilty, Tehlirian was unanimously cleared of assassination, which many Armenians learned on having fled Turkey. Among those (in this first film version of Verneuil's life) are the parents of 'Azad', Hagop Zakarian (Omar Sharif) and Araxi (Claudia Cardinale), who arrive in Marseille with very little French: 'Mayrig' means 'mother' in Armenian.

Here we have the flight from Turkey of a group of Armenians, their initial life as outcasts in Marseille. Azad has to tolerate living in slums, racism in school, and finally being accepted into French society. It's a long haul, but this is a brilliant, unforgettable film which obviously serves as Verneuil's penultimate farewell.

Jean Girault's Le Permis de conduire (1974)

Jean Girault is beyond doubt an underrated director: OK, he's not up there with the big ones, but his comedies are well done, burlesque even, but not as crazy as might is expected: there's certainly some criticism of French society, its mindless bureaucracy, and the established order here. But then isn't that a primary purpose of comedy, to laugh at conventions as much (if not more) than to mindlessly entertain?

Michel Martenot (Louis Velle) lives somewhere in L'Île-de-France with his wife Geneviève (Pascale Roberts) and two children, and is a banker. His brother-in-law Bastien (Jacques Jouanneau) has a garage nearby. But problems start when Michel is promoted to assistant director of a branch in Paris: he's never learned to drive, and must use public transport. But transilien transport being what it (still) is, it means he will have to change four times, which means that he will have to leave early and arrive home late. He's exhausted at both ends, and using a bicycle to commute some of the way proves even worse: chains break, if you try to mend them people might think (in all your dirt), that you're a ne'er-do-well, etc.

So the only thing for Michel is learn to drive, which means renting a hotel room in Paris on weekdays until he can pass his test. And hey! He passes his theory, it's only a step away before he gets a full licence, so the family prepare for the celebration with bottles of champagne, and he hasn't the spunk to confess that he's failed miserably at the practical. Which is why he's (inexplicably to Bastien, Geneviève and kids), unable to decide on the car he wants, so he just has to stay at the hotel a little longer.

I forgot: Michel's quite a magnet to women, and when he literally bumps into Nathalie (Sandra Julien), who's also taking a driving lesson, well, they take a quick cognac in a café, she lives nearby, and what's the point of Michel returning to the hotel? But Nathalie is smitten and Michel's life is from now on more of a prison: a beautiful one, but all the same...

All the same, Nathalie gets Michel a false driving license for free, although he drives into a one-way street, a cop stops him, but hey there's a heavily pregnant woman and Michel drives her to hospital under police escort, he's a hero, and his bank thinks that too. There are many complications and misunderstandings (some of which are indirectly true, but that's another story), but as a result of his heroism Michel's promoted again – but what does that matter now that he's in an apartment in Paris with his family? Ask the cops.

René Clair's Porte des lilas | The Gates of Paris (1957)

René Clair's Porte des lilas is based on René Fallet's novel La Grand Ceinture, and it is fitting that a very rare acting appearance of one of the main stars, the awesome singer George Brassens, was a friend of Fallet. He plays L'Artiste, an unemployed guy like his friend Juju (Pierre Brasseur), an alcoholic who frequents the local café run by Alphonse (Raymond Bussières), whose daughter Maria (Dany Carrel) is in constant presence there.

And then along comes Pierre Barbier (Henri Vidal), a man who's killed three men and is escaping from the police. Barbier hides in L'Artiste's cellar, and being anarchists (Brassens is in some respects playing to type) the two friends conceal him from the law. Meanwhile Maria, who has fallen in love with Barbier, wants to go away with him, but the problem for the now sober Juju is that he's fallen in love with Maria. Maria obtains the money for Barbier's escape, with which she intends to leave with him. But on learning that Barbier isn't interested and will simply run away with the money, Juju kills him with Barbier's own gun.