If there is any genre that Claire Denis cannot bend towards completing a provocative concept, it has yet to be defined. From the great horror of Trouble Every Day to the more meditative traffic of Friday Night, Denis has a...... more »
FilmCritic entries tagged "Isabelle Huppert"
Following Tout Va Bien's stateside release in 1973, Jean-Luc Godard had spent seven years experimenting with ideas and form in a series of shorts and documentaries -- a process the filmmaker likened to the research and experimentation used to come...... more »
You may never figure out exactly what big point Home is trying to make, but you won't soon forget its imagery and its exquisite weirdness. What an unusual premise, what great performances, and what unpredictability. Once again, French cinema trumps...... more »
Sibling rivalry and real estate disputes are two great topics for cinematic drama. Mix the two together, and you can hope for some serious combustion. In Private Property, divorced Pascale (the always elegant Isabelle Huppert) lives with her twenty-something twin...... more »
This appreciation of a still photographer some think of as the grand master of them all demonstrates Henri Cartier-Bresson's ability to consistently make art out of people in the midst of their lives, capturing perfect compositional moments and angles with...... more »
Claude Chabrol hasn't made many adaptations of classic literature, but he proves to have a capable, if stuffy, hand with Madame Bovary. Isabelle Huppert takes center stage as a poor gal who just wants to get ahead. She does so...... more »
With fangs still dripping dark blood, Gabrielle comes to us like Neil LaBute rewriting Henrik Ibsen's classic A Doll's House. Don't let that get you too excited: The film is also very slow, psychological, and just slightly experimental in its...... more »
There's no denying that Claude Chabrol is a master of the French thriller. But every once in awhile, even the best throw up a brick. The Swindle is workmanlike at best, a tired flick (Chabrol's 50th!) that even devoted fans...... more »
Talk about aimless: These two hooligans (Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere) wander across the whole of France, simply looking for trouble. Namely that includes stealing cars and bedding women (usually in a three-way), then running away from whatever trouble they...... more »
If someone asked me to identify a prototypical 'art film,' I could do no better than to point them to Elective Affinities, a low-budget period piece from Italy, featuring circuitous dialogue, a story based on a Goethe novel, and an...... more »
