In her second feature (and her first solo feature), the multidisciplinary artist Niki de Saint Phalle pursues her own take on the fairy tale, and the result is a visionary exploration of female desire that unfurls according to the logic of dreams and poetry. The film follows a princess (played by Saint Phalle’s daughter, Laura Duke Condominas) who, following a series of encounters with fantastical beings, is magically transformed into an adult, and finds herself navigating a frightening and surreal new world. A work suffused with ideas and strong ties to Saint Phalle’s work in other media (sculpture, painting, assemblage, etc.), Un rêve plus long que la nuit is both an exemplary artist’s film and an underseen gem of 1970s French avant-garde cinema.
Tag: FRANCE
Deceptively simple and executed with a documentary feel, this drama represents a highly personal journey home for expatriate Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. The film is divided into two sections. The first documents the paradoxical but sleepy existence in the Arab part of Nazareth. The second part takes a more political view of the city and in it, Suleiman takes a more active role. He has come to his former home in search of inspiration, but what he sees are many disturbing images of Arab people trapped in a cultural identity crisis, a point best illustrated by the plight of a young Arab woman who wants more independence than traditionally allowed in her part of town but cannot find it because of prejudiced residents on the Jewish side.
Georges Menessier, a 45-year-old celebrity press writer, smuggles into a mental hospital to take pictures of…his ex-wife Clara Noël, once a great film star now confined to this clinic for alcoholism and nervous trouble. Once inside the place he meets Clo, a beautiful twenty-year-old woman, another inmate. They fall in love but madness is synonymous with tragedy not happiness…
In this black comedy, Fred works for an insurance company as a computer engineer. Fred is bored with enduring the trials of his shrewish wife, so, after using actuarial tables to calculate the most common means of death, he cleverly prepares the family bathroom and brings about her demise. For a while he is content with his new freedom, but then he recognizes that a friend is in a similar situation.
Broadcast in 2001, La Revolution Tropicaliste is a French TV documentary on the amazing Brazilian music movement known as Tropicália. Such brilliant artists as Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa & Caetano Veloso all played a prominent part in the development of the genre, and they are all seen here in archival footage and recent interviews. Featuring a plethora of vintage live performances and great documentary footage of Brazil then and now, this doc is a must see for fans of the Tropicália genre.
In the following 1961 interview, Jean Renoir discusses with French New Wave director Jacques Rivette his design of the “seventh art” and art in general, demolishing certain generally accepted ideas, and evoking some memories from his own career.
Serge Toubiana spent a year in the company of Isabelle Huppert. Wherever she went he followed, including prepping for a theatre production of Medea, doing promo work at Cannes, posing for photo shoots, as well behind the scenes footage of Huppert working with Claude Chabrol on Merci Pour le Chocolat’ and Michael Haneke on The Piano Teacher.
After winning the “most virgin” contest, Miss Canada is married to a rich milk tycoon. But she quickly flees the marriage to experience the world around her, full of sweetness and anarchy. With its lewd abandon and sketch-comedy perversity, Sweet Movie became both a cult staple and exemplar of the envelope pushing of 1970s cinema.