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Fire Review — Fire (2022) Film Review, a movie directed by Claire Denis, written by Claire Denis and Christine Angot and starring Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Gregoire Colin, Bulle Ogier, Issa Perica, Alice Houri, Mati Diop, Bruno Podalydes and Lola Creton. French filmmaker Claire Denis’ new film, Fire (also known as Both Sides of the [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Fire (2022): Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon Amaze in a Probing Dramatic Film...

A white woman living in a post-colonial African country refuses to abandon her family’s coffee plantation even as civil war brews around her. A derelict spaceship full of criminals sails across the stars towards a black hole, adrift between their histories on Earth and the oblivion that awaits them in the cosmos. A former officer in the French Foreign Legion remembers his time stationed in Djibouti, where his men lost themselves in the desert (and each other) while preparing for a fight that never came.

The people in Claire Denis movies are seldom in a hurry, but they’re often out of time. They’re drawn and quartered between the soft flesh of memory and the acrid metal of waking life — pulled apart by an artist whose films are as fluid as memories, and yet also mesmerized by the violence of inflexible social constructs that separate people against each other and themselves.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Claire Denis's Bastards (2013) is showing April 14 – May 13, 2019 in the United States.Claire Denis' Bastards has often been referred to as an exploration of power, money, and depravity, or as an allegory for late capitalism. The figure of Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor)—an ironclad businessman whom neither the police nor the law courts seem to have any interest in investigating—stands here as the personification of a corrupt economic system, the ultimate devil onto whom it is easy to project our high-profile tycoons and shady politicians. This may indeed be the soil—the given—in which Bastards is rooted, but it can also cloud our vision as to what the film ultimately unfolds.Blindness is a major theme in Claire Denis's Bastards. Marco (Vincent Lindon), a naval captain, returns to Paris after the suicide of his brother-in-law and the...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” what is the best coming-of-age movie ever made?

Siddhant Adlakha (@SidizenKane), Birth.Movies.Death.

While it may not fit the western paradigm of a traditional coming of age film (neither a high school setting nor teenage angst or confusion find themselves the focus), “Lion” holds the distinction of being a rare modern movie that gets to the root of key questions of dual identity, questions that will only become more prominent in the age of globalism. It’s the most extreme version of having your feet in two cultures; Saroo Brierley (Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel) finds himself...

Claire Denis has never shied away from stories of love and desire, but her films tend to render such romantic ideals as atmospheric abstractions, or corrupt them with militaristic repression and fits of extreme violence. For example, the most erotically charged movie she’s ever made is about a caged bride who escapes from her Paris dungeon and bites strange men to death during sex (oh, yeah, and it stars Vincent Gallo).

Prior to Cannes, her most recent feature starred Lola Créton as a teenage girl who was raped with an ear of corn. “35 Shots of Rum” and “Friday Night” are both supremely tender works of art, but they’re also both haunted stories of loss and isolation, holes that can never be filled, let alone played for laughs.

Needless to say, it comes as something of a (pleasant) surprise that “Let the Sunshine In” plays like Claire Denis’ idea of a Nancy Meyers movie,...

The Champs-Élysées Film Festival, created by producer, distributor and exhibitor Sophie Dulac, is a commitment to Parisian audiences for a cinematic trip between France and the USA showcasing the best of French and American independent cinema and highlighting New Orleans.

Six American indies and six French indies will judged for two separate awards and will also receive audience awards. The 2017 Jury consist of talents coming from all kinds of backgrounds and having a strong involvement in French independent cinema : — Lolita Chammah, actress, — Lola Créton, actress, — Vincent Dedienne, actor, humorist and author, — Jérémie Elkaïm, actor, screenwriter and director, — Camélia Jordana, singer and actress, — Gustave Kervern, director and actor — Karidja Touré, actress.

Classic Claude Brasseur back when…

The classic French actor Claude Brasseur will be the Guest of Honor along with the American director Alex Ross Perry and director Jerry Schatzberg. Other guests include directors Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, the French actress Aïssa Maïga.

With twenty-five years of filmmaking under her belt, French auteur Claire Denis is still at it. Her latest movie is Bastards, a stark look under the bonnet of the upper class, revealing dark possibilities and even bleaker realities. It continues her run of films which look inwardly at cultures and the various factors that make them tick – or break – such as Chocolat or 35 Shots of Rum.

The director was kind enough to share some time with HeyUGuys about Bastards, and the methods and motivations behind making it.

Bastards stars Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Michel Subor, Lola Créton, Alex Descas and is in cinemas now.

Kathir a Madurai lad goes to Coimbatore with a purpose and very soon flips for the charms of a beautiful Pavithra who is their neighbor. But Pavithra is already in love with her friend Gautham who is ‘not a nice guy’. Kathir who was...

In Britain, the term ‘bastard’ is often affectionately implemented into speech amongst friends, as a commonly used term that has lost its sting somewhat, said endearingly, albeit mockingly, at times. However it would seem that in France, the word remains indicative of unpleasantness, and as poisonous as it’s intended, as within Claire Denis’ aptly named Bastards, there are some rather nasty characters to say the least. If this film was a physical object and you ran your finger across it, you’d be left with half an inch of dirt to wipe off, as this is a seedy, grotty and ultimately bleak affair.

Vincent Lindon plays Marco, who returns home to Paris following the suicide of his brother-in-law, to not only provide some comfort to his grieving sister (Julie Bataille), and physiologically damaged niece, Justine (Lola Créton), but to seek revenge also, as he targets the man who they...

Claire Denis' films are typically intimate dramas weighted with emotion, which makes it particularly dispiriting that "Bastards," her eleventh feature, contains all of those ingredients without sufficiently making them gel. A muddled revenge drama about family ties and traumatic experiences, the movie wallows in its characters' anger and frustrations, but despite a strong cast and shadowy mysteries that deepen the plot, "Bastards" creates the sour impression of a half-formed work.  That's partly due to a consciously fragmented structure devoid of purpose. The movie contains a confusing trajectory in spite of its relatively simple premise. In a dreary opening sequence, Denis reveals the aftermath of a man's suicide while his nude daughter Justine (Lola Créton) wanders the darkened Paris streets wearing only high heels, apparently abused by an unidentified assailant. Needless to say, that sudden double blow leaves Lola's mother, Sandra (Julie Bataille) in a state of intense...

Photo © 2013 Wild Bunch - Alcatraz Movies - Arte France Cinema - Pandora Film Produktion.

Bastards [Les salauds] begins, like Garrel's Un été brûlant, at night, with a suicide. An explanation for the gesture will never come, although, through the film's near imperceptible ellipses, it comes close. A film of profoundly somber gloam, of loneliness and anger and even stifled madness, of complicity and solitude, its sadness is almost absolute.

A torrid string connects a cast predominantly made up from Claire Denis' family of actors: Vincent Lindon, Michel Subor, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin. There are so many of them that they stand out as coming from somewhere before, some shared place, and their figures seem at once human and also something more so, grander, archetypal. (Lola Créton creates a similar effect in a small role with such a brief but so recognizable presence that it both reaches outside the story, as well as expanding something within.

Claire Denis douses Bastards in her usual oblique dreaminess, equal parts romantic and malevolent, yet that style can’t fully compensate for a tale that, underneath its gorgeous aesthetic affectations, proves frustratingly undercooked. After the suicide of his brother-in-law, tanker captain Marco (a grave, intense Vincent Lindon) abandons ship and returns home to help sister Sandra (Julie Bataille), who blames her husband’s death on his renowned business partner Laporte (Michel Subor), and whose daughter Justine (Lola Créton) has attempted suicide after what a doctor (Alex Descas) claims has been severe sexual abuse. Working from a screenplay co-written by Jean-Pol Fargeau, Denis establishes her scenario – which also involves Marco striking up a ...

Chiara Mastroianni as Raphaelle: "It's the real love scene."

Claire Denis' sinister and irradiating Bastards (Les salauds), with superb performances by an impressive cast including Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, and Lola Créton tells a story of corruption, vengeance, family, and hellish traces of unspeakable deeds.

During my conversation with Claire Denis we discussed the influence of Toshiro Mifune with Akira Kurasowa shoes, William Faulkner's Sanctuary, going in circles, Rip Van Winkle, and in-between places.

Anne-Katrin Titze: I am still in a slight shock after just watching Bastards (Les salauds). Your film moved me deeply.

Claire Denis: The film for me is a little bit like a shriek.

Akt: A shriek? A scream?

CD: A scream. Yeah.

Akt: The position of the women how you show them here is not often seen in cinema. The women are not merely victims. You show over and over again that not...

The 51st New York Film Festival, running September 30th – October 13th, is coming up quickly and the full lineup is well under wraps. As Sound on Sight gets pumped up for the New York hospitality, here are our picks for the most anticipated films of the 51st Nyff, along with their official synopsis and trailer.

Captain Phillips

Paul Greengrass, 2013

USA | 134 minutes

“In April 2009, four Somali teenage pirates in a stolen Taiwanese fishing vessel seized the Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship bound for Mombasa. When the crew resisted, the pirates left with the Captain, Richard Phillips, and tried to make it ashore in the ship’s high speed lifeboat. What followed was a tense stand-off that was closely watched by the entire planet. Paul Greengrass, one of the incontestable masters of reality-based fictional filmmaking, and writer Billy Ray have crafted a film (based on Phillips’ account of the incident) that is...

A true whodunit type but of a different vibe, the one film from this years’ Cannes that should have gotten picked up around the same time they inquired about Blue Is the Warmest Color is the one film that had no business being regulated to the Un Certain Regard section. Sundance Selects will proudly feature their label at the front of the reels for the Tiff & Nyff festival screenings for Claire Denis’ Bastards. We imagine a deal was long in the works as the distributor has already affixed an October 25th release date.

Gist: Written by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau, supertanker captain Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) is called back urgently to Paris. His sister Sandra (Julie Bataille) is desperate – her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter is spiraling downwards. Sandra holds powerful businessman Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte has...

Olivier Assayas looks back at the days following the events of May 1968 – and at his own youth – with a delicate wit

Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here

The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...

The Hangover Part III | Something In The Air | Epic 3D | Benjamin Britten – Peace And Conflict | The Moth Diaries | My Neighbour Totoro/Grave Of The Fireflies | The King Of Marvin Gardens

The Hangover Part III (15)

(Todd Phillips, 2013, Us) Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Ken Jeong, John Goodman, Justin Bartha, Melissa McCarthy. 100 mins

Here we go again, ostensibly for the last time, and if this doesn't capture the magic of the first Hangover it's at least less offensive than the second, which isn't much of a recommendation. An intervention over Alan's mental health and the hunt for Mr Chow is what sets in motion the Wtf escapades and male bonding this time, but it all feels a little forced and familiar. If anything, the "wolf pack" is now too tame.

Something In The Air (15)

(Olivier Assayas, 2012, Fra) Clément Métayer, Lola Créton. 122 mins

Assayas gets beyond the cliches of France's young, post-1968 revolutionaries,...

Bastards [Les Salauds] (Claire Denis, France)

Un Certain Regard

Bastards [Les salauds] begins, like Garrel's A Burning Hot Summer, at night, with a suicide. An explanation for the gesture will never come, although, through the film's near imperceptible ellipses, it comes close. A film of profoundly somber gloam, of loneliness and anger and even stifled madness, of complicity and solitude, its sadness is almost absolute.

A torrid string connects a cast predominantly made up from Claire Denis' family of actors: Vincent Lindon, Michel Subor, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin. There are so many of them that they stand out as coming from somewhere before, some shared place, and their figures seem at once human and also something more so, grander, archetypal. (Lola Créton creates a similar effect in a small role with such a brief but so recognizable presence that it both reaches outside the story, as well as expanding something within.) The string...

★★☆☆☆ French director Claire Denis has maintained a wonderful run, from her 1998 debut Chocolat to recent efforts such as 36 Shots of Rum and White Material. Her latest, Bastards (Les Salauds, 2013), shows not in the main competition at Cannes - which, as ever, is woefully short on women - but instead in the Un Certain Regard strand. In retrospect, however, this decision might be just for Bastards, a broken revenge tragedy set in a rainswept France - a misstep, if not a downright stumble. A man commits suicide and his teenage daughter, Justine (Lola Créton), is found wandering the streets with blood running down her thighs.

The recently-deceased gentleman's friend and brother-in-law, Marco (played by Vincent Lindon, who many will remember from 2009's Welcome), is a ship's captain on an oil tanker stationed out in the Middle East. However, on hearing the tragic news, he returns immediately to France to find out...

Olivier Assayas seems to be dramatising his own youth with this beautiful-looking account of the soixante-huitard aftermath – but politics give way too easily to nostalgia

In contemporary French and European cinema, the events of May 1968 live stubbornly on – intensely debated and treasured and re-mythologised. A whiff of tear gas is a madeleine. For wasn't it cinema itself, and the attempted sacking of the Cinématheque Française chief Henri Langlois, that helped spark the Paris uprising? Philippe Garrel's Les Amants Réguliers, or Regular Lovers (2005), showed a young poet, played by the director's son Louis, taking to the barricades in 1968. Louis Garrel played something similar in Bernardo Bertolucci's soixante-huitard swoon, The Dreamers (2003). Before that, Louis Malle's Milou En Mai, or May Fools (1990) starred Michel Piccoli as the provincial Milou, whose family estate in May 1968 is on the verge of being dismembered by history itself.

Olivier Assayas's Après Mai, or After May,...

In a similar vein to his most recent project Carlos, renowned French filmmaker Olivier Assayas returns with Something in the Air, yet again proving his distinct talent for placing the viewer in a particular period, and immersing us within this world unbeknown to our own, as a director who has a real knack for finding intimacy amidst quite epic surroundings.

Set in 1968, we follow the coming-of-age tale of idealist student Gilles (Clément Métayer), an aspiring artist and political activist who joins forces with a group of likeminded youngsters, seeking a change and brighter future in the wake of the riots that took place across France that spring. Torn between his political allegiances and artistic notions, such a divide extends to his love life, as he falls for two women – Laure (Carole Combes), a freewheeling, liberated bohemian, and Christine (Lola Créton), a dedicated campaigner and revolutionary, and it seems that Gilles...

Claire Denis' films are typically intimate dramas weighted with emotion, which makes it particularly dispiriting that "The Bastards," her eleventh feature, contains all of those ingredients without sufficiently pulling them together. A muddled revenge drama about family ties and traumatic experiences, the movie wallows in its characters' anger and frustrations but never manages to organize them into a compelling whole. Despite a strong cast and shadowy mysteries that deepen the plot, "The Bastards" creates the sour impression of a half-formed work.  That's partly due to a consciously fragmented structure devoid of purpose. The movie contains a confusing trajectory in spite of its relatively simple premise. In a dreary opening sequence, Denis reveals the aftermath of a man's suicide while his nude daughter Justine (Lola Créton) wanders the darkened Paris streets wearing only high heels, apparently abused by an unidentified assailant. Needless to say, that sudden double blow leaves...

UK arthouse distributor New Wave Films are pleased to announce the release of controversial director Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan (2011) this coming Monday (13 May). Along the Cote d'Opale, near to a hamlet with a river and a marshland, lives an unusual guy (the late David Dewaele) who struggles along, poaches, prays and builds fires. To celebrate the home entertainment release of Dumont's latest critically-acclaimed work, we have Three DVD copies of Hors Satan to offer out to our world cinema-loving readership, courtesy of New Wave. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

Dumont's Hors Satan is beautifully shot in a protected area on the coast of Northern France, where the director has been living most of his life. The film engages in a unique way with...

He’s been something of a critical favorite for a while now, but after making the hugely acclaimed “Summer Hours” and the TV miniseries/theatrical marathon “Carlos” within a few years of each other, French filmmaker Olivier Assayas has firmly cemented himself as one of the more exciting directors in world cinema. And to celebrate the success, Assayas has decided to look back, returning to the autobiographical milieu of his international breakout “Cold Water.” But while that film, a teen romance set in the early 1970s, was a rather intimate, small-scale film, Assayas has come up with something much grander with “Something In The Air” (or “Apres Mai”). On the outskirts of Paris in 1971, the spirit of May 1968 still lingers in the air, not least for high-school student and aspiring artist Gilles (Clément Métayer) and his friends Alain (Félix Armand), Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann) and Christine (Lola Créton, who starred in...

Youth, political upheaval, revolt, idealism...it's a heady mix when you're at a certain age, and no doubt those passions -- for the world, for life itself -- can stir up desire. It's that potent blend that Olivier Assayas attempts to capture with his latest effort "Something In The Air." Premiering last year at the Venice Film Festival where it won Best Screenplay, the film is set in the early 1970s and follows Gilles (Clément Metayer), who is graduating high school, and gets involved in the counterculture movement in Paris alongside his radicalized girlfriend, Christine (Lola Créton). And in this exclusive clip from the film, we see how the passion for politics and for each other blends as they sit in the cinema, with the song "The Preacher and the Slave" -- a working man's parody of "In The Sweet By-And-By" -- accompanying their tryst. "Something In The Air" opens this Friday,...

With Cannes fast approaching, don't bet against Baz Luhrmann turning his hip-hop Gatsby into another festival showstopper

Baz in back

News that Baz Luhrmann's reimagining of The Great Gatsby will open Cannes in May has excited Trash. Ever since the film was pulled from the awards season scramble, it has been attracted some negative buzz, but this prime slot now reframes it as an arty spectacular with darkness and decadence intertwined, much like Cannes itself. Memories of Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! opening the fest in 2001 are still fresh in Trash's mind, the opening night party being a high point. I remember Nicole Kidman dancing with Rupert Murdoch as Fatboy Slim span the tunes, and Kidman even having a go on the decks. Lots of stuffy old critics on the Croisette balked at that film's gaudy excesses, although it is now cherished by many fans.

For Cannes, I think it'll be...

At the end of a bumper year for film-making, Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw unveils the contenders for his very own – imaginary – film awards

Most critics compile year-end roundups in a mood of shrugging acceptance that not every year can be great. But actually 2012 has been vintage, with some really brilliant films from the biggest names doing their best work – and some fascinating documentaries. So once again, I have created my imaginary awards nominations in the following categories: best film, best director, best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, best documentary and best screenplay. You will have to imagine me, in full tuxedo-style evening wear announcing the Braddies at the Dorchester. (I have put Seth MacFarlane, Michael Haneke and Kylie Minogue on my table.)

So, the nominations are …

Best film

Amour (dir. Michael Haneke)

The Master (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Holy Motors (dir. Leos Carax)

Killing Them Softly (dir.

When fighting their various political fights, young people oftentimes lose sight of why exactly they are fighting in the first place, getting swept up in the intrigue of dodging the police or suddenly having a tangible purpose in life. Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air follows a group of these idealistic young people, who think that revolution is in their grasp… until disillusionment sets in. The film chronicles the lives of high schooler Gilles (Clément Métayer) and his friends’ involvement in this all-consuming revolutionary fight against the establishment in early 1970s France, in the aftermath of the General Strike and student uprising of May 1968. Assayas’s film is interesting and adeptly captures the misguided, yet well-meaning political fervor of this specific youth culture, but it sometimes falls flat in terms of delving deeper into characters and getting to the root of their passion for their various causes. At the start of the film, handsome...

Oh to be young, in love and ready to the fight "the man." Fueled the spirit of May 1968, but set in the early '70s, and telling a semi-autobiographical tale, the latest from Olivier Assayas buzzes with the energy of those looking to change the state of the world, and you can get a peek of what he has conjured up in the first international trailer for "Something In The Air." Gilles (Clément Métayer), Alain (Félix Armand), Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann) and Christine (Lola Créton) lead a story that spans between England and Italy, and finds political ideals and artistic life aspirations clashing as these folks come of age. When we caught the movie in Venice we found it no less comeplling despite it's flaws, saying that while the characters aren't as well drawn as they could be, "there’s so much to like about the film," inlcuding the work of DoP Eric Gaultier,...

Title: Something In The Air (Après Mai) Sundance Selects Director: Olivier Assayas Screenwriter: Olivier Assayas Cast: Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Carole Combes, India Menuez, Felix Armand Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 9/26/12 Opens: October 4, 2012 at the NY Film Festival, wide in spring 2013 Demonstrations against governments may be taking place these days in some of the “less developed” nations like Libya and Egypt, but in the late sixties, early seventies, the most progressive countries bore the brunt of high physical action most by the young. Here in the U.S. the youths had a point: end the Vietnam War, because if the conflict continued, there was an ever increasing [ Read More ]

The post Something in the Air Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

★★★☆☆ French director Mia Hansen-Løve has managed to collate substantial critical goodwill over the course of her short career, thanks in part to the success over her previous film, 2009's Father of My Child. Hansen-Løve returned earlier this year with the loosely autobiographical Goodbye First Love (2011), a more sedate, at times watery account of the fledgling romance between 15-year-old Camille (rising star Lola Créton) and her slightly older boyfriend Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky).

Read more »...

Sex, drugs, art, and revolution — such was the life of a young European in 1971. Or at least it was the life of a young director at 17 trying to reconcile the state of his country and his ambitions for the future. Taking us along for the rapid ascent into adulthood of a group of school-aged French radicals, Olivier Assayas‘ semi-autobiographical film Something in the Air (Après mai) is a slice of life at a time of wholesale liberation. These Trotskyites look to dissolve the government’s ‘Special Brigades’ and win student rights through pamphlets and graffiti, their actions’ consequences escalating while their political bent begins to wane. There’s nothing like growing up to put an end to youthful idealism.

Gilles (Clement Metayer) is the epitome of boutique rebel, carving an ‘A’ for anarchy on his desk and listening to Syd Barrett while painting. A prospective artist, his dreams are easily...

Nostalgia for the Light; The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists!; The Turin Horse; American Pie: Reunion; Goodbye First Love; Safe

Rooted in the earth of Chile's Atacama desert, 10,000 feet above sea level, Patricio Guzmán's spine-tinglingly profound docu-poem Nostalgia for the Light (2010, New Wave, 12) explores the dizzyingly diverse efforts of those sifting the sands of the present in search of the past. For astronomers looking out into the ethereal clarity of the sky, Atacama is a haven where the very boundaries of our universe become darkness visible, revealing the origins of our world. For the wives and relatives of "the disappeared", those murdered and buried under Pinochet's brutal regime, the fragmentary traces of their loved ones are lost within that same shifting desert, crying out to be found like distant voices, still lives, calling from the edge of the galaxy.

Elegantly, astutely, elegiacally, Guzmán pulls these threads (and others) together,...

Following up his epic 330-minute Carlos is no easy feat, but we couldn’t be more excited for the next feature from France’s Olivier Assayas. Premiering this morning in Venice was Something in the Air, his early ’70s-set feature that follows a group of kids who join in political protests and social revolt in Europe. The first clip has been revealed, which show the gang diving right into the trenches as they battle police on the streets. Check it out below for the coming-of-age film starring Clément Métayer, Lola Créton and Félix Armand, as well as a statement from Assayas himself regarding the feature.

Director’s statement:

I don’t really believe in autobiography at the cinema. One always writes about recent and distant memories that are more or less distorted and more or less idealised. This is particularly the case when talking about adolescence, an age when our...

Following the Toronto International Film Festival line-up earlier this week, the 69th Venice Film Festival has weighed in with their choices this morning. Outside of films also premiering at Tiff — including most notably Ramin Bahrani‘s At Any Price and Terrence Malick‘s To the Wonder – they have a strong batch of films not at that fest. We have the highly anticipated next feature from Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours, Carlos), titled Something In The Air, as well as Brian De Palma‘s sensual thriller Passion with Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace.

Then things get a little silly with Harmony Korine‘s James Franco and Selena Gomez gangster/party film Spring Breakers. Rounding out the other major titles are Susanne Bier following up her Oscar win with Love Is All You Need and Spike Lee’s Michael Jackson documentary Bad 25. The lack of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s heavily rumored The Master...

After a remarkable presence at Cannes Film Festival this year, Indian cinema hasn’t had much luck with the prestigious Venice International Film Festival.

The festival, headed by new Director Alberto Barbera announced its lineup today, but no Indian film figures in any of the sections.

The 69th edition of the festival will run from August 29-September 8, 2012. Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist will be the opening film.

In its 2011 edition, the festival had screened Sonchidi by Amit Dutta and Anhey Ghorhey da Daan(Alms of the Blind Horse) by Gurvinder Singh in the Orizzonti (New Horizons) section.

Films in Competition:

Olivier Assayas – APRÈS Mai (Something In The Air)

France, 122′

Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Félix Armand

Ramin Bahrani – At Any Price

USA, UK, 100′

Zac Efron, Dennis Quaid, Kim Dickens, Heather Graham

Marco Bellocchio – Bella Addormentata

Italy, France, 115′

Toni Servillo, Isabelle Huppert, Alba Rohrwacher, Michele Riondino, Maya Sansa, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio

Peter Brosens,...

Un amour de jeunesse (English title: Goodbye First Love)

directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

Written by Mia Hansen-Løve

France/Germany, 2011

There is a common belief among many people that one’s first love is the one remembered most vividly. It is the one that shapes us the most, that taught us the most, and so on and so forth. The exuberance of finding love for the first time is clearly a pivotal moment in everyone’s lives, in particular if that love is experienced during the formative teenage years. Just how much control does a person have over the intensity with which that first experience shapes them? What might occur if the focus of one’s affections during that pivotal episode in one’s life re-emerges out of the past? What emotions might emerge and how might they influence that individual’s current life? Such is the subject matter which Mia Hansen-Løve...

Mia Hansen-Løve proves that less is more in a beautifully observed tale of a student's romantic entanglements

The critic and columnist Alan Brien once told me about a friend consulting him about an autobiography he'd been asked to write. It was the mid-1950s when angry young men were all the rage, the friend was about 30 and clearly the publishers expected him to deliver something socially significant. "In 1939," he asked, referring to his sixth-form days, "whom should I have been reading and what should I have been thinking?" Somewhat mischievously Brien suggested he should have discovered Orwell, become disillusioned with Auden and Isherwood, had a sceptical approach to the Popular Front but a high regard for John Strachey, and so on. When I checked out the eventual book these were precisely the attitudes expressed, though whether these aspects of the author's intellectual development all came from Brien's tuition I can't be sure.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Hollywood’s romantic cinema is quite rightly derided for its sexlessness and its emotional disingenuousness, mistaking Hallmark truisms and cloying, ham-fisted musical montages for real emotional depth. A stereotypical argument it is perhaps, but one which has been proven time and again by the comparative honesty of European cinema’s approach. Goodbye First Love, a passionate and affecting Franco-German drama, offers uncommonly insightful observations of young adult relationships with everything that this entails.

Camille (Lola Créton) and Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) are young and very much in love. But despite this, their differing expectations are a source of considerable friction; Camille, the younger of the two, favours a dependent, all-encapsulating love, while Sullivan tends towards a more disconnected sense of self-sustainability. When he decides to travel away, Camille feels her life disintegrating, and the two of them, over a sprawling time period, struggle to come to terms with it.

American Pie: Reunion (15)

(Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, 2012, Us) Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Eugene Levy, Alyson Hannigan. 113 mins

It's rare to see teen-movie characters all grown up, and this illustrates the reason why: they just make us feel old. The gang's all here, reverting to their old non-pc habits even as they mourn their lost youth. It's patchy and often dodgy comedy, but there's still something heartening about Stifler's defiant idiocy and Jim's dad's middle-age second chance.

Safe (15)

(Boaz Yakin, 2012, Us) Jason Statham, Catherine Chan. 94 mins

Triads, Russian mobsters, cops and everyone else in New York falls foul of Statham in another ludicrous but fast-moving actioner.

Two Years At Sea (U)

(Ben Rivers, 2012, UK) Jake Williams. 90 mins

Extraordinary, otherworldly observation of a modern-day Scottish hermit.

Goodbye First Love (15)

(Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011, Fra/Ger) Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky. 111 mins

Heartfelt study of a young teen's formative romantic fortunes.

The Lucky One (12A)

(Scott Hicks,...

Mia Hansen-Løve's second film is a clever, persuasive examination of the meaning of first love – and it has a clear streak of autobiography

The 32-year-old film-maker Mia Hansen-Løve began her career acting, notably for Olivier Assayas, whose partner she became. Then, as a director herself, she impressed audiences deeply with her breakthrough feature Father of My Children, in 2009. Un Amour de Jeunesse is a delicate love story, tender and erotic, and drenched in the idealism and seriousness of its central character, Camille (Lola Créton), looking like a very young Penélope Cruz. It is released here under the English title Goodbye First Love, which I think is slightly wrong, pre-empting audience expectations and misreading the film's ambiguity.

This is a fluent, confident and deeply felt movie: unmistakably, if not exactly nakedly, autobiographical. As ever with this kind of personal work, there is an extra pleasure in pondering how and why...

Mia Hansen-Løve's second film is a clever, persuasive examination of the meaning of first love – and it has a clear streak of autobiography

The 32-year-old film-maker Mia Hansen-Løve began her career acting, notably for Olivier Assayas, whose partner she became. Then, as a director herself, she impressed audiences deeply with her breakthrough feature Father of My Children, in 2009. Un Amour de Jeunesse is a delicate love story, tender and erotic, and drenched in the idealism and seriousness of its central character, Camille (Lola Créton), looking like a very young Penélope Cruz. It is released here under the English title Goodbye First Love, which I think is slightly wrong, pre-empting audience expectations and misreading the film's ambiguity.

This is a fluent, confident and deeply felt movie: unmistakably, if not exactly nakedly, autobiographical. As ever with this kind of personal work, there is an extra pleasure in pondering how and why...

The French director talks about the teenage love affair that led her to make films, and the thrill of discovering a new star actress

Your forthcoming film, Goodbye First Love, is about teenage romance. What were you like as a teenager?

Love was everything to me. My parents were both philosophy teachers, so I was brought up to value it more than money or possessions. It was all about beauty, truth, freedom and love. I did have a big, very real, very powerful relationship with someone from when I was 15 till 19. I thought he would be the only one I could ever love, and when it was gone it left a void in me. I think I've tried to turn that void into some kind of creativity ever since, using the sadness to do something poetic.

Love is universal as a topic for a film. I mean, everyone has a...

Love stories can go either one of two ways: the long, sweet and syrupy route or the honest, gritty and realistic route. Goodbye First Love takes the latter road and the results are absolutely charming. Spoken in French and subtitled in English, expect to pay close attention to the film’s dialogue. The actors give lovely performances and the lighting and photography are truly gorgeous. Goodbye First Love is a bittersweet tale of romance that sheds light on a very tender subject: young love.

The film begins in Paris 1999 and follows young, sweet Camille (Lola Créton), a 15 year-old girl who has a lustful relationship with a boy named Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). Their romance is very physical but with sincere moments of tenderness. All of this captured in the first few minutes of the film quite well. They appear naked and chase one another throughout a house. They galavant in the...

The great Maurice Pialat reportedly claimed to edit his films by paring away all the footage that didn’t strike him as true. This may account for the sustained emotional intensity of his work, his jarring transitions between scenes (it’s rarely easy to gauge how much time passes from one sequence to the next), and the way his movies accurately capture the feeling of being alive even when their content departs from strict realism. A similarly cryptic logic governs Mia Hansen-Løve’s The Father of My Children (2009), a film that portrays both coming-of-age and the legacy of art as a steady accumulation of observations. The movie’s timeframe encompasses about a year, though Hansen-Løve avoids any strategies that may give the story any recognizable pattern. Yes, it’s divided more or less in half, but there’s no marked change in the tone of the storytelling: impactful, even joyous...

Spring is here, folks! New love and life are upon us now that the dreary, ice-cold fingers of winter have withdrawn. Loosely translated into the logic of releasing films, this means documentaries and romance melodramas abound! They pop up from studios like daisies from freshly hoed lawns. Head to theaters this weekend and take in the sweet love of soldiers, vampires, Rastafarians, and even chimpanzees. And don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers on your way.

Zac Efron is “The Lucky One” in the adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ novel opening in theaters this weekend. A marine stationed in Iraq, Efron’s Logan is saved from certain death when a photo of the beautiful Beth (Taylor Schilling) distracts him. Though he originally plans to find and thank her for unknowingly saving his life, Logan ultimately keeps the story to himself once they meet, but hangs around just, well, ‘cause.

The subject of one’s first love is a tricky thing to capture on film. There’s a mystical tint to the days, months, or even years that one spends ensconced in the presence of the first person to whom the word “love” first attaches itself in one’s mind. Places, songs, foods, people, ideas… they all become branded with the name of the person we shared them with, and as such become entwined with the emotional attachments as well.

Goodbye First Love is a film that understands that the concept of a first love is not a simple matter of person and time. It goes far beyond that, and the emotional echoes of those moments will last for long after the relationship itself is over. Love doesn’t die, it just hides and bides its time, waiting for the moment where it can finally remind you of how it felt to be there.

Title: Goodbye First Love Director: Mia Hansen-Love Starring: Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Magne-Havard Brekke, Valérie Bonneton, Serge Renko, Ozay Fecht, Max Ricat There’s no one way to tell a love story. Often, romances are recounted on the big screen out of order, to present the happiest of times and the low points without explicitly distinguishing the two. Cinematic examples range from Annie Hall to 500 Days of Summer to Peter and Vandy, and many, many more. That tactic effectively captures what makes the relationship work, the spark and the connection, by citing instances of true delight and weaving them into a grander universe in which these two people exist just [ Read More ]...

We all remember our first kisses and heartbreaks, the alternating agony and ecstasy. Mia Hansen-Løve (All is Forgiven, Father of my Children), the gifted French writer/director tackles the delicate subject head on in Goodbye First Love and the result is one of the most truthful and heartfelt films about first love.Camille (Lola Créton, first seen as a child bride in Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard) and Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) are a young couple very much in love. Naturally, for Camille, their love is the greatest love ever existed in the history of mankind. So when Sullivan decides to quit school and embark on a journey to self discovery in South America, she is devastated. Their affair ends in Camille's failed suicide attempt.Five years pass by and...

Television and movies love to indulge us in pre-adulthood nostalgia. Whether the bait is loose (young hooligans causing a ruckus) or more specific and event-oriented (prom, which we've seen less of lately because, well, prom sucks), the powers that be tug at our heartstrings and force us to look back at a time free of major responsibilities and full of fresh experiences. The glazed schmaltz can be off-putting for some, but occasionally sincerity shines through, and we get something that captures the emotions extraordinarily well (for this writer's money, "The Virgin Suicides" and "The Girl" are uneven but nail certain feelings on the head). But if we look back without this fondness, what are these stories? Are they merely happenings that somehow affected the person we become, or are they just the product of naive children that didn't know better? Mia Hansen-Løve's "Goodbye First Love" attempts a critical look...

Red State; Bluebeard; 30 Minutes or Less; The Art of Getting By; The British Guide to Showing Off

There are few spectacles more unedifying than that of a director who knows they have made a lousy film blaming critics for their failure. When Kevin Smith's Cop Out was justifiably trashed by critics, the director had the gall to liken the reviews for his lame, lazy Bruce Willis vehicle to the playground bullying of a "retarded kid'" (his words, folks). Yet for proof that Smith knew that he had sold out, one need look no further than Red State (2011, Entertainment One, 18), a low-budget throwback to the indie-spirited glory days of Clerks that marks a sparky – if haphazard – return to form. Believe me, no one who could make a film as ballsy as Red State could be under any illusions about the dreadful balderdash of Cop Out.

Made for a reported $4m...