Two balding men travel to Instanbul for a transplant in Manoël Dupont’s uneven yet fascinating hybrid film Before/After.
Before/After’s Enigmatic Ellipses
Tag: France
Dandelion’s Odyssey Equates the Cosmos with a Single Flower
Despite the powerful idea at its core, the fundamental premise of Dandelion’s Odyssey makes it extremely hard to identify with its characters.
Wild Foxes Bobs and Weaves Through the Minefields of Toxic Masculinity
Valery Carnoy’s boxing drama Wild Foxes boasts a standout performance from Samuel Kircher as a teenage boy navigating the mindfields of masculinity.
Le Brutaliste
The construction of the Grande Arche de la Défense is recreated in loving detail in Stéphane Demoustier’s crowdpleasing, yet underwhelming The Great Arch.
Kika’s Dominatrix Service
BDSM and domination is used as a metaphor for the human condition in Alexe Poukine’s Kika, a deeply heartfelt tale about overcoming grief.
L’Aventura Travels Free from the Anxiety of Influence
The very definition of a hangout movie, ACID opener L’Aventura explores the quotidian moments that most contemporary cinema often breezes by.
One For The Pure Cinema Heads
Reflection in a Dead Diamond is a loving and deeply satisfying riff on classic spy tropes with a true and abiding love of the genre.
Snowgirls
Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower is a forbidding and slow riff on Hans Christian Andersen with a movie star performance from Marion Cotillard.
That Summer in Paris. A Small Delight.
A 30-year-old woman’s jaunt to Paris yields all sorts of beautiful insights on the nuances of life in Valentine Cadic’s That Summer in Paris.
Block Pass. A Tyred Vintage.
Antoine Chevrollier’s Block Pass captures its working-class milieu well but suffers due to its tired secondhand framing of queer suffering.