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.
One For The Pure Cinema Heads
Tag: France
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.
The Story of Souleymane. Cycling Through Limbo.
The Story of Souleymane is a tightly-focussed, Dardenne-esque tale of an immigrant delivery driver trying to make ends meet that brims with heartfelt emotions.
Holy Cow. Curdled Maturity.
Love and cheese freely intermingle in Louise Courvoisier’s diverting yet underwhelming debut Holy Cow, (somehow) playing in Un Certain Regard.
Two Glasses of Wine and a Packet of Chips
Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas, 2024) is the lockdown comedy that finds little dramatic potential in its set-up, feeling like a 100-minute episode of a sitcom.
For Night Will Come. The Vampire Genre (Partially) Undone.
The perils of being a vampire in a regular-old world are subtly investigated in For Night Will Come — beating away clichés before eventually succumbing to them.
The Dreamer. Bittersweet Truth Through Sculpture.
Sculpture unlocks the essence of a man in Anaïs Tellenne’s tender, enigmatic debut The Dreamer — live from Venice Film Festival.
Sidonie In Japan. Translation, Adrift
Sidonie In Japan is a classic example of a fine actress phoning it in, wasting Huppert’s talents in a generic, unconvincing cross-cultural examination of grief.