French Film Festival — A–Z of films

Binoche gives her all, stripping away any vestiges of actressy pretence to assimilate herself in the community while at the same time investing her performance with an authentic conviction.

Less would be more, as Beckett knew all too well.

Desplechin eases us into the goings-on without sacrificing any of Roth’s complicated and thorny subject matter.

Corsini agilely combines elements of cinéma verité and farce.

France is a supremely sad film, maybe the saddest Dumont has made in its interplay of the true and the fake.

This is satire. Sharp, observant, but unlike British films in similar vein, never cutting.

A deceptively unassuming and remarkably solid piece of work.

Swann Arlaud as Yann Andréa and Emmanuelle Devos as Michèle Manceaux give tremendous performances that circle around discoveries of deep personal truths.

Bergery crafts an intimate portrait of loneliness and rediscovery, and of particular insecurities pertaining to a certain age.

Audiard captures the fluid nature of relationships for a younger generation navigating both on and offline opportunities and, because this is French, it also features plenty of gracefully worked sexual encounters.

The autumn setting fits it perfectly, because although this is the change of the year as things die back for winter, it is also blazing with colour and hopefulness.

This is the playground as a warzone, where the sandpit might, indeed, be as deep as the sea and hold dead bodies and where adult authority might only make things worse.

If Kruithof’s main ambition with Promises is to make audiences debate and ponder over the relationships between politicians and the public then it is definitely succeeds in its efforts to bring these puzzling and interesting topics to light.

The best scenes are those where the human condition and awareness of teenagers everywhere at the cusp of adulthood encounters the unfathomable.

Lafosse makes excellent choices with his editor Marie-Hélène Dozo (long-time collaborator of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) in what is shown on screen and what is left out for us to fill in.

Never directly asking the question, but leaving liberté, égalité and fraternité to hang in the air between scenes and lines, Périot’s latest gives a voice to the voiceless, the disenfranchised, the forgotten.

There's a subtlety to all this that speaks well of Meyer's thoughtfulness - she never goes for easy options such as having one character be prejudiced against the other, instead simply allowing a respectful attitude to grow into an increasingly strengthening bond.

A film that celebrates the joy and fears associated with youthful lust, while exploring ideas of internal cultural conflict, without making it feel tacky or like a diatribe.

The audience laughed at times that were not meant to be that kind of funny, a primate exhalation of surprise and relief.