Movie review - "Possession" (1981) ***

 Balls to the wall insanity with Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill going toe to toe. He's a spy, she's his wife, she leaves him for another guy, he goes nuts, she goes nuts. Hard to follow. Mostly interesting.

Movie review - "Captive" (1986) **1/2

 Doesn't quite work - Paul Mayersberg was perhaps over ambitious using the Patty Heart story as he had to demonstrate real character change, and the inexperienced cast doesn't help. But it takes a swing. Memorable images and moods. The Edge did music. 

Mayersberg did work for Nic Roeg and it's got his horniness - we first meet Irina Brook naked with a lover and she takes her clothes off a lot. 

Movie review - "Ran" (1985) **** (warning: spoilers)

 I'll admit to being a phililstine and to drifting off occasionally, wishing there were more close ups and struggling to tell people apart (a few more close ups would've worked wonders). The beautiful images sometimes distance me - musical scores over battles. This was deliberate to avoid feeling of pain.

But it's certainy rich and I'm still thinking about it. Even if the main lord is a dill - a man who murdered and massacred his way to the top dividing his land into three; the elder two sons start fighting almost immediately, the "good" son is smart at war but dumb enough to be attached to his dumb dad.

Nice characters - third son, the jester (I guess), the second son's ethical general, the second son's nice wife, her blind brother. They all end up dead except the brother. (Well we don't see the second son or ethical general die we just assume).

Nasty characters - the lord, the elder two sons,  the wife of the eldest who shags the second one (easily the best character with the most brilliant scenes and death). They all die too.

I was confused who was the army at the end against the second son - the people who won I guess.  I assume neighbouring lord.

Movie review - "The Loner" (1987) * (aka "Le Solitaire") **

Jean Paul Belmondo is probably best know still to English speaking audiences for his French classics but he made an awful lot of commercial crud that was popular in France. From the 70s to the 80s you could count on an annual Belmondo film where he'd play a secret agent or cop going around bashing people up. This one flopped and ended the cycle.

This one is best described as Belmondo's most "McBain" movie. He's a tough cop who discusses retirement with his partner - who is duly killed by a psycho baddie, leaving Belmondo to look after his cute kid. There's some other cops, a visit to a nightclub where they play hilariously awful 80s French pop songs, a visit to a brothel, tired action sequences that seem out of a TV show.

The relationship between Belmondo and the kid is undercooked, the villains are dull. It's a very ordinary movie.

Movie review - "The Vultures" (1984) *** (warning: spoilers)

A French Foreign Legion film with a World War Two backdrop - Jean Paul Belmondo is a legionnaire whose platoon is mostly wiped out by Germans, while trying to retrieve six million in old bullion. There are only five survivors, which makes the film cheaper, as they try to get the money back. Belmondo wants to take the money for himself while Michel Constantine wants them to Do the Right Thing.

Act two has Belmondo lock Constantine in a bank and dealing with a banker and his wife, who gives the film some female glamour. Act three involves the emergence of a German soldier who used to sleep with the wife.

The director was Henry Verneuil, a good, solid commercial director who knows how to keep things moving. Belmondo is perfectly cast as a legionnaire lacking in scruple, determined to make some money, a man's man with an eye for the ladies, strutting around in his singlet with a machine gun being tough and cynical, etc.

The film is astonishingly cynical - the only person interested in doing their duty is Constantine.  Belmondo wants the cash, as does his sidekick; there's a fat cowardly soldier, a cowardly bank manager, the manager's trampy wife, and a German officer. Constantine shoots dead Belmondo's ally; he Belmondo ends up teaming up with the wife and German  and killing Constantine. Then he and the German double cross each other. A bank manager electrocutes himself urinating on a live wire.

The visuals are great - trucks, desert sand, blue seas, old African buildings etc. There's lots of double crossing and people going after money though some script issues - how did Belmondo on foot track down the German in a tank? I get that the German read the map wrong... but how did Belmondo know where to find him?

But on the whole this is a no nonsense heist film very much in the vein of Kelly's Heroes and Three Kings.

Movie review - "Mad Love" (aka L'amour braque) (1985) *1/2

Frances Huster is a bank robber who goes out with Sophie Marceau - they both become involved with an idiot (Tcheky Karyo). It's based on Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. 

It gets off to a weird start with a bank robbery by what seems to be theatre students - running around and yelling in masks as if they're doing a performance piece. That sets the tone for the movie - which operates at a fast, heightened theatrical pace, non naturalistic (especially the dialogue).  I didn't go for it - maybe you have to be used to the work of the director.

I only watched really for Sophie Marceau who is pretty and gives a decent performance, including some obligatory full frontal nudity (other girls in the cast have to do it as well). But this was heavy going. Lots of over the top acting, a high body count, lack of logic, plenty of ham. Maybe if I'd seen other films from this director. Or maybe it was just bad.

Movie review - "L'effrontee" (1985) (aka "An Impudent Girl") (1985) **

Early film from Charlotte Gainsborough, French showbiz royalty, being a product of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsborough. She was only 13 or so and plays a girl around the same age. The story is similar to Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding with Gainsborough as the girl on the cusp of adulthood living in a small town, who has no mother and is close to her annoying brother (as opposed to a friend); unlike in McCullers there is no wedding or notable servant character - instead she develops a sort of crush on a 13 year old piano playing prodigy, and announces herself as the girl's manger (this is cute) and fends off the advances of a delivery guy who has the hots for her (this is dodgy).

There's a slightly uncomfortable element to the scenes of men pursuing Gainsborough and her running around in a swimsuit etc - I've noticed a few French films with pre pubescent girls have this whiff of dodginess about them (eg My Father the Hero). Some of it is charming though and Gainsborough is very good.

Movie review - "Le choc" (1982) **

French cinema didn't get more commercial in 1982 - you've got Alain Delon as a hitman who wants to retire, forced to do the inevitable "one last job" (who actually invented this trope, by the way?), falling in love with Catherine Deneuve (who invented that trope?). They canoodle, smoke cigarettes and have great hair while bad music plays on the soundtrack. The baddies force Delon into a job and he kicks arse.

Delon looks moody and melancholic, does a very super hero things, and talks about his long lost love to Deneuve (this seems to be a thing in French cinema - the all-powerful ex, who made the Person What They Are Today). There is some violence, Deneuve looks bored in what is a nothing part, really. Delon isn't that much better. They look like aging film stars rather than real people and the handling feels like a telemovie.

Movie review - "The Student" (1988) (or "L'etudiante") **

Before she became familiar to English speaking countries with Braveheart, Sophie Marceau was actually a big name in France since she was a teenager. This is a vehicle for her in her early 20s. She gets a big star entrance, taking being wrapped up in ski head gear and taking it off to reveal her beauty. The person who sees it is Vincent Lindon, who is first presented as a dag - pink lipstick to help with the glare in ski gear, but eventually turns out to be a pants man: a musician and composer with a track record with the ladies. The film tracks their romance.

It's not much of a story - most of the conflict comes because Marceau is in her final year of studying to be a teacher and feels she should be focusing on that. Also Minton goes on tour and isn't sure he should settle down either. Both get jealous and they yell at each other. They make up.

There's lots of talk about pop culture - Lindon describes his music as a cross between Jim Morrison and Elston John. There is also some terrible music - we hear too much of Lindon's band, and the stuff on the soundtrack isn't much better.

Marie-Christine Barrault (the star of Cousin Cousine) makes a cameo as herself. But the big attraction here is Marceau who is very good looking. She's required to do some full frontal nudity - is this something no French actress can avoid? Still, she's got to rank with one of the most gorgeous stars of all time.