Tag: France

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Art Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
James McNeill Whistler

Courtesy of Exhibition on Screen

Exhibition on Screen: James McNeill Whistler

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 90m

*****

A look at the work of 19th Century painter Whistler, seen through the lens of the 2026 Tate Britain exhibition – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, 15th September

Before watching this latest Exhibition on Screen feature, I was able to visit Tate Britain’s stunning James McNeill Whistler show, which sits very much at the film’s core. The film had the effect of making me want to go back for further visits.

It opens with shots of a Victorian concert hall interior where the unseen Whistler (voice: Bret Jones) is addressing the room with his spoken lecture on art, something the film will return to towards its close. After a montage of brushes, painting surfaces and palettes, establishing shots of Tate Britain take us straight into the current Whistler show. “People sometimes think of Whistler as being based in French art, and sometimes as being based in British art,” explains Carol Jacobi, Curator of British Art 1850-1915, Tate Britain, “whereas…he was very much an independent…and very much leading the avant-garde in both those countries.”

Susan Grace Galassi, Curator Emeritas, The Frick Collection, New York, who considers Whistler one of the greatest American artists, notes that he didn’t distinguish between fine or applied art, that he was as great a painter as he was a printmaker.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

La Femme Infidèle
(The Unfaithful Wife)

La Femme Infidèle (The Unfaithful Wife)

Director – Claude Chabrol – 1969 – France – Cert. 15 – 98m

*****

A man suspects his wife is having an affair, hires a private detective, and then acts upon what emerges… – back out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 11th; Claude Chabrol – Elements of Crime, a season of the director’s films, plays at BFI Southbank from Tuesday, September 1st to Tuesday, October 6th 2026.

Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet from Just Before Nightfall, 1971; Cop au Vin, 1985, both Claude Chabrol; The Bride Wore Black, François Truffaut, 1966) lives outside Paris with his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran, then the director’s wife, from Les Biches, 1968, Le Boucher, 1970, both Claude Chabrol; Babette’s Feast, Gabriel Axel, 1987) and pre-teenage son Michel (Stéphane Di Napoli from Que la Bête Meure, Claude Chabrol, 1969).

He works in an office in Paris, to which he commutes by car. She often goes into town, for instance to get her hair done or visit the cinema. One day, he becomes suspicious and hires a private detective to follow her, who reports back that she is visiting the apartment of another man Victor Pegala every few days.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Just an Illusion
(Juste Une Illusion)

Just an Illusion (Juste Une Illusion)

Directors – Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache – 2026 – France – Cert. 12a – 119m

***

The trials and tribulations of a young French teenager in the mid 1980s – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 11th

1985. 13-year-old Vincent Dayan (Simon Boubill) is fed up with living at home with his elder brother Arnaud (Alexis Rosenstiehl) who loves listening to new wave music while Vincent prefers funk. Vincent wants his own room, because he can’t do his homework in there with Arnaud playing his music, and Arnaud doesn’t want him putting up his own music posters. The two brothers can be fighting tooth and nail one minute, and relaxing together the next.

Vincent is also fed up with the constant arguing of their parents Sandrine (Camille Cottin from House of Gucci, Ridley Scott, 2021; Call My Agent!, TV series, 2015-2020; Allied, Robert Zemeckis, 2017) and Yves (Louis Garrel from Little Women, Greta Gerwig, 2019; Redoutable, Michael Hazanavicius, 2017; The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003).

Dad has a run in with neighbour and car park attendant Berger (Pierre Lottin from The Stranger, 2025; When Autumn Falls, 2024, By the Grace of God, 2018; all François Ozon) when he discovers he’s lost his cherished no.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Pressure

Pressure

Director – Anthony Maras – 2026 – UK, France – Cert. 12a – 100m

*****

Days before the proposed Allied D-Day landings in 1944, the Scots meteorologist in charge becomes convinced that it should be postponed due to impending bad weather – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, September 9th

Taking leave from his heavily pregnant wife Liz (Tamsin Topolski), due in hospital imminently for the birth, Scots meteorologist RAF Gp Capt. James Stagg (Andrew Scott) travels by military car to Southwick House, the stately home requisitioned for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), where he meets his own liaison officer Andrew Carter (Jojo Macari) and, in what is to be his office, MTC First Lt. Kay Summersby (a nicely understated Kerry Condon), Eisenhower’s private secretary. All communications with the General go through her.

From their first encounter – three days from the proposed D-Day landing on Monday morning, when USAAF Col. Krick (Chris Messina) and his weather room staff are improvising a version of The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B with a piano – Stagg is less than impressed with his American counterpart. Krick boasts that he not only correctly predicted the weather for Eisenhower ahead of various military battles in North Africa and elsewhere, but also did the same for David O.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Super Nature

Super Nature

Director – Ed Sayers – 2025 – UK – Cert. PG – 82m

*****

The process of shooting the natural world on the Super 8 amateur home movie format of the 1970s brings a participating community of people closer to nature – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 4th

This starts and ends with the image zooming in to and zooming out from Super 8 footage. The Kodak Super 8 system was the premier format for home movies in the late1960s through the 1970s before it was replaced for the most part by videotape in the 1980s.

For some years, Ed Sayers was involved in a Super 8 film competition wherein punters would enter their films, and most of the material was much the same – family memories or holiday footage. Some of it extremely wild. As he puts it, the medium “painted our memories on film.”

One year, a very different submission turned up from a Frenchman named Roger. Roger had shot footage of flamingoes. 

The nature of Super 8 was that the film came on little cartridges of reversal film inserted into the camera. In terms of footage, the cartridges didn’t run that long. You’d shoot by squeezing the trigger, which would stop filming when released. … Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Landship

Landship

Director – Callum Burn – 2026 – UK – Cert. 15 – 89m

****

A British tank crew on the offensive on WW1’s Western Front becomes stranded behind enemy lines when their vehicle is immobilised – out on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital in the UK and Ireland on Monday August 10th

Doom-laden music. Historial WW1 footage. 1917. Captions explain the situation. The Allies, surrounded on three sides near Ypres, France, push forward, sustaining heavy casualties. Visuals: a lone British officer – you can tell by his revolver and moustache – moves around in the murk near a barbed wire barricade. One hesitates to say “advances” because he appears to be going back and forth. Possibly, he’s lost. A German knocks him out with a rifle butt.

Half-way through the movie, we’ll realise this sequence was a flash-forward. Perhaps the screenplay could have delivered a better oening (this one feels like it came out of the editing).

August 22nd 1917. Four privates inside an industrial metal structure, playing cards, argueing. One of them, Ernest (Ernest Hans Braedy – Nadav Burstein) is sketching a bird from memory. Their C.O., who we’ll later learn is Lieutenant Hill (David Dobson from Spitfire Over Berlin, 2022; Lancaster Skies, 2019; Fray Bentos, short, 2014, all Callum Burn), introduces a senior officer Captain Richardson (Vin Hawke from Battle Over Britain, Callum Burn, 2023) who is joining them today.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

A Private Life
(Vie Privée)

A Private Life (Vie Privée)

Director – Rebecca Zlotowski – 2025 – France – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

A psychiatrist with an unusual eye problem must unravel the mystery of the recent death of one of her patients – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 26th

Parisian psychiatrist Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster from The Mauritanian, Kevin Macdonald, 2021, The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme, 1991; Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, 1976) is having a hard time. One of her patients Pierre is terminating his sessions after years of treatment following his visit to a hypnotist who managed to cure him of his long-standing smoking habit in one session; indeed, he may sue Dr. Lilian for non-effectiveness of treatment. Another regular Paula hasn’t turned up for her last two sessions, and Dr. Lilian is chasing the invoices.

The reason Paula hasn’t turned up, Dr. Lilian learns in a phone call from Paula’s daughter Valérie (Luana Bajrami (Luana Bajrami from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma, 2019)), is simple: Paula has just died. Valérie invites Dr. Lilian to the Shemira (basically, a Jewish wake) only for Paula’s outraged husband Simon (Matthieu Amalric from Nino, Pauline Loquès, 2025; The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson, 2014; Munich, Steven Spielberg, 2005) to tell her to get out.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Mars Express
(Mars Express)

Mars Express (Mars Express)

Director – Jérémie Périn – 2023 – France – Cert. 15 – 85m

*****

In the 23rd Century, a private investigator and her resurrected robot assistant go to Mars to investigate the murder of a cybernetics student – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June

The difference between humans and machines is one of the great themes of science fiction from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) to Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995). Mars Express takes its name from an Earth-Mars shuttle which, following a bravura action / chase sequence early on, not unlike the one at the start of Ghost in the Shell, is used by private investigator Aline Ruby (voice: Léa Drucker from Custody, Xavier Legrand, 2017) and her assistant Carlos Rivera (voice: Daniel Njo Lobé) to transport a captured suspect from Earth to Mars where, it transpires on arrival, the relevant paperwork to detain their prisoner has been wiped from their on-person devices and internet-accessible office, meaning they are forced to release their prisoner. The narrative is littered with cleverly thought out ideas like this.

The setting is the 23rd Century and mostly Mars, where the pair are hired to search for a second year cybernetics student who has gone missing.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Little Amélie
or
The Character of Rain
(Amélie
et
la Métaphysique des Tubes)

Little Amélie or The Character of Rain
(Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes)

Directors – Maïlys Vallade & Liane-Cho Han – 2025 – France – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

A Belgian diplomat’s baby daughter growing up in Japan comes to realise, by her third birthday, that she is not God – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June.

In the beginning was God. At least, that’s how the new-born Amélie (French language version voice: Loïse Charpentier) sees herself. She is, essentially, a tube which swallows, digests and ejects (as per the film’s French language title). She has a perfect command of verbal language, so sees no need to say anything. That said, she makes great use of voice-over throughout the piece. She remains motionless, practising “the gift of serenity”. “Your child is a vegetable”, proclaims a doctor to the child’s parents. She remains in this state until her second birthday, when life is interrupted by an earthquake – nothing significant in the wider scheme of things, but a momentous event in the interior life of a small child. She attempts to speak, but to her horror the words in her head don’t emerge, only baby noises.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Nino
(Nino)

Nino (Nino)

Director – Pauline Loquès – 2025 – France – Cert. 15 – 96m

****1/2

A young man attempts to cope with the news that he has throat cancer in his first weekend following diagnosis – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 19th

There are some films you watch which are so close to parts of your own life that it’s impossible to be objective about them. This doesn’t happen very often to this writer, but it happened on this film. Over a year ago, completely out of the blue, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a UK citizen I’m entitled to free healthcare, and as a cancer patient my treatment is fast-tracked. My initial experience was of being tested for cancer, waiting a week or so for the results to come back, and having the presence of the cancer confirmed. That gave me around ten days to adjust, but it was a terrible shock. Not least because my (mis)understanding was that men didn’t get breast cancer, only women did, so that couldn’t possibly be what I had. And, obviously, it was life-changing.

Cut to the film Nino. A name film, named after its central character. What follows is my own highly personalised reaction as a cancer patient / survivor.… Read the rest