Film
If I asked you if you wanted to watch a seven hour film your first reaction might be to say, "No, probably not". If I then tell you that the film is very slow paced, has a grungy look, has rain in almost every scene, is in black & white and has subtitles you will probably laugh and say, "No way". If I then tell you that the film is somewhat confusing at times, has one 35 minute real time scene where an old drunk writer stumbles around his dingy house looking for plum brandy till he collapses and also includes an extended sequence where a young girl abuses and kills a cat you might turn the other way and run.

But there are some of you out there who will be intrigued and wonder why this film has the reputation that it does and has been called one of the best films of the 1990's.

I won't lie. Sátántangó is a tough film, a rigorous experience and not one I am completely sure is to...Read the entire review

Movie:
Farewell, Home Sweet Home directed by Otar Iosseliani is a stylistically unique French comedy about a series of interconnected stories in and around Paris.

The film has a loose plot that features a series of characters such as a rich young man who would rather hang around with street ruffians, a young attractive woman who works with her father in a small pub, a snobbish woman who walks around with a stork on her back, a sweet scheming maid, a bunch of crooked businessmen and a lot of plain working class folks that often cross paths, ironically, throughout the film.

The one character who can be considered the film's main character is the teen aged boy (Nico Tarielashvili) who roller blades around Paris between his job as a dishwasher in a restaurant and his street friends who hang out finding ways to get money. He also lusts after the young woman who works across the street f...Read the entire review

Movie
That Day [Ce Jour-La] is a whimsical suspense thriller about the fine line between sanity and insanity.

Directed by Raoul Ruiz - who churns out movies like some people churn out TV shows - That Day has some fine moments although much of it feels a bit thin. Although, I should note, the film is not typical suspense comedy; being a Ruiz film it is in the realm of the surreal.

A young woman named Livia (Elsa Zylberstein) has inherited an extremely large sum of money from her mother. But she is rather simple-minded and naive so her family has decided not to tell her she is rich. They instead have decided to be complicit in her death which has been arranged by her estranged father (Michel Piccoli) who wants the money to pay off debts. With the help of a crooked psychiatrist he releases a psychopath from prison to pay a visit to the Estate where Livia resides.

The psychop...Read the entire review

Born into Southern money and a rather troubled family life Gram Parsons had both the best and the worst in life right from the beginning. Being a talented musician who was supported by his family he parlayed his skills, left Harvard after on semester and headed for California to start making music before things came crashing down.

For those who don't know Gram Parsons was an alt-country [or country rock] rock 'n roll musician who's flamed burned bright for too short a time before he died of a drug overdose in 1975 at the young age of 26. Along with that other group of hallowed musicians who died too young - such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison - Parsons created some fine music. But where each of the others hit their stride early and became legends before death Parsons was just on the cusp of greatness.

He played in the International Submarine Band, The Byrds – where he lent his s...Read the entire review

This DVD includes 16 short films by mostly well known European film directors. The selection is eclectic and sure to please fans of short films. It is, however, just an average collection. Some of the films can be seen on other DVDs such as the shorts by Kieslowski, Godard and Svankmajer. The DVD is Region 2 and must be played on an all region player outside of Region 2. The transfer is overall very good.
The extras include commentary tracks for each film; most of which are by the director.
I have put the shorts in order of preference from great to good to fair to poor.

Jabberwocky (director Jan Svankmajer) [Excellent Surrealism]
Czech Republic/1971/13mins
This short starts with the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carrol and then presents a series of odd, funny, surreal pieces that all have a playful and political undertone.
Video: A bit dated but only adds to the charm.
...Read the entire review

Monday Morning is a charming French comedy about man's need to escape his daily obligations. Tired of his daily factory job as well as the commitments to his family a man leaves for a short trip to get away from it all.

In this film - the 16th by director Otar Iosseliani - a man named Vincent leaves behind his wife, his mother, and his two sons for a few days. At first he just gets away to see his estranged father but then he ends up on a train with a couple bottles of wine and heads of Venice Italy. Along the way he encounters many people, drinks more wine and finds himself in many humorous and interesting situations.

Much like Jacques Tati and Jim Jarmusch director Otar Iosseliani's humor consists of a lot of well-timed sight gags and mostly wordless vignettes.He stages each scene from a comfortable distance and has a dearth of editing, which gives the film a natural unhurried rhythm But u...Read the entire review

The Far Side of the Moon is about many things including two brothers who cannot communicate. But it is mainly about the loneliness of one brother who has a lot of insight into the subject of space travel but doesn't seem to understand himself or those around him.

Philippe is a thirty-something man who works as a telemarketer and has an unfinished dissertation about what he believes is man's narcissistic quest for space travel, which he hopes will give him a chance to get a degree. His brother Andre is a successful television weather man. Both have recently had to deal with the death of their mother. But since they are both opposites they have a tough time talking to one another let alone reaching out and confronting each other over the fact that they are the only two survivors of their mother.

The Far Side of the Moon is a Canadian film that was written, directed and produced by Rober...Read the entire review

Movie:
Whisky is a word that when said almost forces one to make a smile. And so in this film the only time the main characters smile is when they are getting their picture taken; "one, two, three, Whisky!".

Pablo Stoll and Juan Pablo Rebella's Whisky is a Uruguayan deadpan comedy about a middle aged man Jacobo (Andres Pazos) and woman Marta (Mirella Pascual) who get a chance to break away from their daily boring work in a Montevideo sock factory.

Jacobo gets news that his overbearing brother Herman (Jorge Bolani) is coming for a visit. So that Jacobo can avoid embarrassment for being middle-aged and still single he asks his co-worker Marta if she will pretend to be his wife while his brother stays.

The set up is quite good and as the film carries on it becomes evident that Jacopo and Marta are both very lonely people who would probably be better off if they were together...Read the entire review

The Buffalo Boy is a a remarkable film about a young man who leaves home to find food for his hungry water buffalo.

Set in among a waterey swamp world in 1940's Vietnam a fifteen-year-old boy named Kim (Le The Lu) decides to head to the nearest fields to find grass to feed his weak and starving buffalo. He knows by doing this he cannot harvest the crops for his mother and ailing father who are getting to old too work.

Along the way Kim considers joining a group of nomads who are moving a large herd of buffalo in the same direction. They are a rough and tumble bunch who prove more of a threat to Kim - and everyone else - than an asset but he joins them for a while anyway because they provide an opportunity to work.

Eventually, though, Kim moves on and joins up with a new friend to start a business under the noses of the dominate herders - who have threatened to kill them for such an act. ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
So what does God mean to you? Is there an afterlife? If you were born on the other side of the planet would you have a different faith? These are just a few of the questions that filmmakers Francesco Cabras and Alberto Molinari ask the cast and crew from the set of The Passion of The Christ in this engaging documentary

If you watched The Passion of The Christ you might be led to believe that this concept would produce some kind of sermonizing work. But, thankfully, that is not the case. The Big Question is instead a very engaging, artfully made documentary that offers a lot of different ideals and ideas.

Most of the crew are Italian so there are a good number of Catholics but too there are Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and non-believers all of whom give answers that are surprising, thoughtful, enigmatic and sometimes entertaining.

The documentary is structured...Read the entire review

Movie
Carbide and Sorrel is a winning German comedy made in 1963 right before the East German Communist party clamped down on the film industry.

The film - set in 1945 - was one of the few that didn't get censored and it is probably because of the humor in the film which keeps everything light. But despite this there is an undeniably sober undertone as well as an individualistic, anti-authoritarian quality to the film.

The situation is humorous from the start. A bunch of out-of-work men want to rebuild a cigarette factory but the place is completely wrecked. They need carbide in order to use their welding equipment. All of them being smokers they decide to ask Kalle (Erwin Geschonneck) an optimistically naive fellow worker - who is in good shape [and a vegetarian] - if he could go to Wittenberge and bring back carbide.

Kalle doesn't have access to a vehicle so he walks to Wittenb...Read the entire review

One Nite in Mongkok is the kind of film that has been done so often that a viewer could probably write most of the scenario themselves.

After an opening couple of scenes that set up a police versus street gang scenario there is a car crash. This crash leads to an assassin (Daniel Wu) being hired to come to Hong Kong to do a hit. The assassin, however, is set up by a greedy crook who gets caught and strikes a deal with the cops. The cops follow every lead but the assassin is too smart. He has also hooked up with a local prostitute (Cecilia Cheung) [with a heart of gold] who escorts him around the densely populated area known as Mongkok.

The assassin knows what he has to do but - it turns out - he's an okay guy. He's actually more interested in finding his girlfriend - who unbeknownst to him - has been in a terrible car crash that opens the film.

The cops, in turn, are not all good guys. The...Read the entire review

Teen angst gets the CinemaScope treatment in Dandelion an American independent coming-of-age emo tale.

The first scene shows a young man in a field crying. Then he sticks a gun in his mouth and presumedly fires. We don't know if he really does fire because the scene is followed by a blackout and a flashback [or so it seems] to a group of young guys firing guns.

Mason Mullich (Vincent Kartheiser) is a sensitive and intelligent young man. Sort of quiet but in a hip way that makes him not too geeky. His parents are a really unstable couple who seem so mentally fragile that it seems they cannot handle any aspect of life including the raising of a son - who seems to have thus far not developed their personality traits.

Mason catches the eye of the new girl in town Danny (played by Hustle and Flow's Taryn Manning) and they quickly become friends. But it doesn't last long because one rainy...Read the entire review

Movie 1:
Alan Clarke's The Firm is one of the very best British hooligan/gangster films ever made.

Originally made for television in 1989 the 70 minute film crackles with a ferocious energy thanks to both director Alan Clarke's visual style and to Gary Oldman's ruthless performance as a family / businessman who hasn't let go of his immature hooligan roots.

Oldman plays Clive Bissell aka Bexie [or Bexy] a man whose only real goal is to represent England's fighting fans by leading a group of blue collar hooligans to the European football championships. In order to determine which group will go to Europe his 'firm' and two other 'firms' decide to challenge each other to a series of street fights, which seem to have no discernable rules.

Bexie is a bully who has his sights so focused on his goal that even his young son's accident with a Stanley knife razor blade or his wife's threats...Read the entire review

Movie:
Many reviewers have written about the connection between the Hollywood films of the 1970's and the Independent films of today. Often they are talking about the independent spirit that the two periods share. However, in the case of Forty Shades of Blue the comparison is close to literal. The film has the look, the feel, the acting and directing style of a seventies film - although it was only made two years ago.

Rip Torn plays Alan an aging musician in Memphis who is an obnoxious somewhat emotionally erratic personality who is nonetheless liked by everyone. He is twice divorced and now living with Laura (Dina Korzub) an aloof Russian immigrant 30 years his junior who has given him a young son.

They have a relationship that seems to be all on the surface. They go through the motions of their days and nights occassionally cheating on one anther when they get the chance but both...Read the entire review

Movie:
L'amour Dangeroux [aka Trop plein d'amour] is a tepid French road movie about a young man and woman on the run from the law.

Originally made for French television and directed by Steve Suissa the film stars Simon (Nicolas Cazale) a young man who gets caught up in a bungled burglary attempt. While making a getaway one of his cohorts knocks a cop unconsious and into a coma. Everyone gets caught by the authorities except Simon who, naturally, is blamed for hitting the cop.

The basic set up of the story is good; a working class [possibly of Arab decent] young man faces tough odds. But then the film goes awry with the introduction of the Simon's love interest; Noemie (Jennifer Decke) an attractive upper class student who works in her father's bistro. Although Simon and Noemie appear to be no more than passing friends - who frequently eye each other - Noemie decides to give...Read the entire review

Movie:
Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin is a collection of fourteen short comedy films made by Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox in the 1940's and featuring Robert Benchley and a couple other American satirists of the 1920's 30's and 40's.

Benchley was an American satirist, author and actor who got a chance to show off his talents in a number of short films that would play before the main feature. Before making these shorts Benchley was a regular at the Algonquin Hotel where he - along with Dorothy Parker and Robert Sherwood - founded the famous literary Round Table that met in the 1920's.

Comedy has changed over the years and that is evident with this DVD. In part it is the particular humor of Benchley that is dated but too it is the period of time that is on display. I find many 1930's comedies very funny and am a big fan of screwball comedy. But Benchley's com...Read the entire review

Windhorse begins a bit like a PBS documentary. Shot in television-style video - which has the harsh yet glossy look one associates with documentaries - the setting is a Tibetan village where people unassumingly walk by the camera, goats are being herded and children can be seen playing. No one seems to be a central character. Or more precisely everyone is the central character. The only thing leading us to believe we are watching a story is that there is a voice-over that describes the scenario and what is about to happen. Then some Chinese policemen arrive and shoot a man who is praying.

The film cuts to modern day Tibet where we learn that the three children, all now grown, have gone their separate ways in life. Two are a brother and sister the other their cousin. They are Dolkar (Dadon) a karaoke singer in a local Tibetan club, her brother Dorjee (Jampa Kelsang) who is sullen and out-of-wo...Read the entire review

The World is a well made, compassionate and ultimately tragic Chinese film that few people saw last year. Directed by Zhangke Jia it is primarily about a group of performers who dance and perform in a park called the Beijing World Park.

The park features scaled-down replicas of such landmarks as The Eiffel Tower, The Taj Majal, St Mark's Square, The London Bridge and even downtown Manhattan. At first it is amusing to see all the sites so close to one another; the Pyramids are adjacent to Taj Majal and Manhattan is a stone's throw from London. Yet as the film goes on it becomes apparent that the park is an odd and somewhat disquieting place. It becomes purposely central to the film's somewhat depressed and empty feeling.

Each of the characters is in conflict with each other or with their fate. There is a twenty-something woman dancer named Tao (Zhao Tao) who cannot decide if she loves her bo...Read the entire review

Benjamin Franklin is an excellent made-for TV documentary that brings the famous inventor, publisher, statesman and all around good fellow into focus.

Originally shown on PBS in 2002 its length is 210 minutes and is told in three parts:

The first section is title, Let the Experiment be Made (1706-1753), [55.07 min] and covers Ben Franklin's childhood up through his early adulthood when he began to make scientific discoveries. It also deals a lot with his publishing of the Poor Richard's Almanac, his writing for newspapers and his work in starting Voluntary Associations in Philadelphia, which had an impact on American history by having citizens being to take responsibility for their neighborhoods. It also laid the groundwork for Franklin's abilities to become a negotiator and a respected statesman.

The second part is titled: The Making of a Revolutionary (1755-1776) [54:34 min...Read the entire review

Movie
A man gets lost in the Saharan desert. He wanders for days. Finally he finds a settlement of people but is in such a state of euphoria that he attacks his host. He then runs to the nearest rock formation and there hides from his pursuers. While hiding he is accosted by a jaguar who for some reason doesn't attack him. A friendship is born.

Passion in the Desert is based on a Honore de Balzac story and takes place in 17th century Egypt. When the film starts Napolean's Army is crossing the desert. After one nights stay they are attacked by the locals. Everyone dies except one officer named Augustin (Ben Daniels), and an artist Venture (Michel Piccoli). They head out together to find their way back to civilization.

Once the officer heads off on his own he runs into the jaguar and the film becomes a fantasy of sorts. At first the jaguar just won't let him leave. But then the offi...Read the entire review

Movie:
5x2: Five times Two is a divorce movie that plays out in reverse. Directed by François Ozon from an original story the film starts the day a couple divorces and then goes back through five vignettes that reveal what led to that fateful day.

It begins with a peculiar scene in which the couple - Marion [Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi] and Gilles [Stéphane Freiss] - sign the divorce papers and then go to a hotel room together to have sex. From this start you know that their relationship is not typical. Scene two involves a dinner party where a conversation reveals that Gilles has not been faithful to Marion. Scene three shows the birth of their son and the peculiar reaction by Gilles. Scene four is their wedding night, which doesn't go exactly according to plan and scene five is how they meet.

As far as film narratives are concerned Memento started the trend of having a film s...Read the entire review

Landscape in the Mist is one of the best unseen films of the 1980's. Actually it may just simply be one of the best films of the eighties in general. But the fact that it is a film few have heard of it makes it particularly significant that it has been unseen.

Directed by Greek director Theo Angelopoulos in 1988 it is a road movie of sorts about two children who go in search of their father. They are in Greece and they have been told by their mother that he is in Germany. No specific reason is given why the two run away from home but in the first scene they are at a train station watching the train depart. They come back the next day and hop on without a ticket. From this point their tough journey begins.

The girl; Voula (Tania Palaiologou) is around twelve years of age and her brother Alexander (Michalis Zeke) is around six. They are much too young to be out alone and the world around them ...Read the entire review

Movie:
Loving Couples [aka Alskande Par] is a sensitive, somewhat erotic and mostly serious Swedish film about the fate of three women in the early 20th century.

Set around 1917 the film is about three women all of whom, at the beginning, are seen individually awaiting to give birth in a hospital. The three woman are Angela (Gio Petre) a blond woman who has had an illegitimate affair with an older man, Adele (Gunnel Lindblom) a bitter woman who is in an unhappy marriage and Agda (Harriet Andersson) who is a happy-go-lucky woman who gets married to a gay man just so she can be in the house with another man with whom she is having an affair.

The film, directed by Mai Zetterling in 1964 [who was a well known European actress at the time] is quite good for a first film.The first half in particular is artfully put together. It is set in the hospital and shows that the women are v...Read the entire review

Fighter Pilot - Operation Red Flag is a very high quality military educational film about fighter pilots. Made for the big screen IMAX format the film follows a fourteen day training exercise at Nellis Air Force base called Red Flag that tests the skills of the best fighter pilots in the world before they are assigned to go into real battle.

The film, written and directed by Stephen Low from a story by Denny Kuhr and Joseph Stanley - is impressive from a technical stand point. The cinematogrphy is excellent, the editing impecable, the use of sound impressive. But the 'narrative' is about as compelling as most educational films.

The filmmakers try to give the film a personal edge by following one particular pilot named John C. Stratton. He does a voice-over narration at times telling us about his father - who was a decorated pilot in World War Two - and about the feelings and experiences tha...Read the entire review

Cet Amour-La is a fictionalized account of a 16 year affair between French writer Marguerite Duras and a shy young man named Yann Andrea who was her apprentice and [possible] lover during the last few years of her life.

Yann (Aymerix Demagigny) who was in his early 20's and Duras (Jeanne Moreau) who was in her 60's exchanged letters for years. One day she invited him to meet her. The film begins with their meeting at Duras' seaside apartment in Trouville and goes from there as they develop their complex and interesting relationship.

Jeanne Moreau is good in her role as Marguerite Duras. She plays the combative, disturbed, drunken and aging writer with skill and makes the character her own. I don't know if she captures the true Duras but as a performance it is as good as she has done in quite a long time. Indeed if anyone has followed Moreau's career one might be inclined to believe she was p...Read the entire review

The Killing of Sister George, directed by Robert Aldrich, is a tense drama about an older woman TV star named George (Beryl Reid) who is going through a late midlife crisis.

George plays a friendly and wise bicycle riding sister of mercy on a popular TV show soap opera that always presents the world as simple and agreeable. But in real life George is a hard drinking, foul mouthed woman who is continually paranoid that she is about to be axed from her show.

Due to this, her home life - where she lives with a younger woman named Childie (Susannah York) - is very strained and often punctuated by George's drunken cruelty.

Based on a play by Frank Marcus the film has a stagey quality to it but the good acting by the main cast keeps it relatively involving. I say relatively because the film does play a bit slow and has the feel of a TV show at times. But it is also edgy in much the way that 1950...Read the entire review

Movie:
The Silence is a very interesting Iranian movie that combines the realism and humanism that many have come to expect from today's Iranian film. But it also adds a poetic and musical element that takes the film into the realm of what might be called realism fantasy.

Directed by famed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf the film is about a blind ten-year-old immigrant boy from Tajikistan named Khorshid. He walks everywhere with his eyes closed but he has pitch perfect hearing, which has helped him get a job in a music shop tuning guitars.

Khorshid loves music and delightful sounds so much that he often forgets where he is going and gets lost while following the sounds around him. To remedy this each morning as he gets on the bus to go to work he puts cotton in his ears and covers them so he won't following music. Each day he gets off the bus he is greeted by an eleven-year-old ...Read the entire review

Movie:
Bollywood Dreams [aka Rangeela] is a Bollywood musical about a young middle class named Milli (Urmilla Mathondkar) who dreams of becoming a movie star. One day out on the beach doing a dance workout she is spotted by a movie star named Rajkummar (Jackie Shroff) who suggests she try out for a role in his latest movie. She does and overnight becomes a star.

But all of this is to the chagrin of her friend Munna (Aamir Khan); a lower class street ruffian who likes Milli but cannot admit that he is in love with her. Over the course of Milli's rise to fame Munna finds himself having to compete with Rajkummar who has taken a liking to Milli. Eventually Munna must decide if he has what it takes to win her back.

The film, directed by Ramgopal Varma in 1995, is a grade B musical. There are half a dozen dancing musical numbers that add spark to the film but for the most part it is not ...Read the entire review

Movie:
Voyages begins with an elderly Jewish woman accidentally being left by her husband in a cemetery. The woman - named Rivka (Shulamit Adar) - is on a trip visiting Poland with her husband and a large group of Jewish survivors from World War II. In the next scene the bus they are taking to Auschwitz breaks down. While they wait the woman informs her husband that she no longer loves him.

Before the trip is over both the man and woman overhears two stories from a couple of older men on the trip about real life coincidences that are both bittersweet yet inspiring.

This first secton sets the tone for the entire film. It is at once ironic and banal but with an undercurrent of enlightenment.

The film, written and directed by Emmanuel Finkiel, is really three separate stories all of which subtly intertwine to give us one big picture about the characters and to a certain extend Holo...Read the entire review

Movie:
A young Czech woman named Julinka (Dagmar Blahova) waits out her final days in a Nazi prison at the tail end of World War Two. While she waits in a cold forbidding cell she recalls her life prior to imprisonment.

Julinka's life in the cell - where she is to be executed after 99 days - is rather dull. She shares a cell with a German and then later with another Czech woman. She spends her time painting toy German soldiers and gets breaks every so often to walk around the prison yard. Other times she is berated and tortured by the Nazis men and women who run the prison. The flashbacks are told in poetic form and rarely with dialogue. In them we see the relationship she has with her family, her friends and the men in her life.

The most important being her relationship with the Czech Resistance Movement, which was a thorn in the side of the Nazis and one that resulted in many deaths for...Read the entire review

Movie:
Young Gods is an engaging and effective Finnish movie about the hard lessons learned by a group of young men.

The film has a salacious tag line; it is about a group of young men who decide to videotape their various sexual encounters with women and then show them off to one another. But that hook is merely a facade to a good solid drama that manages to stay entertaining and relevant without being didactic.

18-year-old Taavi (Jussi Nikkila) videotapes everything in his life ever since the untimely - and gruesome - death of this parents. One night he invites his friends to a mansion party. That night he secretly tapes his guests in their drunken state having sex or laying around partly undressed. The next day they watch the tape and come up with the idea to film their sexual encounters with women.

But right from the start they realize it won't be all fun and games. The vario...Read the entire review

Gabbeh is a poetic Iranian film about a woman in a nomadic tribe who tries to escape from her people so she can be with the man that she loves.

The film, directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, begins with an elderly couple arriving at an oasis to clean their gabbeh; a handmade rug, which often has a story woven into it. Suddenly, a young woman - whose story is woven into the rug - appears and her story comes to life.

The young woman - named Gabbeh (Shaghayegh Jodat) - works hard for her family and her people as they travel and survive through the various seasons and Iranian countryside. But she is young, attractive and of marrying age. Because of this she is pursued by a lone man on horseback who is in love with her. Each time he arrives the sound of a howling wolf can be heard in the distance and his solitary figure can be seen along the horizon. And each time the woman hears it she longs run away...Read the entire review

Lorna Doone is a by-the-numbers silent film adaptation of the famous 19th century historical romance by R. D. Blackmore.

A young girl named Lorna is kidnapped from her mother by a marauding group of thugs called the Doones. Years late the girl has grown up into an attractive young woman who is under the tutelage of Sir Ensor Doone - an aging ex-Nobleman who has become her father figure. He protects her and refuses to allow anyone to marry her whom she finds objectionable, which turns out to most of the thieves and cutthroats that make up the clan. In particular is Carver Doone, a mean-spirited brute who drinks, curses and fights a lot as a way to impress Lorna.

One day Lorna (Madge Bellamy) is out by the river and she comes across John Ridd (John Bowers) an old acquaintance who she met as a child right before she was kidnapped. They quickly strike up a conversation and it's obvious they are...Read the entire review

Betty is an interesting French drama. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, the story is about Betty (Marie Trintignant) a destitute woman who has hit rock bottom - who tells her story to a woman with whom she shares a connection.

Betty is befriended by Laure (Stephane Audran), a kindly, rich widow who quickly takes a liking to Betty, takes her to a nice hotel room and cleans her up. Over the course of a few days Betty tells her story, which we see in flashbacks. We learn that she married into a well-to-do family but suddenly became an outcast by her inlaws who seemed to only want her to get pregnant and produce heirs.

Much of the film - directed by Claude Chabrol - takes place in a bar called the Hole where there are a number of interesting characters. Betty is a sad story but in director Chabrol's hands it becomes a psychological story will subtle thriller elements. Cinematically the...Read the entire review