An adult French farce from Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim
Although it is set in modern Paris, "The Game Is Over" is actually based on Emile Zola's novel "La Curee." This 1966 film was directed and produced by Roger Vadim for his wife, Jane Fonda. The film is the old story about a woman, Renee (Fonda), who marries an older man, Alexandre Sacaard (Michael Piccoli), but falls for his sexy young son Maxime (Peter McEnergy). By setting Zola's story in modern Paris, Vadim is obviously out to explore the morality of the rich in France. The film was a smash in Europe but a failure in the United States, although critics on both sides of the Atlantic tended to like it as an example of adult farce (although Judith Christ put it at the top of her list of "Perfectly Marvelous Awful Movies to Eat Chocolates and Play Russ Columbo Records By"). However, while this film certainly starts off as something of a farce, Vadim turns it into more of a gothic horror movie at the end. Any visions you have of Fonda swimming nude in a goldfish pond are going to be replaced by nightmares involving German police dogs. On balance, this might be the best of the Vadim-Fonda efforts...
This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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In terms of alluring female nudity, Swimming Pool shows a lot, but it's what remains concealed that gives this erotic thriller a potent, voyeuristic charge. With his Hitchcockian handling of secrets and lies, prolific French director François Ozon reunites with his Under the Sand star, Charlotte Rampling, to tell a seductive tale of murder and complicity, beginning when British mystery novelist Sarah Morton (Rampling) seeks peace and relaxation at her publisher's French villa, only to find his brash, sexually liberated daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) arriving shortly thereafter to disrupt her solitary reverie. What begins as mutual annoyance turns into something more sinister and duplicitous, alternating between Julie's predatory sex with men and Sarah's observant,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlotte Rampling - Ludivine Sagnier - Charles Dance Director(s): François Ozon DVD Release Date: Released the 23 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A semi-scandal upon its release in 1978, this Louis Malle film is set in a turn-of-the-century, New Orleans bordello and focuses on a girl named Violet (then-child actress Brooke Shields) whose imminent twelfth birthday signals her "readiness" to become a career prostitute. Typical of Malle, the outwardly forbidden nature of the story and relationships within are morally obscured by the immediate experiences and unqualified urges of the characters. The little heroine brings a distinctly youthful and innocent view to the milieu, and the introduction of a photographer (Keith Carradine)--who eventually marries Violet--in the brothel carries the suggestion that there is art and beauty to be explored there. Susan Sarandon is beguiling as Violet's mother, who seems to unfold in the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Brooke Shields - Keith Carradine Director(s): Louis Malle DVD Release Date: Released the 18 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I had heard of Jacques Demy's "Bay of Angels"; and Pauline Kael gave it a favorable review that made me want to see it, saying Jeanne Moreau blond gambling bombshell was the New Wave equivalent to some of Bette Davis' intense 30s portrayals. But it never played anywhere I knew of, it's never been on tv, it seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. I just came across the dvd in a store the other day, saw that Demy's filmmaker wife restored it -- and it's gorgeous in the dvd edition -- and I bought it and watched it. It's strange and peculiar but thoroughly engrossing. Most of Demy's work is very stylized ... and in this Moreau has white/blond hair and white/blond clothes and I guess black/addict's soul. I was surprised how powerful, in its off-hand way, the film was about gambling as... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jacques Demy DVD Release Date: Released the 09 December 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Julie Christie's miracle year of 1965 (she was also in Doctor Zhivago) was capped by a best-actress Oscar® for this sardonic take on Swinging London. Looking about as gorgeous as women get, Christie ascends the ladder of social success, trampling everybody in her path--an ascent that allows writer Frederic Raphael and director John Schlesinger to slash away at the morally bankrupt world that would enable such a person to triumph. Cynics might suggest that Schlesinger's approach, rife with the experiments of New Wave filmmaking, is nearly as empty and showy as the world it describes... which may be why this movie seems more dated than, say, Richard Lester's films from the '60s. Still, with Christie getting generous and suave support from two of the top British stars of the day,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dirk Bogarde - Julie Christie Director(s): John Schlesinger DVD Release Date: Released the 02 December 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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