From “Lost Illusions” to “Titane”: the 5 best and 5 worst French films of the year

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5. “The man in the cellar”, by Philippe Le Guay

A couple of Parisian bobos living in a beautiful Parisian building sells their cellar to an enigmatic man (François Cluzet). The latter settles there and does not take long to state his negationist ideology … The man in the cellar Philippe Le Guay (The women of the sixth floor, Alceste on a bicycle) abandons comedy and signs a Polanskien thriller which, in today’s France, examines the venom of anti-Semitism and revisionism with a magnifying glass. The opportunity for the filmmaker, he told us last October, to autopsy “a perverse rhetoric, an unhealthy pleasure to sow doubt, an obsession to undermine the truth”.

4. “Everything went well”, by François Ozon

A man victim of a stroke (André Dussollier) refuses his downfall and asks his daughter (Sophie Marceau) to help him die… In Everything went well, the prolific François Ozon adapts the eponymous and autobiographical work of Emmanuèle Bernheim, evokes head-on a painful subject, the right to die with dignity, and signs one of his most beautiful films.

3. “A story of love and desire”, by Leyla Bouzid

A young boy brought up in the Parisian suburbs meets a student from Tunisia in his college. The heroine displays a much more free and daring temperament than her contemporary… In the aptly named A story of love and desire, Leyla Bouzid delicately stages two moving characters and zooms in with relevance on certain social and political realities of France today.

2. “The Event”, by Audrey Diwan

A student in the 1960s becomes pregnant and decides to have an abortion. She begins an obstacle course in a country, France, where abortion is prohibited… Audrey Diwan, awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice festival, adapts the autobiography of Annie Ernaux and signs an important film on a subject still relevant today: the right to abortion. ” People often ask me why I wanted to shoot this film today, when the Veil law came into force in 1975 Audrey Diwan told us in November. This question reveals a very French and ego-centered point of view when we see what is happening today in Poland, the United States, Latin America or Africa… The subject of clandestine abortion is still relevant. news, alas. And the fight for abortion is not in the past. “

1. “Lost Illusions”, by Xavier Giannoli

A monument of French literature which looks straight in the eyes of our times… In Lost illusions, Xavier Giannoli masterfully adapts Honoré de Balzac’s novel and stages a constantly inventive fiction on the pretenses of Parisianism, the fabrication of the “info spectacle”, submission to the God of profit, the cynicism of life political, moral corruption. The most beautiful French film of the year.

READ ALSO: “Lost Illusions”, Balzac and Giannoli hand in hand

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5. “Annette”, by Leos Carax

Expert in esoteric fictions, the hermit Leos Carax is unleashed in this absurd musical comedy where he stages the destructive relations in Los Angeles between a singer (Marion Cotillard) and a comedian of stand-up (Adam Driver). Alas, despite the score of the Sparks, the film is lost in the big puppet and the emphasis. In the musical comedy register, the Larrieu brothers, with their Tralala located in Lourdes, have more seduced and amused this year.

4. “Eiffel”, by Martin Bourboulon

The biopic over and over again. And rarely for the better. The proof with this evocation of Gustave Eiffel who, alone against all, intends to build “his” tower and finds his great love of youth … Academism is rife on all levels of this film camped by Romain Duris who never escapes the traps of the dusty reconstruction of the Grévin Museum. In the much frequented register of the biopic, Eiffel looks pale in front of the Aline, by Valérie Lemercier, a delirious fiction about Celine Dion who, this year, has escaped the conventions of the genre.

3. “Mystery in Saint-Tropez”, by Nicolas Benamou

Or how the supposedly popular comedy no longer makes anyone laugh … This sluggish humorist-detective film, embodied by “stars” in shambles (Christian Clavier, Benoît Poelvoorde, Thierry Lhermitte, Jérôme Commandeur), looks like a contest of grimaces and aligns the heavy gags. This expensive turnip (13.5 million euros) gathered only 174,000 spectators. The general public, obviously, preferred to applaud the OSS 117: Red alert in black Africa by Nicolas Bedos, an insolent and incorrect comedy of a completely different caliber.

2. “The fantasies”, by Stéphane and David Foenkinos

Bad publicity for sex… In this film with sketches on erotic fantasies, the Foenkinos brothers have fun staging a range of actors in all positions: Karin Viard, Denis Podalydès, Jean-Paul Rouve, Monica Bellucci , we pass. Alas, the film struggles to tear the slightest smile and shiver from the spectator who remains desperately unmoved.

1. “Titanium”, by Julia Ducournau

The Palme d’Or for confusion and false transgression … By awarding the supreme award to this vociferous film about a serial killer pregnant with a car, the jury of the Cannes Film Festival stood out for its snobbery. In this trying fiction, Julia Ducournau strikes a few heavy “messages” rays of warrior feminism, tattered identities and toxic macho culture. So many themes at the heart of the concerns of the moment that the filmmaker approaches with the grace of the executioner and a very sure sense of the show off.

READ ALSO: “Titanium”, Palme d’Or of the show off and confusion