La Cérémonie aka The Ceremony

Sophie and Jeanne with shotguns

Ruth Rendell didn’t like many adaptations of her books but she did like 1995’s La Cérémonie (The Ceremony), a reworking of her thriller A Judgment in Stone. She wasn’t alone. Roger Ebert put it on his Great Movies list, the Cahiers du Cinéma people named it the best film of 1995, and Bong Joon Ho says it’s one of the main inspirations for Parasite, his Best Picture Oscar winner from 2019. It’s a chilly, anxious thriller about a mouselike maid working for a rich French family who strikes up a friendship with a woman who runs the local post office. Sophie is cool, efficient, doesn’t say much and does her job so brilliantly … Read more

Á Nos Amours aka To Our Loves

Suzanne in a white dress

A crazy mixed up film about a crazy mixed up girl, if it’s nothing else 1983’s Á Nos Amours (To Our Loves, sometimes To Our Romance) is a brilliant showcase for the astonishing Sandrine Bonnaire, sexy as young French stars tend to be, in her debut on screen, possessing it entirely and aged only 15 or so. She plays the effortlessly hot Suzanne, a precocious tease wielding the weapon of her good looks and fully functioning libido in a series of encounters with older men. These dark-haired, worldly and hairy guys are the opposite of Luc (Cyr Boitard), the fair-haired, sulky, smooth-skinned boyfriend of her own age she will dump repeatedly as Suzanne’s … Read more