Vincent Pérez

Alone in Berlin

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Otto and Anna Quangel face each other over the dinner table

During the Second World War, a Berlin couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, waged a two-person war against the Nazi regime. Prompted by the death of their son at the Front, they embarked on a campaign of writing seditious postcards and leaving them all over the city for people to find. The cards urged their fellow countrymen to rise up against Hitler and join the German resistance. Being just little postcards, they weren’t much of a statement, maybe, but they were enough to make the authorities to sit up and take notice. In 1947 writer Hans Fallada published Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Every Man Dies Alone), a novel about the Hampels and their … Read more

Hot Milk

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Ingrid and Sofia on the beach with Ingrid's horse

In a hot European beach resort a woman in a wheelchair seeks a crank cure for her condition with her resentful daughter along in tow. Hot Milk is a hothouse drama, a sketch of a nasty little co-dependent relationship. Will the worm turn, and if so, when? Is mother really crippled, or is this part of her way of controlling her adult daughter? Does daughter realise her mother is possibly putting it all on? As mother Rose (Fiona Shaw), with sulking Sofia (Emma Mackey) perpetually on call, consults a dubious doctor on one of the Spanish Costas, something appears to be brewing but debut director Rebecca Lenkiewicz isn’t telling us what. “What do … Read more

Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train

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Bruno Todeschini and Vincent Perez in Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train

A bunch of reasonably familiar French faces (Charles Berling, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi among them) all get together in a talky French Big Chill sort of affair, concerned with the interaction of lots of individuals, as was director Patrice Chéreau’s recent Queen Margot. Though here we’re in the present day and Chéreau’s characters are  heading off to the funeral of one of their number, a bisexual painter (Trintignant, who also plays his own brother) who’s had them all, one way or another. And they’re on the train, as his will commanded – he’s controlling them in death as he did in life. En route they expose themselves and each other, to their discomfort and … Read more

Le Bossu

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Daniel Auteuil and Marie Gillain in Le Bossu

Daniel Auteuil, Jean Reno, Gerard Depardieu. Where are the barrel-chested Brit equivalents to these beefy action men of the French cinema? But then, Brits are all gay, aren’t we? Take this fine, roistering spectacle, a dashingly charming entertainment in which Auteuil plays a D’Artagnan-like figure, all flashing swords and teeth. The story has been made into a film five times before, and is in the tradition of the Count of Monte Cristo – revenge is its beating heart – as it follows 18th century swordsman the Chevalier de Lagardère (Auteuil) through long patient years, disguise as a hunchback, political intrigue, love from an unexpected quarter, until he finally faces down the dastardly Gonzague (played … Read more