Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Vincent Cassel, Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Amalric, Cécile De France, Gérard Depardieu
Director: Jean-François Richet

Best of the genre, 2010-08-24
Being a great lover of French thrillers I found it amazing that it took me so long to get around to purchasing this dvd - was it worth the wait? Definitely.
This film oozes class from the acting to the camerawork and Vincent Cassel excells in the lead role - it cannot be easy portraying a likeable then despicable character from one scene to the next and for it to seem so natural.
I am not a great lover of the gangster genre as I think it is full of stereotype, unecessary violence and bad language - for the sake of it/or to shock. However this film never falls into that trap and the movie moves along too quickly for the viewer to become complacent. A MUST buy.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Mathieu Amalric, Gerard Depardieu, Cecile De France

Love the singer, not the song, 2010-05-05
We recently saw this film on tv and enjoyed it as we love Gerard. Have not had time to view this dvd but we can now watch it again when we wish.

Staring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais
Director: Julian Schnabel

The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralysed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an outstanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humour and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown pai...
A ground-breaking film of great heart, 2010-01-27

It's not often that a film comes along as exhilarating as this in terms of concept and execution. In terms of lighting, camerawork and editing it breaks every rule in the book - and gets away with it triumphantly. The script is by Ronald Harwood, a former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher who invented "The lady's not for turning", and who also wrote the screenplays of "The Dresser", "The Pianist" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch", among others. From this previous form, and from his stage plays, I would guess that what he presented to director Julian Schnabel was much more conventional than the final result. In which case, all credit to Schnabel, Janusz Kaminsky (cinematography) and Juliette Welfling (editor) for pushing the envelope so far and so effectively. You have to credit all three, because it's hard to know where the work of one ends and another begins.

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was editor of French "Elle" magazine, a glamorous high-flyer who was striken by a massive stroke and as a result suffered from "locked-in syndrome", able to comprehend everything but completely paralysed save for an ability to flutter one eyelid (the other eye is paralysed too and in the grimmest scene in the movie the eyelid is stitched up because the eye does not lubricate itself and will go septic. The film documents his adaption to his situation - you can't say recovery - to the extent that with therapists he develops a language based on blinks which is effective enough for him to write a book about his experience and how it feels.

You would think from this that you would have a very static movie, but not a bit of it. By using a first-person camera technique we see everything as Jean-Do sees it, we hear his voice-over to get his feelings, and we experience the frustration and humiliation of his situation. We see the despair and grief of those around him - his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), his girlfriend Ines who can't bring herself to visit him (Agathe de La Fontaine) and above all his 92-year-old widower father (a heartbreaking Max von Sydow). This is all the more moving because Jean-Do, and therefore we, can say nothing, do nothing, to ease the situation.

We identify completely with Jean-Do, so much so that when we first see him, about 35 minutes into the movie, it's a complete shock, because we've built up our own pictures of what he looks like. It immediately confronts our own ideas of normality. The director is wise enough to know that an audience needs variety, and we do see Jean-Do's previous life in flashbacks/dreams, but so strong is the identification we have that it is the "normal" scenes which seem odd, and we are impatient to get back inside Jean-Do's head where the "real" action is.

In a particularly crass interview among the extras, Schnabel maintains the film is about death and confronting fears of death, but I don't see it as this. Though at one point Jean-Do says he wants to die, all the impulses in the movie, his and others', are pulling in the direction of life. To me the movie is about how we cling to life, and how we make something valuable out of it given even the tiniest window of opportunity.

Julian Schnabel is one of those directors like John Maybury and most recently Steve McQueen who come from a visual arts background. As such he brings a richness of imagery and technique to his movie which is rarely seen. Not only is this a great movie, it will I think be a hugely influential movie on other film-makers.

Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Melvil Poupaud
Director: Arnaud Desplechin

One of the best films of 2008, 2009-08-28
Others have given the story and tenor of this film. I'll just say that Conte de Noël is one of the best two contemporary films that I saw in 2008. It was shown at the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival and at a mini-Festival put on by Alliance Francaise in 2009. Conte de Noël never received a commercial release in Melbourne, perhaps nowhere in Australia.

Since seeing it I have tracked down copies of all Arnaud Desplechin's films and watched each at least three times, despite most being out of print (the early ones are pre-2000 DVD issues, with pretty dire transfers). One major film has never been been released on silver disc at all AFAIK, but fortuitously the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI, a government institution) put on a retrospective season in late 2008 which included it, and subsequently it was shown twice on our government multicultural TV channel SBS. Needless to say, I have multiple backup copies on two PVRs.

IMO Desplechin is a leading contemporary director who is yet to get his proper due, and all his early films deserve re-releases with decent mastering.

And there is a story here for someone to write. Desplechin, right from his first feature film La Sentinelle (1992) through to Conte de Noël, has consistently used an ensemble group of actors, mostly young and clearly his generation, who must share some common, most likely film educational, background. It is fascinating to watch this group develop over seventeen years. Not only has Desplechin emerged from this group, but also at least two independently famous major acting talents: Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric.

Contrary to the information supplied above by Amazon, this Drakes Avenue Pictures New Wave 004 release is a two disc set, with the lesser known documentary L'Aimée (2007) featured on the second disc. I'm disappointed that Conte de Nöel did not come out on Blu-ray as in France (an edition with no English subtitles), but that is partly made up for here by the valuable presence of L'Aimée.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton
Director: Marc Forster

Daniel Craig hasn't lost a step since Casino Royale--this James Bond remains dangerous, a man who could earn that license to kill in brutal hand-to-hand combat… but still look sharp in a tailored suit. And Quantum of Solance itself carries on from the previous film like no other 007 movie, with Bond nursing his anger from the Casino Royale storyline and vowing blood revenge on those responsible. For the new plot, we have villain Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), intent on controlling the water rights in impoverished Third World nations and happy to overthrow a dictator or two to get his way. Olga Kurylenko is very much in the "Bond girl" tradition, but in the Ursula Andress way, not the Denise Richards way. And Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, and Giancarlo Giannini are welcome holdovers. If director Marc Forster and the longtime Bond production team seem a little too eager to embrace the continuity-shredding style of the Bourne pictures (especially in a nearly incomprehensible opening car chase), they nevertheless quiet down and get into a dark, concentrated groove soon enough. And the theme song, "Another Way to Die," penned by Jack White and ...
Jamez Bond, 2010-06-24
The second in the series of the ever so cool Daniel Craig as 007. Not as good as Casino Royale but still a real good romp and all the typical ingredients in the new era.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Mathieu Amalric, Michael Londsdale
Director: Nicolas Klotz

Enigmatic and Haunting, 2009-11-02

If only for the masterful performance of Amalrik, this film is well worth seeing. Playing the character of a corporate psychologist in charge
of the Human Resources Department, and responsible, among other tasks, for the streamlining and restructuring of their personnel (read sack
and dismiss), he dominates the whole film, with his spare body language, intense gaze and ghost like complexion. The storyline is almost
irrelevant - a shadowy intrigue in which the past of a trio of corporate executive slowly unravels and the hero's personal life and certainties
deteriorate.
The ideological point made here is that the corporate policy of retrenchment and efficiency buildup (Amalrik as the
in house psychologist organizes seminars in which participants are made to go beyond their limits) is a mirror image
or counterpoint of the Nazi culling and elimination of unwanted people. As such it may be a little overstated but the slow, haunting pace of
the film, the sometimes frozen images (the recurring image of the chemical plant chimney stacks), the way Amalrik seems to decompose as he delves
into the accusations and counter attacks of the "villains" is spellbinding.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Marc Forster

Daniel Craig hasn't lost a step since Casino Royale--this James Bond remains dangerous, a man who could earn that license to kill in brutal hand-to-hand combat… but still look sharp in a tailored suit. And Quantum of Solance itself carries on from the previous film like no other 007 movie, with Bond nursing his anger from the Casino Royale storyline and vowing blood revenge on those responsible. For the new plot, we have villain Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), intent on controlling the water rights in impoverished Third World nations and happy to overthrow a dictator or two to get his way. Olga Kurylenko is very much in the "Bond girl" tradition, but in the Ursula Andress way, not the Denise Richards way. And Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, and Giancarlo Giannini are welcome holdovers. If director Marc Forster and the longtime Bond production team seem a little too eager to embrace the continuity-shredding style of the Bourne pictures (especially in a nearly incomprehensible opening car chase), they nevertheless quiet down and get into a dark, concentrated groove soon enough. And the theme song, "Another Way to Die," penned by Jack White and ...
Jamez Bond, 2010-06-24
The second in the series of the ever so cool Daniel Craig as 007. Not as good as Casino Royale but still a real good romp and all the typical ingredients in the new era.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Marc Forster

Daniel Craig hasn't lost a step since Casino Royale--this James Bond remains dangerous, a man who could earn that license to kill in brutal hand-to-hand combat… but still look sharp in a tailored suit. And Quantum of Solance itself carries on from the previous film like no other 007 movie, with Bond nursing his anger from the Casino Royale storyline and vowing blood revenge on those responsible. For the new plot, we have villain Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), intent on controlling the water rights in impoverished Third World nations and happy to overthrow a dictator or two to get his way. Olga Kurylenko is very much in the "Bond girl" tradition, but in the Ursula Andress way, not the Denise Richards way. And Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, and Giancarlo Giannini are welcome holdovers. If director Marc Forster and the longtime Bond production team seem a little too eager to embrace the continuity-shredding style of the Bourne pictures (especially in a nearly incomprehensible opening car chase), they nevertheless quiet down and get into a dark, concentrated groove soon enough. And the theme song, "Another Way to Die," penned by Jack White and ...
Jamez Bond, 2010-06-24
The second in the series of the ever so cool Daniel Craig as 007. Not as good as Casino Royale but still a real good romp and all the typical ingredients in the new era.

Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over
Staring: Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve
Director: Arnaud Desplechin

The perfect film, 2007-09-24
In this film we follow two parallell stories showing the lives of two people, each accompanied by it's own type of music, highlighting their different tones and ways. The lives of these two people are revealed to stand in a special relationship to each other, which eventually brings them into the same scene, and not by chance. At the end they also appear together, yet apart. The explanation of this apartness is revealed, puzzling all the different bits of the film together, affectuating a sort of catharsis. The film is truly brilliantly constructed by an integration of form and content. It is the story of a man and a woman who's lives are separate yet belong together in some special way. Part of plot cirles around her desire to tie him to her son. The matter is considered forwards and back, while the lives of the two main characters each proceed in their own directions. The film is long, but it's one of those rare films you just want to go on. Perhaps partly because of the captivating beauty and intruiging personalities of the main characters, (I must admit I fell in love with Mathieu Amalric - or perhaps Ismael), but also the great music, the excellent repertoir of characters, and the way in which they are presented, never entirely revealed at first, but slowly unravelled with exciting surprises. The film has humour, depth and aesthetic appeal. To me it felt like it was everything which every film aims to be.

Rated: Suitable for 12 years and over
Staring: Mathieu Amalric, Lopez Garmendia, Emma De Caunes, Jean-Philippe Watkins, Nicolas Le Riche
Director: Julian Schnabel

The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralysed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an outstanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humour and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown pai...
A ground-breaking film of great heart, 2010-01-27

It's not often that a film comes along as exhilarating as this in terms of concept and execution. In terms of lighting, camerawork and editing it breaks every rule in the book - and gets away with it triumphantly. The script is by Ronald Harwood, a former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher who invented "The lady's not for turning", and who also wrote the screenplays of "The Dresser", "The Pianist" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch", among others. From this previous form, and from his stage plays, I would guess that what he presented to director Julian Schnabel was much more conventional than the final result. In which case, all credit to Schnabel, Janusz Kaminsky (cinematography) and Juliette Welfling (editor) for pushing the envelope so far and so effectively. You have to credit all three, because it's hard to know where the work of one ends and another begins.

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was editor of French "Elle" magazine, a glamorous high-flyer who was striken by a massive stroke and as a result suffered from "locked-in syndrome", able to comprehend everything but completely paralysed save for an ability to flutter one eyelid (the other eye is paralysed too and in the grimmest scene in the movie the eyelid is stitched up because the eye does not lubricate itself and will go septic. The film documents his adaption to his situation - you can't say recovery - to the extent that with therapists he develops a language based on blinks which is effective enough for him to write a book about his experience and how it feels.

You would think from this that you would have a very static movie, but not a bit of it. By using a first-person camera technique we see everything as Jean-Do sees it, we hear his voice-over to get his feelings, and we experience the frustration and humiliation of his situation. We see the despair and grief of those around him - his wife (Emmanuelle Seigner), his girlfriend Ines who can't bring herself to visit him (Agathe de La Fontaine) and above all his 92-year-old widower father (a heartbreaking Max von Sydow). This is all the more moving because Jean-Do, and therefore we, can say nothing, do nothing, to ease the situation.

We identify completely with Jean-Do, so much so that when we first see him, about 35 minutes into the movie, it's a complete shock, because we've built up our own pictures of what he looks like. It immediately confronts our own ideas of normality. The director is wise enough to know that an audience needs variety, and we do see Jean-Do's previous life in flashbacks/dreams, but so strong is the identification we have that it is the "normal" scenes which seem odd, and we are impatient to get back inside Jean-Do's head where the "real" action is.

In a particularly crass interview among the extras, Schnabel maintains the film is about death and confronting fears of death, but I don't see it as this. Though at one point Jean-Do says he wants to die, all the impulses in the movie, his and others', are pulling in the direction of life. To me the movie is about how we cling to life, and how we make something valuable out of it given even the tiniest window of opportunity.

Julian Schnabel is one of those directors like John Maybury and most recently Steve McQueen who come from a visual arts background. As such he brings a richness of imagery and technique to his movie which is rarely seen. Not only is this a great movie, it will I think be a hugely influential movie on other film-makers.