New Dvd Releases For June

L’Enfer (Torment)   Claude CHABROL  1993


This gripping film based on a rediscovered screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot is the story of a country hotel owner named Paul who becomes suspicious of his wife. Little by little his suspicions take shape and jealousy plunges him into an unfathomable purgatory of doubt and dementia.

Le Mépris (Contempt)   Jean-Luc GODARD  1963


Godard’s subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star-studded Cinemascope epic which stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European director (played by legendary director Fritz Lang), a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), and his disillusioned wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot), as he attempts to doctor the script for a new film version of “The Odyssey”.

Casque d’Or (Golden Helmet)   Jacques BECKER  1952


Jacques Becker, former assistant to Jean Renoir created one of the great classics of French cinema. After killing a man in a knife fight, a simple carpenter attempts to start a new life with a prostitute that he has fallen for, but when an old friend is implicated in the killing he feels obliged to turn himself in, leaving his beloved Marie in the hands of the duplicitous gangster who orchestrated the whole sordid affair.Beautifully photographed, expertly acted, and a thoroughly compelling fatalistic gem.

Le Confessionnal   Robert LEPAGE  1995


Pierre Lamontagne travels to his hometown in Quebec after his father dies. There, he runs into his adoptive brother who desperately wishes to uncover the mysterious identity of his own biological father. They begin to investigate, which leads them back to 1952, with Alfred Hitchcock filming I Confess in the area amid a complex scandal involving the Lamontagne family, Marc’s pregnant mother and the Catholic Church.

Acclaimed director François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women) has created an erotic tale of sexual awakening. After losing her virginity, 17-year-old budding beauty Isabelle takes up a secret life as a call girl, meeting her older gentlemen clients for sleazy hotel room trysts. Throughout, she remains curiously aloof, showing little interest in the encounters themselves or the money she makes, while Ozon slyly refrains from offering easy answers.

Hélène (Stéphane Audran) is a good mother with a checkered past as a stripper and barmaid. Se divorces her ne’er-do-well husband after he attacks her and her son over breakfast. Her former in-laws blame her for causing her husband addiction and set out to remove their grandchild from Hélène’s custody. Thwarted by the courts, they hire a seedy penniless operative, Paul, to destroy her reputation. Paul moves into her rooming house and begins to insinuate himself into her life, hatching darker and more convoluted plots to implicate Helene in everything from drugs to a bizarre kidnapping plot.

L’Adversaire (The Adversary)Nicole GARCIA 2002

Surrounded by friends he’s known since his days at medical school, he is constantly talking about the latest developments in his field. His work often requires him to attend conferences in Switzerland, lectures at the University of Dijon and affluent discussions with colleagues at the World Health Organization in Geneva. He lives a charmed life. One day, the unimaginable happens. Jean-Marc murders his wife, his children, and his parents and then commits suicide. What the investigation reveals is even more difficult to believe.

Unemployed, he drives around aimlessly, sitting at the W.H.O.’s cafeteria, sneaking into lectures and stealing documentation on the latest research to keep up his charade. Pretending to invest family’s and friends’ money, he has been living off their savings for years. For the last eighteen years, Jean-Marc’s entire life has been a fabrication. A tragic story of a man, who rather than have those closest to him know the truth or face it himself, he chose the lie… and death.