Call me a Francophile or a geek, but it isn’t the New York Film Festival at Film at Lincoln Center in September that thrills me each year. It’s the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in March that truly rocks my psyche. I remain convinced that French cinema still dares to take risks on subjects Hollywood would rather sand down for mass consumption. It occupies a distinctive space when it comes to women: historically women-centric, unafraid of female desire or complexity—even if not immune to sexism or objectification. The French love women onscreen. You see not only the obligatory young ingénues, but older actresses given meaty, commanding roles that captivate audiences.
I’m happy to report that I’ve already crossed a few titles from this year’s lineup off my list, and I’ll try to save you some money by telling you whether it’s worth peeling yourself off your comfortable couch to catch them. Fair warning: spoilers ahead.
Enzo is a coming-of-age story about a teenager fortunate enough to be born into bourgeois privilege—privilege that comes with suffocating expectations. His father aggressively insists he pursue a respectable white-collar career and not drag the family name into anything “beneath” it. The complication? The boy—artistic, sketching and composing music—finds himself drawn instead to the company of men who lay bricks for a living. Literally.
Why? You can probably guess, but the film prefers to let the tension simmer rather than spell it out. Let’s just say a certain hot Ukrainian makes the internal conflict all the more compelling.
Credits: Palace Films
With Alpha, however, I found myself far less patient. Julia Ducournau, the filmmaker behind the body-horror sensations Raw and Titane, seems to stumble here. The AIDS-tinged pandemic metaphor feels heavy-handed and relentlessly dreary. A 13-year-old girl comes home from school with a crude tattoo on her arm while an unnamed contagion spreads around her. Her mother is a nurse; her uncle is a drug addict—you can see where this is heading.
The film split critics at the Cannes Film Festival. I side with the naysayers. Perhaps we are still too close to our own global trauma to embrace yet another allegory of infection and decay. Maybe in twenty years we’ll be able to revisit such stories with more generosity and less fatigue.
La venue de l’avenir (Colors of Time), on the other hand, is a delight. A group of distant cousins is summoned by the French government and informed that they’ve inherited a house in Normandy, land the state is eyeing. As they trace their lineage, the film shifts between the present and 19th-century Paris, revealing how their shared history took root.
It is as entertaining as it is reflective, probing questions of identity, inheritance, and the way the past quietly inhabits the present. This is a deeply moving experience—the kind you crave when you go to a movie theater but don’t always find. The film is nominated for three César Awards this year (the French equivalent of the Oscars): Best Female Newcomer for Suzanne Lindon, Best Costume Design for Pierre-Yves Gayraud, and Best Production Design for Marie Cheminel.
Nino is a very special film about a young, timid man, played by the mesmerizing Théodore Pellerin in the title role, who is diagnosed with throat cancer on the eve of his 29th birthday. Yes, it has shades of Cléo from 5 to 7, but I hesitate to lean too heavily on that comparison. Beyond the similar premise, this is an autonomous, stunning, and heartbreaking work. The director Pauline Loquès just won a César Award for Best First Feature.
Pellerin’s résumé is already impressive—Genesis, Solo, Lurker—not to mention the prematurely aborted On Becoming a God in Central Florida, my forever-mourned series in which he appeared alongside Kirsten Dunst. His recent win for a César Award as Most Promising Actor (Best Male Revelation, as they say in French) for Nino is almost puzzling; Pellerin is already a mature, astute master of his craft. Still, I’ll take any excuse for the spotlight to land on his singular talent.
Credits: The Party Film Sales
Guess Who Is Calling? (Le Répondeur) is a quintessential French comedy—and I mean that as a compliment. Even if some of the humor may be lost in translation, it evokes my childhood memories of Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu farces, though without the slapstick.
Baptiste, a struggling impressionist comedian, meets Pierre, a writer played by Denis Podalydès, who is desperate to finish his next big book without constant interruptions. Pierre hires Baptiste to impersonate him on the phone, shielding him from his father, his daughter, and anyone else threatening his concentration. Baptiste does his best, but the disasters are inevitable—and what viewer doesn’t enjoy watching a well-orchestrated train wreck unfold?
Credits: Unifrance
Two Pianos is the latest from Arnaud Desplechin, the story of pianist Mathias (François Civil) returning to his home city of Lyon for a series of concerts. There he bumps into Claude, the woman he loved—and, apparently, still loves. He soon discovers she has a son who is most obviously his, though the boy has been raised by Claude with her husband, a former friend of Mathias’s who has since died.
Claude clearly still feels something for Mathias. Played by Nadia Tereszkiewicz, she becomes one of the most insufferable characters I’ve seen on screen. It doesn’t help that the story meanders without any real promise of significance—and ultimately delivers none.
As sublime a director as Mr. Desplechin can be, this one falls flat. It was, however, a pleasure to see Charlotte Rampling as Mathias’s mentor, Elena. She disappears halfway through the film, but even so, her presence provides a welcome—if fleeting—counterpoint to the central melodrama.
L’Épreuve du feu (Trial by Fire—though the English distribution title, rather banally, is Hearts on Fire) is a feature film by Aurélien Peyre, starring Félix Lefebvre as Hugo and Anja Verderosa as his love interest, Queen. Lefebvre may be familiar to audiences from François Ozon’s masterful Summer of 85, for which he was nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2021. Verderosa, meanwhile, is nominated this year for the César Award for Most Promising Actress for her role here.
In this beautiful film, young Hugo tests the waters of his first real relationship with Queen, who may not appear to be his ideal match in the eyes of his circle of friends. Yet the audience cannot help but root for them, because their connection feels genuine. However, we quickly learn—perhaps we already know—how fragile love can be when the opinions of those we value begin to cloud our judgment.
Credits: WTFilms
Here are several films in the festival lineup that I have not yet seen but am particularly eager to discover.
First among them is L’Étranger (The Stranger) by François Ozon. Ozon rarely repeats himself and almost always surprises with his nonconformist directorial instincts. The film is also notable as the first French adaptation of the novel, previously brought to the screen by Luchino Visconti and Zeki Demirkubuz.
Affection Affection, directed by Maxime Matray and Alexia Walther, immediately caught my attention thanks to the presence of Agathe Bonitzer, an actress I find endlessly intriguing, and because the film appears to venture into thriller territory.
À pied d’œuvre (At Work) by Valérie Donzelli is high on my list as well. Her 2023 film L’Amour et les Forêts (Just the Two of Us) was a towering achievement—an unflinching look at domestic abuse shaped by a singular and deeply personal directorial voice. Here is the story of a photographer who wants to be a writer.
Credits: Unifrance
Then there is Dossier 137 (Case 137) by Dominik Moll. Moll’s Seules les bêtes (Only the Animals) still lingers in my mind, and no performance by Léa Drucker should ever be missed, especially the one that just won her this year’s César.
Credits: IMDb
La petite dernière (The Little Sister) by Hafsia Herzi, nominated for six César Awards, also intrigues me. Her powerful performance in Borgo remains vivid, and I am curious to see how her sensibility translates behind the camera.
Credits: Blu-ray
Love Me Tender by Anna Cazenave Cambet earns a spot on my list for one simple reason: Vicky Krieps.
Credits: IMDb
Météors by Hubert Charuel is another must-see for me, largely because Paul Kircher’s recent performances in Le Règne animal (The Animal Kingdom) and La venue de l’avenir (Colors of Time) have made him one of the most compelling young actors to watch.
Credits: Filmaffinity
L’affaire Bojarski (The Money Maker) by Jean-Paul Salomé promises a WWII-era tale of counterfeit money—a premise intriguing enough on its own to warrant immediate attention.
Credits: IMDb
Finally, L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche (The Great Arch) by Stéphane Demoustier arrives with eight César Award nominations, which alone makes it difficult to ignore.
Credits: Unifrance
