Ogier, Bulle

The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie - Criterion Collection

What can be more enjoyable then a meal among friends and family? In Luis Buñuel's surrealistic comedy The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie it is this common ritual a sextet of upper-class friends repeatedly attempt, only to be obstructed by one obscure event after another. Masterfully balancing the dichotomy of class vs. debauchery Buñuel delivers a ripping critique of the upper class. It is clear from the beginning that the lives Buñuel's Bourgeoisie are living are not what they seem. Eventually, their true colors begin to shine; not in actual actions but in haunting dreams. What is real and what lies in the subconscious becoming exceedingly blurry and in order to deliver his message, surrealism must take over. It is hard to pigeonhole Buñuel's classic that won him the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film 1972: An absurd odyssey? A discreet satire? Not necessarily, but definitely charming. --Rob Bracco

In Luis Buñuel's deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined. Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyring, and Jean-Pierre Cassel head the extraordinary cast of this 1972 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film. Criterion is proud to present The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie in an exclusive Special Edition Double-Disc Set.

Venus Beauty Institute

The carefully unattached existence of working girl Nathalie Baye is suddenly upended when lovesick hunk Samuel Le Bihan introduces himself: "My name is Antoine and I love you." Set in a cute glass storefront with a neon pink and blue façade that could have sprung from a Jacques Demy musical, this bittersweet romantic drama was written for the arresting Baye, who plays a middle-aged "girl" in a uniquely Parisian beauty shop that specializes in facials, body treatments, massages, and emotional confession. Her coworkers, young, sweetly guileless brunette cutie Audrey Tautou and gloomy twentysomething Mathilde Seigner, are like glimpses into her past lives, one full of hope and giddy optimism, the other turned resentful from disappointment. She clings to the girly camaraderie and workaday autopilot of her job while her "patronne" (the incomparable Bulle Ogier) nudges her toward responsibility.

Writer-director Tonie Marshall has a marvelous feeling for the women who work and visit the place, though her soulful bohemian artist Le Bihan is defined by little more than good looks, shaggy charm, and a kind of reckless attraction. The film is at its best with the women: the easy by-play and guarded emotions of the shopgirls, the often uncontrolled outbursts of the offbeat and oddball clients, and especially the haunted and lonely performance from Baye, who warily creeps out of her shell for another chance at intimacy. --Sean Axmaker

Maitresse - Criterion Collection

Drifter Olivier (Gérard Depardieu) lands in Paris and partners up on a friend's home invasion. Ostensibly they're breaking into the vacant flat of a vacationing old lady, but in reality it's the kinky dungeon of a high-class dominatrix with a powerful client list. The bearish Depardieu falls for the lithe professional, blonde Ariane (Bulle Ogier) in a black bob wig and dressed in tight leather and latex, and soon moves into her handsome flat while she plies her trade downstairs. Barbet Schroeder's kinky little slice of sexual decadence is initially titillating and erotic, but soon turns grotesque. Ariane's clients desire her domination but only as contracted: They control their abuse. The romance becomes a warped mirror of her career, Ariane allowing Olivier the appearance of control as he slides behind the driver's seat of her car, but setting the parameters of his dominance. Easygoing Olivier soon begins to simmer with frustration and jealousy, unable to comprehend her twisted world of sexual deviance, and attempts to "save" her from her lifestyle. Schroeder pushes the portrayal of S&M and bondage to the limits with graphic scenes of pain, torment, and mutilation, presented with a bland detachment that makes them all the more uncomfortable to watch. He brings that same dispassionate attitude to the romance, which results in an uninvolving yet undeniably fascinating story of a quirky affair. --Sean Axmaker

When he is implicated in the burglary of a Paris apartment, a young provincial (Gérard Depardieu) stumbles into the subterranean world of sadomasochism, becoming the upstairs lover of the apartment's mistress, who then finds the two levels of her carefully controlled existence beginning to interfere with each other. Barbet Schroeder's film examines the line between fantasy and reality, decadence and deprivation, and the distance one will go for love. The DVD also features a new interview with the director.

La Vallee

While The Godfather was making moviegoers an offer they couldn't refuse, La Vallée was wowing art-house crowds with its flower-powered search for paradise in the jungles of New Guinea. It's there that an adventurous diplomat's wife (Bulle Ogier), hoping to find the forbidden feathers of a rare exotic bird, embarks on a deeper, more personal quest when she encounters a makeshift family of hippies seeking an unmapped valley from which visitors are said never to return. Like the structurally similar cult films from its era (including Walkabout and Aguirre: The Wrath of God), La Vallée dazzled the post-'60s subculture with free-spirited adventure and enigmatic beauty, captured here through the peerless lens of cinematographer Néstor Almendros. The hippie vibe seems mildly dated but its sensual context is timeless, and a climactic encounter with the primitive Mapuga tribe retains an intense cross-cultural mystique. Pink Floyd's celebrated soundtrack is mostly heard as background ambience, but it effectively enhances the film's compelling atmosphere of mystery and expectation. --Jeff Shannon

The Third Generation

Alternately acclaimed and controversial German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder's disturbing, twisted, and often very funny satire about modern culture and terrorism was made in 1979, but remains an intriguing and, of course, still-timely look at the subject. The provocative film follows an inept group of radicals who take a well-known businessman hostage to draw attention to their cause, but soon find themselves consumed with infighting and somewhat-justified paranoia, unwitting pawns of the very state they oppose. The capable cast includes Harry Baer, Hark Bohm, Margit Carstensen, and Udo Kier.

System Requirements:

The Kimstim Collection: The Color of Lies

Irma Vep

In the tradition of films about filmmaking, Irma Vep takes its own special place among such films as Fellini's 8½. A has-been director decides to remake the silent French serial film Les Vampires starring a Hong Kong action film superstar. The production is falling behind schedule and its star, Maggie Cheung (who plays herself), finds herself an outsider with the film's crew save for a woman costumer (Nathalie Richard) who has a crush on her. Rene the director (Jean-Pierre Leaud) cast Maggie after viewing one of her many martial-arts fantasy films. Although he finds her perfect for the part of the jewel thief in Les Vampires, the rest of the crew cannot see the reasons for casting Maggie beyond her beauty and how she looks in her tight-fitting latex costume. Rene's vision is soon lost on everyone and he suffers a mental breakdown. The film is reassigned to Jose (Lou Castel), a seemingly more commanding director (although he takes the job because his welfare is about to run out), whose first decision is to fire Maggie. Irma Vep is presented as a comedy, but at its heart lies an examination of the art and craft of filmmaking. In a clever turn, Maggie creeps around her hotel getting into character, in essence remaking Irma Vep for real-life director Olivier Assayas. Assayas wrote the film in 10 days and shot the film in a month after meeting Maggie Cheung at a film festival--a fascinating case of life imitating art... or is it the other way around? --Shannon Gee

Hong Kong action superstar Maggie Cheung (Police Story) plays herself in Olivier Assayas' brilliant satire of the movie industry.

Merci Docteur Rey

An opera diva, hustlers, and murder collide in this rollicking Parisian farce from Merchant Ivory.

Shattered Image

There are times when Raul Ruiz's maddening and mesmerizing film resembles a direct-to-video erotic thriller in which rampant clichés collide in scenes surreal in their straight-faced silliness. And there are moments when the fractured narrative and stylistic shards create a sophisticated study in alienation and disconnection. These elements often coexist in the same scenes. Ruiz is a master craftsman whose cinematic intelligence is put to the process of storytelling as much as to the telling of stories. Here he has two tales that intertwine through dreams and fantasies, bouncing off of and commenting on one another. Anne Parillaud stars as a lethal, world-weary assassin in the first and as a skittish, wide-eyed newlywed in the other. When one falls asleep the other wakes up, as if it were all a dream, but we're never sure which one (if either) is real. When the assassin takes a job that targets her lover (William Baldwin) and the newlywed suspects her husband (Baldwin again) of a plot against her life, it becomes clear that their relationship is far more than a schizophrenic split. Pinging against the narrative sophistication and deliriously rich images are creaky B-movie twists and hoary performances by Baldwin and femme fatale Lisanne Falk. The result is a film that defies its own conventions, like a parody of bad thrillers executed with the assured brilliance of a cinematic genius. It may not always work, but it never fails to astonish. --Sean Axmaker

Confusion of Genders

Based on a best selling novel of the same name, Confusion of Genders is an uninhibited romantic satire that tells the story of Alain (Pascal Greggory), who is having an office romance with a female colleague Laurence (Nathalie Richard). Unfortunately her younger brother Christophe (Cyrille Thouvenin) likes him as well. Alain however, doesn't know what he wants. Men, women, commitment and freedom are luring him in every direction but he is incapable of choosing. Or willing. When Alain encounters sexy, dangerous Marc (Vincent Martinez), the only way to get close to him is to become the messenger of Marc's passion (the sexy Babette, played by Julie Gayet), an entrancing woman whose charms Alain can not resist. Unfortunately, by this time, Christophe has moved into Alain's flat and Laurence is expecting his child and his hand in marriage. Will Alain find a compromise that will be acceptable to all?