News

Based on a true story, Pierre Godeau’s sophomore feature film is Down By Love, and takes place, for the most part, in a women’s prison. While his last film was titled Juliette (2013), this could well have gone by the name of Romeo, for he depicts love in the face of adversity, between two […]

The post Down By Love Review appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated isn't awful, as its sorry Facebook-referencing title would indicate. But this feather-brained French farce also isn't the honest, bracing look at the temptations of infidelity that it could have been. It's as slight as its diminutive star (Manu Payet, who also co-directed with Rodolphe Lauga and co-wrote with Romain Lévy and Nicolas Peufaillit). Ben (Payet) never got over his high school crush, American transfer student Vanessa (Emmanuelle Chriqui). Being engaged to the beautiful, level-headed Juliette (Anaïs Demoustier) doesn't shake this struggling videographer out of his gloom. Upon hearing that Vanessa has returned to Paris to launch a restaurant, he agrees to shoot a promotional video for the grand opening....

Young directors from Paris to Athens are tackling the existential woes of 'adulescent' twentysomethings

July is not normally a month for seminal cinema in France. But even the summer lull and the heatwave in France haven't managed to eclipse totally the release of Juliette, the first film by 24-year-old director Pierre Godeau, which is being heralded as the latest example of a new wave of European films dealing with youth and the eurozone meltdown.

Featuring the 27-year-old Franco-Spanish actress Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, known for her role as Syrena in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Juliette tells the story of a young woman who keeps postponing the moment when she'll have to make choices in life.

It is a far cry from the carefree atmosphere of films such as Cédric Klapisch's L'Auberge Espagnole (Pot Luck) in 2002, and its follow-up, Russians Dolls. Describing pre-euro-crisis European youngsters on the Erasmus exchange...