Faceless (1987)
Mad Surgeon
Cult exploitation director Jesus Franco pays homage to the mad surgeon films of his heyday. Essentially one of Franco’s Dr Orloff films by way of the sadistic despatches of the giallo film
French Cinema
The history of French Cinema is the history of the beginnings of cinema – from the very first films made by the Lumiere Brothers, which screened in Paris in 1895, to some of the first science-fiction and fantasy films by Georges Melies who pioneered most of the major special effects techniques.
France has produced a steady stream of films since. Its next major wave of genre output came during the French New Wave of the 1950s and 60s, which produced a series of experimental films that broke with Hollywood narrative and technique, creating a series of surrealistic, sometimes extraordinary, often baffling and pseudo-intellectual works.
France has its steady output of films that are light comedies, popular thrillers and action films, as well as a strong output of drama and independent works that usually defy a Hollywood norm. From the 1980s onwards, one of the major producers of genre cinema has come from Luc Besson who operates in the action, science-fiction and fantasy genres.
The other major intersection with genre material came during the so-called French Extremism movement of the mid-late 2000s involving a series of horror films that pushed gore, sadism and blood-letting to unbearably brutal levels.
Regular genre contributors from France include Alexandra Aja, Olivier Assayas, Enki Bilal, Alexandre Bustillo, Leos Carax, Marc Caro, Helene Cattet, Sylvain Chomet, Rene Clair, Jean Cocteau, Marina de Van, Claire Denis, Julia Ducournau, Quentin Dupieux, Bruno Forzani, Abel Gance, Christophe Gans, Xavier Gens, Jean-Luc Godard, Michel Gondry, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rene Laloux, Pascal Laugier, Louis Malle, Chris Marker, Julien Maury, Georges Melies, Dominik Moll, David Moreau, Gaspar Noe, Michel Ocelot, Francois Ozon, Xavier Palud, Pitof, Thierry Poiraud, Jean-Marie Poire, Jean Renoir, Alain Resnais, Jean Rollin and Roger Vadim.
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
Silent Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation
Early silent adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story that treats the story liberally, drops Poe’s mood of desolation and despair for one more of melancholy, but holds an undeniable style
Fantastic Planet (1973)
Bizarre Alien Planet/Animation
The first film from French animator Rene Laloux, a trippily surreal vision and one of the few portraits of a genuinely alien world on film
Fascination (1979)
Erotic Horror/Blood-Drinking Lesbians
One of the films from cult French director Jean Rollin whose works always contained an arty mix of horror and erotica. This concerns mysterious blood-drinking rituals among a group of women at a chateau
The Father (2020)
Alzheimer's Sufferer/Reality Blurrings
A film that received great acclaim at awards season. Anthony Hopkins is a dementia-ridden senior and we experience his state of mind subjectively in a constantly shifting sense of what is real
Fear(s) of the Dark (2007)
Anthology of Horror Animation
A visually striking compilation of five animated French horror tales. Each varies widely in style but the result is far more extraordinary than many live-action counterparts
Femme Fatale (2002)
Psycho-Thriller
Brian De Palma makes a return to the classic psycho-thrillers where he made his name, shouting virtuoso directorial flourish from the rafters and pulling off an amazingly contrived plot
The Fifth Element (1997)
Space Opera/Showdown Against Ultimate Evil
A big-budget space opera from Luc Besson. This offers a dazzlingly designed future but the plot is an inane hodgepodge of bad SF elements with a tone that flails between action and camp
Final Cut (2022)
Zombies on a Zombie Film Set Comedy
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest takes on the overworked zombie film in recent years. Here Academy Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius conducts a French remake but misses the mark
Le Frisson des Vampires (1971)
Arty Vampire Erotica
One of the early films of French director Jean Rollin who gained a cult following for his vampire films that offer a near-plotless blend of artily surreal imagery and erotica
Frontier(s) (2007)
Backwoods Brutality
Xavier Gens delivers a French copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is largely by the numbers excepting for a gore level raised to what must be a maximum for the genre
Game of Death (2017)
Boardgame Where Players Must Kill People
Gore-drenched French-Canadian film where teens play a board game that forces them to kill a select number of people lest their heads explode
Gandahar (1988)
Animation/Planetary Adventure
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure set on a world where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979)
Alien Visitors Slapstick Comedy
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
Ghostland (2018)
Home Invasion/Reality Bender
Pascal Laugier emerged as a most promising director with Martyrs. All of his films hang on improbably contrived twists. This starts out as a home invasion film not unakin to The Strangers but nothing is as it seems
Goal of the Dead (2014)
Zombies and Soccer
Zombies and soccer! Ok? From co-director of the ferocious French zombie film The Horde, a rather entertaining effort that resembles something of Shaun of the Dead in its comedy approach
Gwendoline (1984)
Lost City Quest/Softcore Fetishism/Comic Strip Adaptation
From the director of Emmanuelle, this is an adaptation of an adult comic-book that replays the lost city adventure with the addition of a mind-boggling softcore fetishism
Hail Mary (1984)
Modern Day Immaculate Conception
A controversy-laden Jean-Luc Godard film that offers an irreverent modern-day retelling of the Immaculate Conception. An amusing idea that vanishes under Godard’s pretensions
The Hands of Orlac (1960)
Possessed Hands
The third film and least version of the classic horror story about a pianist who receives hands transplanted from a murderer and is driven mad believing they are possessing him
Have Mercy On Us All (2007)
Modern Day Bubonic Plague Killer
French thriller about police investigating a killer who is infecting victims with the bubonic plague and leaving Mediaeval clues, all part of an elaborate revenge scheme
Hellphone (2007)
Demonic Cellphone
A French film about a teenager who buys a demonic cellphone and is able to use it to enact comeuppances against the people in his life. A 976-Evil for the cellular era
High Life (2018)
Space Mission
The title suggests a film about stoners more than about a space mission. From acclaimed director Claire Denis, this is less the space realism of Gravity and more akin to Solaris and its mission crew falling apart
High Tension (2003)
French Backwoods Brutality
The film that made the world take notice of Alexandre Aja. Aja serves up a brutal and gore-drenched variant on the Backwoods Brutality film, although things fall apart in an absurd twist ending
Hitman (2007)
Videogame Adaptation/Action
Disappointing film adaptation of the videogame from Xavier Gens that comes with unremarkable action scenes, a script filled with holes and Timothy Olyphant miscast as Agent 47
Holy Motors (2012)
Surrealism/Man's Cryptic Journey Through Various Disguises
Genuinely mind-screwing effort from Leos Carax. Imagine a version of Cosmopolis as hijacked by Alejandro Jodorowsky – a series of surreal vignettes that arrives at a major “huh?” ending
The Horde (2009)
French Zombie Film
This could be The Raid reconceived as a zombie film (and a few borrowings from Assault on Precinct 13). This never reinvents the basics, just delivers a ferociously entertaining, bared to the bone zombie survival film
House of VHS (2016)
People Sucked Inside a VCR
Group of backpackers at a chateau find an old VCR that mashes up genres and sucks them inside. There’s a good idea for a horror film somewhere here but it ends up with terrible execution
How I Became a Super-Hero (2020)
Superpowers Film
The title suggests either a comedic take on the superhero film or a teen film about a kid discovering superpowers. The least thing you expect this to be is a French police thriller about a unit investigating super-powered crimes
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1956)
Deformity/Historical Romance
Largely overlooked, this is the first version of the story in colour and has a lavishness that the previous versions lacked. On the minus side, Anthony Quinn’s Quasimodo is no more than a simpleton lacking in pathos
I Can’t Sleep (1994)
French Serial Killer
Claire Denis makes a film loosely based on the activities of a true-life drag performer/serial killer. However, she seems uninterested in developing plot or suspense
If the Shoe Fits (1990)
Modernised Cinderella
A modernised retelling of the Cinderella story that is set in the Paris fashion world starring with Jennifer Grey as a lowly seamstress falling for self-important fashion designer Rob Lowe
Immoral Tales (1974)
Erotic Anthology/Countess Bathory Story
One of the key films from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, a quartet of exquisitely photographed and art directed erotic tales, including one about Countess Bathory
Immortal (ad vitam) (2004)
Future New York/Ancient Egyptian Gods Return
Comic-book creator Enki Bilal creates a visually extraordinary film about Ancient Egyptian gods awakening in a future New York
An Impossible Voyage (1904)
Train Journey Into Space
Georges Melies’ successor to A Trip to the Moon featuring a journey to the sun by astronauts aboard a combination train-submarine-dirigible. A charming whimsy with remarkably technically accomplished effects for the era
In My Skin (2002)
Self-Mutilation Obsession
Fascinatingly perverse film directed and written by its star French actress Marina de Van who plays a woman who becomes obsessed with mutilating her own skin
The Incident (2011)
Trapped in an Asylum for the Criminally Insane During a Powercut
From an early script by S. Craig Zahler, this is an incredibly brutal and harrowing work about a group of cooks trapped inside an asylum for the criminally insane during a power cut
Incredible But True (2022)
Gonzo Comedy/Time Portal in the Basement
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s gonzo, surreal comedies where a married couple buy a house and find it has a portal that takes them twelve hours into the future, while making them younger
Infested (2023)
Spiders Overrun an Apartment Building
This French film ratchets up quite a reasonable degree of scary tension in taking a kitchen sink view as spiders overrun a low-income Paris apartment building
Inside (2007)
Brutal Home Invasion/Pregnant Woman Pursued
The most difficult to watch of the films to come out of French Extremism about a pregnant woman pursued by a mystery woman determined to tear the baby from her womb
Irreversible (2002)
Revenge and Rape
A highly controversial Gaspar Noe film that is all told in reverse chronological order, depicting the rape of Monica Bellucci and violent revenge by her husband Vincent Cassel
J’Accuse (1919)
Anti-War Film
Extraordinary filmmaking from Abel Gance made at the height of the silent era. Gance was deeply affected by World War I and makes an epic anti-war parable that stuns you with its cinematic craft
Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (2013)
Animation/Boy With a Cuckoo-Clock Heart on a Quest
A French animated film where a boy with a cuckoo-clock for a heart goes on a quest for love through a surreal quasi-Steampunk world. With cameos from Georges Melies and Jack the Ripper
Je T’aime, Je T’aime (1968)
French New Wave/Time Travel
French New Wave SF film from director Alain Resnais about a time machine. The idea of a protagonist travelling at random through his own memory is predictive of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five
La Jetee (1962)
French New Wave/Time Paradox
Chris Marker’s celebrated 28 minute time paradox film, an experimental work that was made at the height of the French New Wave. This later became the basis of Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys
Just Visiting (2001)
Time Travel Comedy
The US remake of the French time travel comedy Les Visiteurs. With a script by John Hughes, this imports the original film’s stars but misses its comedy charms by a mile
Kamikaze (1986)
Device That Can Kill People by TV
An early film written/produced by Luc Besson concerning a scientist driven crazy by tv announcers who invents a device that can kill people as they appear live on tv
Kandisha (2020)
Mythical Boogeywoman
Directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury made the brutally extreme Inside. Here they return with what feels like an unofficial copy of Candyman about a vengeful boogeywoman
The King and the Mockingbird (1980)
Animation/Fairytale
A classic French animated film that remained unseen for over thirty years. A fairytale about a cruel king and two lovers aided by a mockingbird, it emerges with an impressively epic sweep
Kirikou and the Men and Women (2012)
Animation/African Folk Tales
The third of Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou films, delightful tales about the ingenuity and plain-speaking wisdom of a young boy winning out over adult pomposity and foolishness. Animated with a simplicity that is magical
Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998)
Animation/African Folk Tales
The debut film from French animator Michel Ocelot, a beautifully simple series of African folk tales about a young boy whose plain-speaking truths outwit a witch
Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005)
Animation/African Folk Tales
Michel Ocelot returns to make a sequel to Kirikou and the Sorceress. This expands the quality of animation and is slightly the lesser than its predecessor but not without its charms
Lancelot du Lac (1974)
Arthurian Legends
French director Robert Bresson’s take on the Arthurian legends, stripped of nobility and magic. I’m not part of the critical cult around Bresson. Films that are dull and lifeless are not about spiritual yearning just dull
Last Journey of Paul W.R. (2020)
Earth Endangered by an Oncoming Moon
French film about Earth endangered by an oncoming moon and how only one man can save the world. This seemed it might be something culty – before the mind-bogglingly bizarre science becomes apparent
Last Year in Marienbad (1961)
French New Wave/Time and Memory
An extraordinary work from the French New Wave filled with incredible visuals as lovers drift through an ornate hotel where memory and time itself seems to shift
Lemming (2005)
Surreal Identity Exchange
A surreal very Lynchian French film in which a deranged Charlotte Rampling shoots herself and then afterwards appears to possess Laurent Lucas’s wife Charlotte Gainsbourg
Level Five (1996)
Virtual Reality Game/World War II Documentary
Chris Marker, the director of La Jetee, returns to SF. Though this is set around a Virtual Reality game, it is in fact a documentary essay about the Battle of Okinawa
Little Buddha (1993)
The Story of Buddha
Bernardo Bertolucci directs a biopic of the Buddha, which is interspersed with a modern story where a Western boy learns that he is the reincarnation of a revered abbot
The Little Prince (2015)
Animation/Young Boy Alien Visitor Fable
On its own terms, a frequently lovely film. The director made a big thing of how much he loved the Saint-Exupery original but makes a completely different story with only occasional Little Prince interludes
The Living Dead Girl (1982)
Girl Returns from the Dead
Another entry from the oeuvre of cult French director Jean Rollin – a film about the bond between a girl and her zombified friend that sits between some gore amateurish effects and a poetic subtlety
Lockout (2012)
Future Orbiting Prison/Action
Luc Besson written action-prison film that blatantly borrows from Escape From New York. An entertaining comic-book of a movie, even if its depth exists no further than Guy Pearce tossing off flip one-liners
Low Life (2011)
French Immigration Nightmare/Cursed Documents
Long-winded French film largely about criticising the country’s problematic immigration and asylum seeking system. This also has a B plot about a series of cursed documents
Lucy (2014)
Drug Grants Enhanced Intelligence and Superpowers/Action Film
Luc Besson makes a preposterously entertaining work where drug mule Scarlett Johansson develops superhuman mental capabilities – sort of if you imagine Limitless reconceived as an action film
La Machine (1994)
Psychiatrist Swaps Bodies with a Serial Killer
French thriller where psychiatrist Gerard Depardieu tests a device that allows him to swap bodies with a serial killer – only for the killer to get free and steal his life
Madame Hyde (2017)
Gender-Reversed Jekyll and Hyde Film
A gender-flipped version of the Jekyll and Hyde story with Isabelle Huppert is a teacher who is walked over in every aspect of her life before she is changed by a strange electrical discharge
Mads (2024)
Deadly Outbreak
A French horror film shot all in a single unbroken take as a deadly infection spreads all around town and we follow various people as they try to survive in the midst
Malefique (2002)
Jailed Prisoners Find an Occult Tome
Effective and unusual French film in which four prisoners in a jail cell discover an occult tome in the walls and start reading its spells thinking it can offer a means of escape
Malevil (1981)
Nuclear War
An entry in the spate of early 1980s nuclear war films about the residents of a French village who are sheltered in a wine cellar when the bomb drops and their efforts to survive in the aftermath
Mandibles (2020)
Gonzo Comedy/Men Find a Giant Fly
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s bizarrely surreal deadpan comedies in which two amiable idiots discover a fly that is about the size of a dog and believe they could tame it
Maniac (2012)
Psycho Film
Controversial remake of the 1980 psycho film. The remake’s unique take is that everything is shot in first-person from the point-of-view of the killer.
Un Mariage Sans Fin (2025)
Timeloop Comedy
Palm Springs was one of the funniest and most delightful variants on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This is a French language remake that relocates the story to the Moroccan desert
Mars Express (2023)
Animation/Mars Action/Cyberpunk
A French animated film, SF noir set on a future Mars with detectives fighting against someone who is jailbreaking robots. This deploys a strong and confident use of Cyberpunk tropes
Martyrs (2008)
Imprisonment and Torture
Pascal Laugier makes one of the most horrific films to emerge from France in the 00s. Scenes of grim torture sit alongside a plot that twists like a pretzel and messes with almost everything we take for granted
Mauvais Sang (1986)
Near-Future Romance
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality
Me Two (2008)
French Bodyswap Comedy
Lightweight French bodyswap comedy where aging rocker Alain Chabat and mousy bureaucrat Daniel Auteuil end up sharing the same body
Meander (2020)
Mysterious Labyrinth
This may be the most claustrophobic film ever made about a woman trapped inside a labyrinth of narrow tunnels and crawlspaces that house a series of death traps
Melies Cinemagician (2011)
Compilation of Georges Melies Shorts
Melies Cinemagician is a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The show was a live performance involving a score composed especially for the event, displays of conjuring tricks and a magic lantern show. The same year also saw […]
The Melies Mystery (2021)
Georges Melies Documentary
A documentary that offers the best discussion of the life of Georges Melies to date. Much of the film is focused on the recent rediscovery of a complete trove of negatives of Melies’s film
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Historical Epic
Luc Besson takes on the Joan of Arc story with then wife Milla Jovovich in the title role but in Besson’s hands it becomes a crazed historical action film that unquestioningly accepts Joan’s visions as real
Michel Gondry: Do It Yourself (2023)
Michel Gondry Documentary
A documentary focused on the unique and distinctive French director Michel Gondry, tracing his emergence through music video and to the success of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Mister Frost (1990)
The Devil in an Asylum
Fine film that deserves wider recognition with Jeff Goldblum as a man in an asylum who claims to be The Devil
Molom, A Legend of Mongolia (1995)
Buddhist Journey
Gentle affecting film about a boy learning Buddhist life lessons as he journeys across Mongolia with an old man
The Monk (2011)
Monk's Temptation by the Devil
The Monk is a sordid classic of 18th Century Gothic literature, filled with crazed lusts and Catholic guilt and damnation. However, in the hands of French director Dominik Moll, all the tortured sexuality has been watered down and the story stuffed as a costume drama
A Monster in Paris (2011)
Animation/Genteel Singing Monster
A charming French-made animated film about a genteel singing monster. Nothing profound but this is beautifully animated and sweetly appealing in all the right places
Mood Indigo (2013)
Wackily Surreal Romance
After the disastrous misstep of The Green Hornet, Michel Gondry returns to the surreal whimsy of The Science of Sleep. A film where Gondry delights in scene after scene of visual nonsense and serving up all the appealingly capricious silliness he can muster – creativity for creativity’s sake alone
The Most Assassinated Woman in the World (2018)
Real-Life Grand Guignol Theatre
A biopic of Paula Maxa, the real-life star of Paris’s Grand Guignol Theatre. The Grand Guignol specialised in plays depicting gory on-stage deaths and she was killed on stage an estimated 10,000 times during her career. Here the biopic elements are blended with a mystery in which she is targeted by a serial killer
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Alternate Life Pathways
Jaco Van Dormael film that reaches for epic ideas in a story about multiple life pathways and a babble of ideas taken from physics but fails to assemble them in a way that makes much sense
The Naked Vampire (1970)
Arty Vampire Erotica
The second in the works of arty vampire erotica that gained French director Jean Rollin a cult following. The surreal visuals and in particular the costuming make for mind-boggling visuals
The Night Eats the World (2018)
French Zombie Film
The zombie genre has become creatively overused and exhausted in recent years but this French entry plays with an appealing originality, sort of like a low-key version of Dawn of the Dead where a man builds a Parisian apartment building into his own paradise
Night of the Hunted (2023)
Psycho Sniper
From an Alexandre Aja associate, a reasonably tight thriller about a woman taking shelter in a gas station from a psycho sniper outside
The Ninth Gate (1999)
Quest for Occult Tome
Roman Polanski makes a return to Rosemary’s Baby territory in this work with Johnny Depp as a rare book collector on the trail of an occult tome. Polanski great a great sense of sinister forces surrounding Depp but the film reaches an unsatisfying ending
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961)
Deathdream
Famous short film adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce short story that patented the twist ending in which someone discovers that have been dead all along
Olivier, Olivier (1992)
Child's Mysterious Disappearance
Agnieszka Holland drama about the sudden return of a boy who went missing several years earlier, although may well be an impostor. Contains minor fantasy elements
1, 2, 3, Whiteout: The End of the Light Age (2007)
Experimental Film/Future Thought Experiments
Baffling SF film that lacks anything resembling a plot and seems mostly an experimental film about showing pretty light patterns
Orphee (1950)
Modernised Greek Myth
Jean Cocteau’s beautiful modernisation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice updated to post-War France
Outside Satan (2011)
Ambiguous Miraculous Visitor
In the vein of Pasolini’s Teorema, French director Bruno Dumont makes a film about an ambiguous visitor who may be capable of miracles. Slow, very opaque but eventually rewarding
The Owners (2020)
Home Invasion/Sinister Occupants
Maisie Williams and an aging Sylvester McCoy in a film about house burglars who break in to a home to discover sinister things afoot
Oxygen (2021)
Woman Imprisoned in a Cryogenic Capsule
Imprisonment thriller where Melanie Laurent wakes up trapped inside a cryogenic capsule, this expands out to become an excellent SF film
Perceval le Gallois (1978)
Arthurian Legends
From Eric Rohmer, a director of the French New Wave, an adaptation of stories from the Arthurian legends, made in a decidedly eccentric style
Personal Shopper (2016)
Possible Ghost Story/Mystery Texter
Olivier Assayas’s high-profile but wildly critically divided work feels as though it has several competing plots circling around Kristen Stewart – a ghost story, one about a mystery texter and briefly a murder mystery – which feel incomplete and unfinished and only maybe intersecting with one another
Pesticide (1978)
French Zombie Film
One of the films from cult director Jean Rollin. This is a zombie film, clearly influenced by Night of the Living Dead, but with a uniquely French spin – the zombies are caused by drinking toxic wine