The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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.
Quietly understated French SF film set in a future where all illness has been abolished and a woman becomes a media sensation when she is diagnosed with a terminal condition
This starts out seeming like a Backroads Brutality film with an innocent family being attacked after taking a side road detour, only to end in increasingly stranger supernatural territory
Prolific exploitation director Jess Franco makes an entry in the early 1970s fad for lesbian vampire films. This has more softcore erotic content than other entries, although the Dracula part of the title is a misnomer
This exploits the topical fascination with the darknet in a story ostensibly about making snuff videos for sale there. In actuality, this telescopes down to being no more a variant on The Most Dangerous Game
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
Finally, the answer to what happened to Marc Caro after parting ways with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Caro directs what would appear to be a darkly lit and confusing variation on The Green Mile set on a space station
Luc Besson produced film set among drum and bass dance culture in New York that follows an aspiring mute dancer (Mia Frye) who is asked to test a new technology that translates dance to music
The first film in 24 years from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surreal journey through his own childhood. Gone is Jodorowsky, the mad prophet of El Topo, replaced by a warm, wryly self-reflexive Jodorowsky looking back in on his own life
Xavier Gens film from the screenwriters of The Conjuring films based on a supposedly true-life exorcism. One was hoping that Gens would do amazing things with the exorcism genre but he only rehashes the same cliches
Luc Besson scripted sequel to the serial killer thriller The Crimson Rivers. However, in director Olivier Dahan’s hands, this emerges as a empty-headed series of shock images and random action scenes
A strong well-made French thriller that comes with the influence of Se7en involving murders on a mountainside glacier and a secretive boarding school with ties back to the Nazi era
An early film from Francois Ozon, this offers a modernisation of Hansel and Gretel where the two are teenage lovers on the run before the story turns into a remarkable gay coming out parable
An experimental silent film from the great Rene Clair that depicts a group of people who remain unaffected as all of Paris around them has been frozen in time by a ray experiment
Actress Julie Delpy directs/stars in an adaptation of the Countess Bathory story. In trying to pitch itself as a work of historical feminism and having sympathy for Bathory, this downplays the considerable horror element of the story
The almost indescribable second film from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Delicatessen fame, a Dicekensian street urchin fantasy that takes place in a stunningly designed almost-familiar world filled with eccentric characters
French Cyberpunk film with a detective investigating the murder of an illegal immigrant girl and finding a blackmarket in stolen and transplanted memories
More of an abstract art short than a film. Dialogueless, almost plotless, this concerns the lone human in a city inhabited by inscrutable beings that amuse themselves by rearranging matter
Famous surrealist short film made as a collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, full of the shock juxtapositions and symbolism you associate with either
Vastly over-praised French New Wave film that is a ghost story of sorts. Three hours plus of tediously protracted happenings that don’t seem to be about anything at all
Colourful and frothy whimsy from Fina Torres in the Magical Realist tradition about a woman engaged in a series of romantic mishaps in Paris
French film that was nominated for the 2011 Best Animated Film at the Oscars. Cute but over-rated, the film is all highly stylised hand-drawn caricature that looks great but never works very hard to engage in terms of its characters
This French film is an uncredited copy of Peggy Sue Got Married wherein director/star Noemie Lvovsky a dissatisfied divorcee who is propelled back to her high school graduating year and gets to relive her life choices
The first film from Enki Bilal set in a decaying luxury bunker where the elite of the future take shelter from a civil war. A film that creates a fascinating world – in which nothing interesting ends up happening
From regular genre director Christophe Gans, this is a head-scratching mix of French historical drama, monster movie and imported Wu Xia action moves
The English-language remake of the Luc Besson-produced Banlieue 13. The electrifying parkour scenes of the original now seem routine and the film’s social set-up so thinly sketched as to be negligible as science-fiction
Catherine Breillat, a director known for her full-on explorations of sexuality, takes on an adaptation of the French fairytale about a multiple wife murderer
Influenced by the classic Eyes Without a Face, this is a work of French Gothic about an aristocrat trying to find the right woman to use her face for his disfigured wife
Early film from Jean Cocteau that consists of a progression of surreal situations. Dreamy and occasionally interesting
Roger Vadim conducts a very sofctore adaptation the classic vampire story Carmilla but this seems pallid and bloodless in contrast to the Hammer Films of the same period, not to mention their later adaptations of the same story
Louis Malle’s one and only venture into the French New Wave – a baffling work set around social collapse as a young girl wanders a farmhouse encountering unicorns, talking animals and various surreal happenings
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of The City of Lost Children and Amelie fame returns with an appealingly eccentric, beautifully designed comedic take on the machine revolution
Adaptation of the fairytale that takes place in an exquisitely dreamy sumptuousness – a stunningly designed, costumed and photographed world that has a genuine magic. However, the motion-capture animated Beast looks far too much like a CGI effect
Jean Cocteau makes one of the greatest of all fantasy films and the finest of all fairytale adaptations, elaborating the original story out with a visual magic that still manages to dazzle audiences today
Delightful and completely charming Rene Clair comedy about a daydreamer. A much better version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty than either of the official film adaptations
An exquisitely dreamlike erotic fairytale from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, a variant on Beauty and the Beast involving the liaison between a girl and a beast.
Another of the films from cult exploitation director Jess Franco. This is a vampire film made with a mix of arty erotica with Lina Romay as Countess Irina Karlstein who drains men and women’s lifeforce during sex
Charmingly capricious and silly adaptation of the comic-strip with a wide-eyed Jane Fonda as the spacegoing heroine. Filled with some wonderfully naughty gags and a production and costume design scheme that goes to a gorgeously deranged excess
Sequel to the French action hit. The plot shuffles the same basic elements around but it is the action we have come for, which is slow to start but soon kicks into exhilarating high gear
Luc Besson written/produced film that is a French rehash of Escape from New York but director Pierre Morel gives it a series of exhilarating action and parkour sequences
Splendidly nasty French film that feels like Thelma and Louise by way of Natural Born Killers where two women pick up guns and go on a shooting spree against men who are abusive jerks. Directed by two women and cast with porn actresses, this holds little back
This was critically dismissed – even its director spoke out against it – nevertheless it proves a flawed but not entirely uninteresting French Cyberpunk film as mercenary Vin Diesel is hired to protect miracle girl Melane Thierry
A wildly deranged and gore-drenched ride. Imagine Rosemary’s Baby with an Alien chesburster where a woman is impregnated by a parasite that maintains a monologue as it urges her to kill and drink blood to feed it.
Next to Hayao Miyazaki, Michel Ocelot is the greatest animators of all time but one of the least widely recognised. Here he conducts a beautifully made Arabian fairytale
Costa-Gavras, a director known for highly political films, makes a dark comedy about an unemployed man who sets out to eliminate his rival job applicants
The title is misleading as the film doesn’t feature any robots but a group of mind-controlled assassins. An entry in the mid-1960s spy film fad from cult exploitation director Jess Franco
The sixth film version of a classic lost world story about explorers finding Atlantis and its immortal queen in the desert. This is a more mundane version that waters down the fantastic elements
The first and best film version of a classic story about an expedition finding the city ruled by an immortal queen in the desert. This was shot in the real locations and comes with a stunning sense of expansiveness
One of the sillier among the animated Asterix films maintained at a high-level of slapstick and with badly dubbed voices that do not suit the characters
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
The best among the films made from the Asterix comics. This delivers the characters and the visual humour the way they should be, plus leaves the sly satiric wit of the originals intact with side-splitting results
One of several animated films based on the popular comic-book characters Asterix and Obelix made by Dargaud Films
The third of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This faithfully replicates the look and visuals of the original comic-books as the two head off to the Olympics
The first of the live-action films based on the famous comic-books set during the Roman period, starring Gerard Depardieu who seems born to play the part of Obelix
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
Fourth of the live-action films adapted from the Asterix comic-books with Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This replicates the absurdist historical wit of the originals while poking fun at the foibles of the British
Luc Besson has made some phenomenal action films but I just can’t seem to get into his trilogy of children’s films. This was the third. A silly effort written down to a very juvenile level and padded with inane humour
This was the second of Luc Besson’s Minimoys films, partly animated children’s films set in a world of miniature creatures. Here the charms of the first film seem thinly stretched
Lightweight Luc Besson directed children’s fantasy with a young boy shrunken down to miniature size to engage in a series of CGI animated adventures among a race of fairy-like people. Several sequels followed
This English-language debut from Emir Kusturica should have been a hit going by its cast that includes a young Johnny Depp romancing a 50+ Faye Dunaway, but is a plotless piece of improv of occasional surreal interludes
Animated film that takes place in a Steampunk alternate history. This brims over with an extraordinary degree of visual invention from the amazingly detailed vistas of the world to a script tossing in quirky twists and wacky inventions
As a follow-up to Holy Motors, Leos Carax returns with of all things a musical. As might be expected of Carax, this is a wildly surrealistic film, not the least of which is one of the characters is a singing puppet
A standout French-made stalker film that leaves Fatal Attraction in its dust. Isabelle Carré giving a frightening performance as a woman who becomes obsessed with a doctor
An award-winning and highly acclaimed French film set in a world that is affected by a series of mutations where people are transforming into animal hybrids
Luc Besson makes a charming and funny film where a suicidal loser is aided by a tall and statuesque Rie Rasmussen who claims to be an angel sent to help him sort his life out
An exquisitely directed homage to giallo cinema – a fascinating work that has been stripped of almost all dialogue that takes place on a purely visual level of sensation and body movement
Surrealistic cinematic joke from French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard that mashes up film noir and SF where hard-boiled detective travels to another planet represented by contemporary Paris
A French-Spanish film in which a group of troubled youths escaped from a reform centre only to discover that all the adults around them have become zombies
A French variant on The Quiet Earth adapted from a comic-book about a group of young people who wake up to find themselves alone in a deserted city
This collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali is not much more than a plotless series of surrealistic images, which are frequently calculated to outrage
Beautifully filmed work featuring John Malkovich as an enigmatic Messenger of Death. A coolly sophisticated and mysterious film that plays out like an arthouse version of Final Destination by way of the Jeff Bridges Fearless
A harsh and urgent French-made catastrophe film about a family trying to survive and get to safety with the appearance of a sudden cloud of deadly acid rain