French Film Festival UK 2022: Five films to see

The French Film Festival turns 30 this year and it’s got a fantastic lineup fitting of that milestone. Among the big names in the programme you’ll find the latest work from the Dardenne Brothers. Titled Tori and Lokita, it’s a social realist thriller concerned with two migrant youths being drawn into the Belgian underworld. Many critics have been hailing it as a return to form for the double Palme d’Or-winning duo. 

A brace of remakes from two of France's most unpredictable directors should also prove to be hot tickets. There’s Final Cut, Michel Hazanavicius’s take on the Japanese meta-zombie horror One Cut of the Dead, which became a surprise arthouse hit back in 2017. There’s also François Ozon’s latest Peter von Kant, a curious gender-flip on The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1972 melodrama about the eponymous fashion designer and her relationship with two other women. Here the triangle consists of a film director, modelled on Fassbinder, his assistant and a wannabe young actor. Ozon is always interesting and his last work musing on Fassbinder – 2000’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks (based on a Fassbinder play) – is one of his most enduring films, so we’re excited to see him back in this territory. There's also Incredible But True, the latest piece of sci-fi oddness from Deerskin director Quentin Dupieux, in which a middle-aged couple find a time portal in their basement.

Below are five other films from the French Film Festival UK 2022 programme that we recommend seeking out...

Full Time

Dir. Eric Gravel

Anyone who’s ever had to deal with a hellish commute will appreciate Full Time. After getting an interview for a job that will enable her to be financially stable and spend more time with her kids, Julie’s dreams hang by a thread thanks to a Paris transit strike. A nail-biting thriller dressed as a social realist drama, we’ve seen Full Time described, quite delightfully, as Uncut Gems for single mums.

Stirling Macrobert Arts Centre, 15 Nov, 7.45pm; Glasgow Film Theatre, 17 Nov, 8.40pm; Dundee Contemporary Arts, 24 Nov, 1pm & 8.15pm

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Lost Illusions

Dir. Xavier Giannoli

Adapting the epic novels of France’s greatest author Honoré de Balzac has proved tricky for filmmakers, but word is that Xavier Giannoli (Marguerite, The Apparition) has pulled off the task with aplomb, creating a gorgeously sexy and funny period piece. Based on Balzac’s 1837 novel, the film follows a handsome young poet who gets embroiled in the sleazy world of Paris’s 19th-century journalism industry, where money and power are more important than truth and honour – sound familiar?

Inverness Eden Court, 5 Nov, 8.15pm; Edinburgh Dominion, 4 Dec, 5.30pm

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The Green Perfume

Dir. Nicolas Pariser

With the recent success of Knives Out and See How They Run, it seems like the crime caper is having a bit of a resurgence. Nicolas Pariser gets in on the action with The Green Perfume, a zesty screwball that pops like a graphic novel. Fronted by the ever-charming Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Lacoste and promising a twisty plot worthy of Hitchcock, The Green Perfume should prove to be a delightful night at the cinema.
Glasgow Film Theatre, 19 Nov, 1.30pm

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More Than Ever

Dir. Emily Atef

We’ve heard nothing but great things about this powerful yet understated melodrama since it debuted in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar. Vicky Krieps is reportedly wonderful as a young woman facing a possibly terminal illness while Gaspard Ulliel is similarly terrific in what would turn out to be one of his last on-screen performances (he died in a skiing accident earlier this year). The onscreen emotions combined with the real-life tragedy should make this a heartbreaking watch.

Dundee Contemporary Arts, 26 Nov, 1pm & 6pm; Stirling Macrobert Arts Centre, 29 Nov, 7.45pm

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A Room in Town

Dir. Jacques Demy

We’d also urge you to dip your toes into some of the classics of French cinema screening at the festival this year, including Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise and Claude Chabrol’s Madame Bovary. The pick of the bunch might be Jacques Demy’s A Room in Town from 1982, which is a darker cousin to the bright and effervescent musicals he’s most celebrated for. Set against the backdrop of a violent ship-builders strike, it follows a young docker who becomes romantically entangled with the middle-class daughter of his landlady, despite being engaged to marry his pregnant girlfriend. Jonathan Rosenbaum called A Room in Town “one of the most beautiful, assured, and cinematically inventive films of its period.”

Edinburgh Institut Français d'Ecosse, 8 Dec, 6pm