(Click on a film's title to read SK's original review.)
Le Doulos. Once more a Jean-Pierre Melville film is brought back from the 1960s and is welcome. Melville's crime films are almost balletic in their graceful moves toward doom, and this mode is especially effective here because of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani. (Reviewed 07.23.07)
Golden Door. Around 1900 an Italian family emigrates from their impoverished village to America. Emanuele Crialese concentrates on the change of environment--the trip itself--rather than the usual American story. Some of the film is movie stuff, but mostly it is grim, funny, and courageous. (07.23.07)
In Between Days. Koreans in Toronto--the very phrase has a twist in it. This sensitive picture deals with and travels with a Korean high school girl adjusting to a new life, along with her Korean friends, but there is no heavy thematic freight. It is all done with the activities and feelings of a high school girl. The shadowy setting helps. (07.23.07)
Lady Chatterly. Another film from the Lawrence novel, and a a French one, too. Amply justified because the director Pascale Ferran is chiefly concerned with the world of passion, of which the sexual acts are in a way only the evidence. (07.02.07)
--SK
By Stanley Kauffmann