French Connections: Binoche Is Boss in Assayas Family

Summer Hours
Running time 103 minutes
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas
Starring Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier

Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours (L’Heure d’Été), from his own screenplay (in French with English subtitles), is curiously described by the 54-year-old writer-director of a dozen or more feature films as his “most Taiwanese film.” Mr. Assayas Read More

Haran, Akers—Cabaret’s Best

On the music scene, Hoagy Carmichael is wrong: Spring will not be a little late this year. To quote Lorenz Hart, spring is here. The proof in the pudding is currently being served by two of the cabaret scene’s most cherished stars. Before they tear down the Bemelmans murals from the walls and move the Read More

Three Weeks to Live-What Would You Do?

Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me , based on Nanci Kincaid’s short story “Pretending the Bed Is a Raft,” confirms the stature of one of the most gifted young actresses in the world today. At the age of 24, Canadian actress Sarah Polley has been blessed with a heroic and brilliantly written role that could’ve Read More

Diane Lane Stumbles, Smolders-Richard Gere Plays the Square

Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful , from the screenplay by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., loosely based on Claude Chabrol’s La Femme Infidèle , brings to mind Vittorio De Sica’s crypto-Marxist, anti-”white telephone,” pre-neorealist aphorism to the effect that adultery is the only drama of the middle class. Mr. Lyne is no stranger to adultery and Read More