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Christophe Honoré's Winter Boy is now showing exclusively on Mubi starting April 28, 2023, in many countries in the series Luminaries.When Antoine Doinel first dons his checkered jacket and roams the streets of Paris in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), the city air is so cold that his breath clouds the frame. Truffaut’s wintry film is a tale of isolation and frustration in the life of the young Doinel, a misbehaving schoolboy bored by la dictée and the stifling teachings of his professor. Out in the frostbitten night, he sleeps in a printing press and steals a typewriter, evoking his search for his own liberation and words to live by. To everyone else, he appears a troubled youth in need of institutionalization. To Truffaut, he is his younger self looking for his identity and the means to express it, a memory committed to film. When a filmmaker sets...

“French Dispatch” director Wes Anderson is so stranger to sharing his favorite movies. Now, he’s paired with the French Institute Alliance Francaise (Fiaf) for a seven movie series devoted to Anderson’s favorite French features. The screening series will coincide with the release of Anderson’s next feature, the aforementioned “French Dispatch” starring Timothee Chalamet.

The series will kick off with a free screening of Diane Kurys’ 1977 feature “Peppermint Soda” on September 14. The other features in the series, dubbed “Wes Anderson’s French Connection” includes Max Ophuls’ 1940 film “From Mayerling to Sarajevo,” Francois Truffaut’s “The Man Who Loved Women” from 1977, “Kings and Queen” (2004), Bertrand Blier’s “Get Out Your Handkerchiefs” (1977), “Max and the Junkmen” from 1971, and Jacque Becker’s 1947 film “Antoine and Antoinette.”

These are just a few of the inspirations associated with Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” which follows a group of journalists at a fictional French magazine.

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) has partnered with film distribution company Kino Lorber to present a new film series titled “AWFJ Presents.”

Curated by esteemed female film journalists and critics under the new “AWFJ Presents” banner on Kino Lorber’s digital platform KinoMarquee, the inaugural selections include six exceptionally entertaining and relevant films by women directors.

Jennifer Merin, AWFJ president, said, “The alliance is very proud to partner with Kino Lorber for our inaugural ‘AWFJ Presents’ series to highlight some truly outstanding films by some of the world’s finest women directors. The films tell stories that are true to women’s experiences and represent women’s perspectives, but have universal appeal. We are also beyond appreciative of their enthusiasm and generosity regarding this partnership.”

Kino Lorber SVP Wendy Lidell, added, “It is as important to increase the number and presence of female film critics as it is...

Nothing is accidental in a film as keenly observed as Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda” (now streaming on the Criterion Channel), but the opening title song seems a particularly important choice. She uses Cliff Richard’s “Living Doll,” and not only to set the picture’s early-1960s scene. The orchestration does that; the lyrics do more.

Got myself a cryin’, talkin’, sleepin’, walkin’, livin’ doll

Got to do my best to please her just ’cause she’s a livin’ doll

Got a roamin’ eye and that is why she satisfies my soul

Got the one and only walkin’, talkin’, livin’ doll

Take a look at her hair, it’s real

If you don’t believe what I say, just feel

I’m gonna lock her up in a trunk so no big hunk

Can steal her away from me

This way of seeing women – not as a person, but as an accessory,...

Cinema St. Louis presents the 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place March 8-10, 15-17, and 22-24, 2019. The location this year is Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards.

The 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.” The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating...

Cinema St. Louis presents the 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place March 8-10, 15-17, and 22-24, 2019. The location this year is Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards.

The 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.” The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating...

Cinema St. Louis presents the 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place March 8-10, 15-17, and 22-24, 2019. The location this year is Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards.

The 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.” The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating...

Cinema St. Louis presents the 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place March 8-10, 15-17, and 22-24, 2019. The location this year is Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards.

he 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.”

The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSApichatpong Weerasethakul's Blue.The Toronto International Film Festival is continuing to roll out an impressive (and massive) lineup of films, this time for its Masters and Wavelengths sections, including a mysterious 12-minute "portrait of feverish slumber" by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, entitled Blue, the international premiere of Naomi Kawase's Vision, about a woman's search for a Japanese medicinal plant in a strange forest, and the North American premiere of Jia Zhangke's gangster film Ash is Purest White.Recommended VIEWINGWith fall festival season upon us, a slew of new trailers has arrived: Firstly, Gaspar Noé is back with what is destined, based on reviews from Cannes, to be yet another contentious film. Lawrence Garcia wrote about the "virtuosic, infernal" film for Notebook. Here's the U.S. trailer. A sublime, oneiric first trailer for Naomi Kawase's aforementioned Tiff-bound Vision,...

“To my sister, who still hasn’t given back my orange pullover” reads Diane Kurys’ cheeky dedication in the opening to her newly restored feature debut, “Peppermint Soda.” Set over the course of a single school year, bookended by summer vacations, the breezy snapshot-style narrative tracks the lives of thirteen-year-old Anne (Eléonore Klarwein) and fifteen-year-old Frédérique (Odile Michel) as they encounter the clumsiness and cruelties of coming-of-age.

Continue reading Diane Kurys’ ‘Peppermint Soda’ Is A Vital Look At Surviving Adolescence [Review] at The Playlist.

Paris, 1963. Anne (Eléonore Klarwein) has just turned 13, while her cool older sister Frédérique (Odile Michel) already has a rep at age 15. Forty years after French filmmaker Diane Kurys’ semi-autobiographical debut (she’s the Anne of this story), “Peppermint Soda” is as refreshing and bubbly as any other coming-of-age film, a feature that was both ahead of its time and true to the life Kurys led as an impressionable teen. Turns out, growing up has always been awkward and weir and fun, and the enduring power of “Peppermint Soda” speaks to exactly that.

Kurys went on to direct a slew of signature features, including “Entre Nous” and “Love After Love,” but “Peppermint Soda” captures the filmmaker at her most effervescent. The film screened at both Tiff and Nyff, and went on to win Best Foreign Language Film from the National Board of Review.

On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, the...

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Nathan Gelgud, an artist who has brought a wry comic book charm to the world of cinephilia. It seemed only natural that I should find out more about the art that has influenced him and so I asked him to select his personal top ten favorite movie posters. He was more than up for the challenge and decided to narrow the field to illustrated posters, which makes perfect sense. Here are his ten favorites, in no special order.1. (Above) Us one sheet for Five on the Black Hand Side (Oscar Williams, USA, 1973). Artist: Jack Davis.I love all the accouterments on the main figure—the hat, the cigar, the umbrella, suitcase, those things that go over the shoes. But even better is the way Davis has arranged all the characters around him, the way the jumping guy’s arm joins with the guy...

It feels wrong to say that the man responsible for something as achingly tender as the high-concept romantic masterpiece Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is only getting personal with his work now. And yet, French director Michel Gondry's new comic adventure Microbe and Gasoline may just might be the wizard of whimsy's most intimate picture to date. Drawing on his own experiences as a Gallic grade-school hooligan tinkering with homemade contraptions, he's filtered his memories of childhood into a buddy comedy that bridges the gap between how it happened,...

For a Woman continues French writer-director Diane Kurys's career-long interest in autobiography. Kurys started out as an actress in the '70s, but hasn't returned to performing since directing 1977's Peppermint Soda.

Rather, she’s crafted intimate domestic dramas -- most of them, like her Oscar-nominated Entre Nous (1983), set in the past -- that draw on her recollections of her family life.

For a Woman boasts a sloppy, 1980s-set framing device, which presents a Kurys surrogate (Sylvie Testud) diving into family photographs and heirlooms in the wake of her mother's death. Her discoveries in those documents lead into the main narrative, which takes place in Lyon immediately post-wwii.

Like Kurys's own parents, the Russian-Jewish couple at ...

Nostalgic coming-of-age films feed our need to delude ourselves about the way we were

For his first feature, the NME-dubbed "coolest man in London" gives us an already acclaimed portrayal of adolescence in south Wales. You might reasonably have expected something funny, touching and perceptive, and at least according to its fans, Submarine is all of these things. You might also have hoped for a bit of insight into life on the threshold of adulthood in today's fretful Britain. Yet mobiles and iPods are mysteriously absent. In their place, we get record-players, tape-decks, typewriters and duffle-coats.

Director Richard Ayoade says of his film, "The idea was that it shouldn't be set in a particular time-frame." Still, Crocodile Dundee is on at the flicks, and that had its UK release in December 1986, which fits pretty much with the Thatcher-age props. This commandeering of the immediately pre-internet era reflects a strange penchant of the coming-of-age genre.