366 Weird Movies

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, psychotronic, and the just plain WEIRD!

Entries Tagged ‘French’

CAPSULE: À L’AVENTURE (2009)

DIRECTED BY: Jean-Claude Brisseau
FEATURING: Carole Brana, Etienne Chicot
PLOT:  Sandrine, bored with sex and life in general, takes a year off from the rat race

and meets some libertines who explore the intersection of sex, hypnosis and religious ecstasy.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This retro sex-drama only flirts with weirdness at the very end.  Considered as [...]

CAPSULE: THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997)

DIRECTED BY: Luc Besson
FEATURING: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker
PLOT: 300 years in the future, an ex-special ops agent turned taxi driver must collect

four stones and discover the fifth element to stop the universe from being destroyed by evil, with the help of a scantily clad supreme being.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  [...]

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: EDEN LOG (2007)

DIRECTED BY:  Franck Vestiel
FEATURING:  Clovis Comillca, Vimala Pons, Zohar Wexleser
PLOT: A man named Tolbiac (Cornillac) awakens with amnesia alongside rotting corpses

in a high-tech underground wasteland.  He must find his way out of a massive labyrinth deep within the earth.  To do so he has to collect and assimilate data and unravel clues to the bizarre [...]

35. DELICATESSEN (1991)

“I have a lovely memory of my producer, Claudie Ossard, who came to see us in these sewers.  She’d come in Chanel suits and high heels.  It was surreal to see her among these Troglodists dripping in oil.”–Jean-Pierre Jeunet

DIRECTED BY: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
FEATURING: Dominique Pinon, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Karin Viard, Howard Vernon
PLOT:  In [...]

29. THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN [La cité des enfants perdus] (1995)

“…someone who didn’t dream but, just the same, lived very well, yet would want to see, in dreams, a greater dimension of the imagination. For us, someone who is deprived of that is condemned to die. That’s part of what we wanted to say…  If one cannot dream and imagine things, and if one is [...]

26. THE MILKY WAY [LA VOIE LACTEE] (1969)

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
And a man’s foes shall be they of [...]

CAPSULE: GIRL SLAVES OF MORGANA LE FAY [MORGANE ET SES NYMPHES] (1971)

DIRECTED BY:  Bruno Gantillon
FEATURING: Mireille Saunin, Dominique Delpierre, Alfred Baillou
PLOT:  Two pretty young women travelling through the French countryside

stumble upon the castle of an elegant witch attended by a bevy of beauties and a dwarf, who promises to keep them eternally young and pampered if they will give up their souls to her.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE [...]

5. EYES WITHOUT A FACE [LES YEUX SANS VISAGE] (1960)

AKA Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus [dubbed and edited version]
“I love images that make me dream, but I don’t like someone dreaming for me.” –Georges Franjou

DIRECTED BY: Georges Franjou
FEATURING: Edith Scob, Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli
PLOT:  The face of the daughter of a brilliant plastic surgeon is horrifically scarred in an automobile accident.  The doctor [...]