Synopsis: Marcel Marx, a former author and a well-known Bohemian, has retreated into a voluntary exile in the port city of Le Havre, where he feels he has reached a closer rapport with the people serving them in the occupation of the honourable, but not too profitable, of a shoe-shiner. He has buried his dreams of a literary breakthrough and lives happily within the triangle of his favourite bar, his work, and his wife Arletty, when fate suddenly throws in his path an underage immigrant refugee from the darkest Africa. As Arletty at the same time gets seriously ill and is bedridden, Marcel once more has to rise against the cold wall of human indifference with his only weapon of innate optimism and the unwavering solidarity of the people of his quartier, but against him stands the whole blind machinery of the Western constitutionally governed state, this time represented by the dragnet of the police, moment by moment drawing closer around the refugee boy. It's time for Marcel to polish his shoes and reveal his teeth. [Synopsis courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival]
Summer is around the corner which means that with the cold weather a distant memory, people are going to want to spending their time outside in the sun and warmth while it lasts. Which likely means less time sitting at home watching movies. So perhaps with that in mind, The Criterion Collection is k...
Read More »The annual top ten list is pretty much an exercise in futility to some degree. With a race to cram in as many movies as possible as the clock on the year winds down (and let it be said, I didn't get to see everything I would have wanted to) combined with the added duty of then ranking them, it...
Read More »While "The Artist" is currently the foreign film/arthouse darling, with Oscar in its sights and audiences lining up to see it, we do hope Aki Kaurismaki's beautiful and brilliant "Le Havre" doesn't get lost in the chatter this fall. The film premiered at Cannes to largely...
Read More »Janus Films has acquired North American rights to Aki Kaurismaki's "Le Havre," which premiered to rave reviews in competition at Cannes earlier this year.
Read More »The 2011 Cannes Film Festival kicked off a little over a month ago, and its reputation for being a particularly sales-heavy edition of the fest continued today with Cinema Guild's acquisition of Grand Prix co-winner "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia". Of the 20 films that screened in official competiti...
Read More »Le Havre is Finland’s official entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar, as it is the work of celebrated Finnish writer-director Aki Kaurismäki—yet it takes place in France, where it was shot with a nearly all-French cast. Let us agree, then, not to get caught up...
Read More »With its bouncy soundtrack, deadpan humor and good-natured disposition, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's "Le Havre" is an endearing affair. Combining his clownish storytelling with a life-affirming plot, Kaurismaki churns a fundamental scenario through his own unique narrative tendencies, yielding ...
Read More »