Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Late Marriage (Israel 2001, 102 min, dir: Dover Kosashvili, cast: Ronit Elkabetz, Lior Louie Ashkenazi).

Two enormously fat Georgian (Soviet) Jews invade the love nest of their son in Tel Aviv and demand he leave his lover for his wife. He’s not married yet, but they have plans and love shouldn’t get in the way. We normally think of Israelis as shrewd men and tough women. But in an immigrant nation, there’s no such thing as normal.

It’s a melting pot where nothing melts. There’s an old joke about a Jew marooned alone on a deserted island who builds two synagogues. When he is rescued they ask why two? He says, “one to worship in and the other one I wouldn’t set foot in.”

Zaza is 31. He’s in love with a 34 year-old divorcee with a young daughter. He is blissfully happy, especially in the very sensual bedroom scenes with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz). She’s pretty amazing, in bed and out, and has gone on to many more movies, mostly in France. But in Late Marriage she’s content to take off her clothes and jump on Zaza, making him the happiest Georgian in town.

But she’s divorced, and she’s not of his Georgian tribe. When his parents storm her apartment she’s sure he’ll chose love over tradition. Ha! You can accuse director Dover Kosashvili of short-handing a lot in the parents’ characters, but he precisely asks the right questions of conviction versus convenience. Zaza tries to slink back, but you don’t slink with Judith.

Judith’s had enough of him, and Ronit, seems to have had enough of Israel. She moved to France and continued her career with Origine Controlee, an intriguing little movie that was brought to American as Made in France. (This takes the all-time prize as the worse title translation ever).

Meanwhile at home, the Israelis are still battling one another to prove ethnic and moral superiority. Tradition battles commerce, religion battles secularity. It makes one of the most fertile cultures for filmmaking even if it is the worst for peace and politics. I’m reminded of the old Kingston Trio song, They’re Rioting in Africa, that goes:

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles. The Italians hate Yugoslavs, the South African’s hate the Dutch. And I don’t like anybody very much.

Fingers (USA 1978, 90 min, dir: James Toback, cast: Harvey Keitel, Tissa Farrow, James Brown) The Beat That My Heart Skipped (France 2005, 108 min, dir; Jacques Audiard, cast: Romain Duris, Aure Atika)

Rarely is an American movie remade as a French one. Usually it is the reverse. What’s clear is our style is brute confrontation and theirs is subtle manipulation. These two films, both excellent, are a Rosetta stone of Anglo-French cultural understanding.

James Toback made Fingers in 1978 with a young Harvey Keitel. You have to forgive him carrying a boom box everywhere on his shoulder: not even Sony Walkmans had been invented yet. Jacques Audiard makes Romain Duris a Belmondo-like thug who hides his musical ambition as a concert pianist by playing imaginary keyboards on cafe tables.

Audiard also adds characters and levels of plot absent from Fingers. It would be easy to say the French version has more depth and polish. But it is easier to improve than create from nothing. I think the American version is actually subtler for what it leaves out, and more electric for emotions that are not stated.

Witness the two love scenes. Harvey Keitel is crude and forceful. Romain Duris is expressive, romantic, yearning and wanting. One is a trashing animal ready to climb on his conquest. The other is opening himself up to feelings long simmering. But which has more heat, and what is more honest in human passion? I think Toback takes the prize and his film, though less sophisticated and less of a successful character study; finally has more raw power. See them both together and acknowledge them both as excellent. See them for Tissa Farrow and Aure Atika adding very sexual interpretations to the same part. Then go on see Toback’s Tyson and Audiard’s The Prophet to understand the extent of their cinema art.

My Best Friend (France 2006, 94 min. dir: Patrice LeConte, cast: Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet)

If Daniel Auteuil was an American, he would be Richard Gere. Auteuil is that always available, always serviceable, but never quite exciting star. He had great beginnings in Jean de Florette back in the mid-eighties. Here he is again, voila!

This time he is a Paris antique dealer with a good business but an empty life. He has no friends. So here’s the studio pitch: man with no friends takes a bet to find one and learns what friendship is all about. Before you say “Pass-adena, remember that producers in France don’t need to make money on pictures; they just make their fees and move on.

Where the film gets interesting is when it happens to land on the SAME plot device used in Slumdog Millionaire. Bruno (Dany Boon), the hapless taxi driver who was suckered into Francois’s (Auteuil’s) bet, is also a trivia expert. Thanks to some high-powered manipulating by Francois, he gets picked for the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (According to movie lore, the only country that has not had a version of this show is Iceland, where the bankers ran off with everybody’s money).

So it comes down to the “Lifeline” phone call where the contestant reaches out to one special friend who can help answer the most difficult question. The lifeline call to Francois is the beginning of an emotional connection between them. Francois finally begins to understand friendship.

In both Slumdog and My Best Friend, the phone call is the story turn towards resolution. In both films it works; we are emotionally hooked. Watch My Best friend and Slumdog Millionaire and ask yourself: Where would the movie writers be without David Briggs, Mike Whitehill, and Steve Knight.? These three veteran UK game show creators came up with the TV idea. The answer: up the creek without a third act, that’s where.

Priceless (France 2006, 104 min, dir: Pierre Salvadori, cast: Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh)

Audrey Tautou is not Audrey Hepburn. This much we knew in God is Great, I’m Not (2001), and Amelie (2001). But she is fetching, sexy, and appealing enough to float like a peach melba through films like Priceless. So much better than bombing completely in dogs like A Very Long Engagement (2004).

A barman and a female hustler (Audrey) meet on the French Riviera. She’s in pursuit of a rich man who will give her everything; he’s hunting for the same in a woman. Naturally they are not meant for each other, but then again, maybe they are. Director Pierre Salvadori is the “go to” guy in France for date night romance movies, but that doesn’t mean he’s a hack. On the contrary, he’s very good at what he does and in Priceless he struts his stuff. Where he earns his euros is in stoking the jealousy and desire of each character while they go about hustling their own private gravy train between the sheets.

Finally Audrey gives up her dream of money and runs away with her euro-centless (penniless) true love. Audrey is always best as the waif. Here she’s the kind who is so confused by what she thinks she wants that she almost looses her real love when he is right in front of her. It is so much better than watching her trying on all those big hats in Coco Before Chanel (2009). We are happier with Audrey in Priceless. Which is exactly the point. For the price of a movie ticket or a DVD you can have 104 minutes of joy.

Title: Monsieur Hire
Year: 1989
Director: Patrice Leconte (The Girl on the Bridge)
Writers: Patrice Leconte and Patrick DeWolf, based on a novel by Georges Simenon
Stars: Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire (La Ceremonie)

The Story: A woman has been killed. The police suspect a antisocial, middle-aged man who likes to spy on his beautiful young next-door neighbor. But just when we start to worry about the object of his gaze, she turns the tables on her voyeur and takes control of the situation.

Why It’s Great: Leconte’s career is still going strong, and he’s one of the few French directors whose films routinely get released in the States, but he’s never become a household name over here. It doesn’t help his recognition factor that he keeps migrating through different genres, mastering each one and then moving on. What his films always have in common, however, is a heartbreaking romanticism. Americans find sex so alien and alienating, that we demand our movies either demonize it or worship it. The French, on the other hand are able to take a more nuanced view, exemplified by the audience’s complex relationship to Bonnaire. She is an object of desire with desires of her own, both wanted and wanting, both victim and vicitmizer.

Three more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan.

Tell No One (France, 2006, 131 Min. dir: Guillaume Canet, cast: Francois Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas, Gilles Lellouche)

The irony of Tell No One is a French film based on an American novel by a kid from Newark, New Jersey.  Once upon a time American action filmmakers prided themselves and telling really great stories. No more. Shutter Island is a mess, and French cliffhangers like Tell No One are excelling at a genre we thought we owned.

It gets more embarrassing. Once this film became a hit in American art cinemas, Hollywood decided to remake it. Kathleen Kennedy, a big time feature producer, is transferring the action back to the US where it was set in the first place. Whether the remake will every see daylight is dubious.

Meanwhile the French, along with the Germans and the Koreans, are creating some of the best action and suspense films anywhere. Tell No One is a hard-plotted story of a guy who goes skinny-dipping with his wife, is hit over the head, and wakes up to find her dead. Or at least she is dead for several years until he starts getting disturbing notes from her. Then her best friend, who knows more, is killed. And then he is stalked by both the killers and the cops.

You want to see heart stopping ingenious action? Watch the chase across the Paris Paripherique expressway. Watch it again and again. American stunt men usually slow the traffic and speed up the camera. This is different: an intricate ballet between men and machines.

And when you’re finished analyzing that action sequence, take a look at District 13, also on MovieWihMe.com. It’s another amazing action picture that is supposedly in work for an American remake (called Brick Mansion). Don’t make any bets you’ll see it at a theater near you soon. Better to watch the original versions and marvel at truly great filmmaking. And then read some of Harlan Coben’s other novels, he’s a first rate storyteller.