SAVAGE NIGHTS (LES NUITS FAUVES)

(Cyril Collard, 1992, DVD, amazon.fr no English subtitles)
A sort of “anti-Amélie”, there is nothing rose-tinted in Collard’s semi-autobiographical story of a reckless HIV-positive artist who plunges into an affair with Laura (Romane Bohringer) even as he lusts after Samy (Carlos López). Raw and intense, it represents an emotional mangle — but it’s worth it. Collard (who also stars) died of Aids four days before the film won the César for best film.

WILD REEDS (LES ROSEAUX SAUVAGES)

(André Téchiné, 1994, DVD region 1)
Set in 1962 — the same year as American Graffiti — Téchiné’s poignant coming-of-age film underscores the differences between French and American culture. Earnest and touching, his film reflects its adolescent protagonists’ intellectual curiosity, their political engagement and troubled psychology. The war in Algeria hovers over them, as François (Gaël Morel) comes to terms with his homosexuality, and his friends make their own breakthroughs.

NELLY AND MR ARNAUD (NELLY & MONSIEUR ARNAUD)

(Claude Sautet, 1995, DVD region 1)
Sautet’s last film is also his best, a refined observational drama which is so rich in character nuance that it scarcely needs a plot. Emmanuelle Béart is Nelly, a 25-year-old who has married unwisely, but who finds a friend in the retired judge Pierre Arnaud (Michel Serrault). To repay a debt, she agrees to type up his manuscript. From this meagre outline, Sautet creates a film of rare intimacy and insight.

THE DREAM LIFE OF ANGELS (LA VIE RÊVÉE DES ANGES)

(Erick Zonca, 1998, VHS or DVD region 1)
Isa (Élodie Bouchez) and Marie (Natacha Régnier) meet in a Lille sewing factory. Both 20, and up against it, they become friends and wind up sharing an apartment. But when Marie fastens on to the slick, rich club-owner Chriss (Grégoire Colin), Isa knows there is trouble ahead. Shot in the cinema-vérité style, it’s a deceptively slim slice of life which rings true right up to the unforgettable ending.

BEAU TRAVAIL

(Claire Denis, 1999, DVD)
Invited to make a film about “feeling foreign”, Denis created this free and oblique adaptation of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, transferred to an outpost of the French Foreign Legion in East Africa. Physical, abstract, sensual and distant, the film is a kind of tranquillised ballet of repressed desire; primitive, and mesmerising.

TIME REGAINED (LE TEMPS RETROUVÉ)

(Raoul Ruiz, 1999, DVD)
The Chilean refugee Ruiz assaults Proust’s unfilmable literary peak and, though a preordained failure, the film is also a peculiar triumph: a playful surrealist truc superimposed over a deluxe costume drama (with Deneuve, Béart, John Malkovich et al). In Britain, the film became a surprise box-office smash.

FAT GIRL (À MA SOEUR!)

(Catherine Breillat, 2001, DVD)
In Breillat’s most powerful film, Elena (Roxane Mesquida) is 15, beautiful, and on the verge of womanhood. Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) is 12, dumpy, and on the sidelines (in the next bed) when her sister loses her virginity. It’s her point of view that Breillat gives us: curious, cynical, scared, courageous, loving and resentful. What’s most shocking about it is how true it feels.

TIME OUT (L’EMPLOI DU TEMPS)

(Laurent Cantet, 2001, DVD)
A redundant, middle-aged executive (Aurélien Recoing) pretends to be a business consultant for the UN, desperately keeping his pathetic charade alive by persuading family and friends to invest in a dodgy deal. Inspired by a real case, Laurent Cantet’s film is a sober, measured account of a midlife breakdown.

THE DODGE (L’ESQUIVE)

(Abdellatif Kechiche, 2003, VHS or DVD, amazon.fr, no English subtitles)
It sounds suspiciously contrived: an inner-city film in which the teen protagonists re-enact age-old courtship rituals in their own idiom even as they rehearse Marivaux’s The Game of Love and Chance for a drama class. But this sympathetic and refreshing film delineates its own comedy of modern manners as the hopelessly undemonstrative Krimo takes a leading role in the play just to get close to the blonde Lydia.