SEXY HOUSEWIFE ... AND AN URCHIN WHO SUES HIS PARENTS
OVER the past few months, I have listed my favourite English-language films and documentaries. Now it’s the turn of foreign-language pictures.
I’m restricting myself to 20 favourites, listed in reverse order with five this week and the remainder to come.
As ever, please let me have your feedback, either by post or at features@ dailymail.ie.
20 Babette’s Feast (1987)
KAREN BLIXEN, more famous for her memoir Out Of Africa, wrote the short story from which this poignantly charming Danish film was adapted. It’s about a French housekeeper who cooks a sumptuous banquet, spicing up the austere lives of two elderly sisters and their fellow villagers in 19thcentury Denmark.
19 Belle De Jour (1967)
CATHERINE DENEUVE is at her most beguilingly sexy in Luis Bunuel’s singular and daringly erotic (for its time) tale of a bored Parisian housewife who was apparently abused as a child and starts spending her afternoons as a highclass prostitute.
18 Leviathan (2014)
I’D CHALLENGE anyone not to be captivated by this powerful Russian film, about everyday life in a remote fishing village, which is fuelled by petty corruption, the Russian Orthodox Church and vodka. Especially vodka.
There’s a grandeur about Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film that reminds me of David Lean’s epics, but also some glorious comic touches.
17 Pather Panchali (1955)
SIXTY-FIVE years old this year and shot in black and white, yet evergreen, this extraordinary film is the first of Indian director Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, and tells the story of a young village boy growing up in rural poverty. The two later films follow Apu into manhood, and they’re nearly as good.
16 Capernaum (2018)
DIFFERENT time, different country, but in striking ways similar to Pather Panchali, Nadine Labaki’s mesmerising, partly improvised film is set in Beirut, where a resourceful street urchin sues his parents for bringing him into such a miserable world. It’s heart-rending but uplifting.