Foreign treats, from fear in Argentina to dark days in Korea...
THIS is the third instalment of my 20 favourite foreign language films, with the top five to follow next week. All feedback gratefully received at featuress@dailymail.ie
10 El Secreto De Sus Ojos (2009)
I’VE given this its Spanish title so as not to confuse it with the inferior Hollywood remake, The Secret In Their Eyes. The Argentinian original is a belter, a really clever crime thriller, superbly acted, following the twists and turns of a 1974 murder case and its resolution 25 years later.
9 Loveless (2017)
THIS was the best movie I saw — high praise
indeed because it was a good year — at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It’s a superb, emotionally draining Russian drama by director Andrey Zvyagintsev (whose Leviathan is also in my top 20) about a couple in the throes of a bitter divorce whose only child, 12-year-old Alyosha, goes missing.
8 Les Diaboliques (1955)
IN ENGLISH, The Fiends. But I love the original French title and everything about this psychological horror-thriller starring Simone Signoret as a woman who conspires with her lover’s wife to kill him. It is said that Alfred Hitchcock tried but failed to buy the rights to the novel from which it is adapted. He couldn’t have done a better, more suspenseful job.
7 Volver (2006)
I HAVEN’T enjoyed any of the great Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s films as much as this treasure featuring Penelope Cruz, a compelling picture with heavy themes such as death, loneliness and sexual abuse which nevertheless retains an often playful tone.
6 Parasite (2019)
THIS South Korean treat was the first foreign-language film to win a Best Picture Oscar. Bong Joon-ho’s glorious dark comedy about a poor family of engaging rascals inveigling their way into a wealthy household fully deserves the distinction.