French Movies that are surprisingly good
France is not only jokes. Sometimes it’s melancholy, memory, and the sea calling you personally. These are good French films with mood. Slow burn. Texture. Aftertaste. Watch when you want cinema, not dopamine.
The Picks
Two men from different worlds become friends and accidentally re-teach each other how to live. Funny, warm, and annoyingly effective.
Official synopsis
A true story of two men who should never have met – a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects.
Two divers obsess over the ocean like it’s a religion. Beautiful, melancholic, and aggressively blue.
Official synopsis
Not to be confused with Luc Besson's film of the same title from the same year. Documentarian Andrew Horn's second narrative feature.
Love, memory, and trauma in dialogue form. It doesn’t hold your hand. It asks you to sit with the weight.
Official synopsis
The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.