Spitfire

Les Herbes folles (Wild grass)

Crit

Love as a dogfight, alternating pursuit and evasion, with predictably ugly results. Starts out looking like a sweet little Amélie-type coincidence vehicle--the atomically red-haired Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azéma) has her purse snatched, and Georges Palet (André Dussollier) finds her discarded wallet in a car park and falls in love with the photo on her pilot's license--but with Alain Resnais (Last Winter at Marienbad) at work, you know better than to fall for that.

Georges has a law-enforcement mystery in his past, and in his present he has a beautiful, loving wife of 30 years (though Anne Consigny, who plays that character, looks so young that you're surprised she's not the much younger stepmother to the grown children). He also has a bit of an unconventional way of demonstrating his desire--not sure what they call it in France, but here we call it stalking--that extends to slashing the tires of her car to keep her where he can talk to her (though he then loses his nerve and runs away).

But when the police (including the ever-welcome Mathieu Amalric) persuade him to leave her alone, that's when things really get interesting. A delightfully warped film.

Parlez-moi de la pluie (Let it rain [sic])

Crit

This one is a more standard French mix of love, infidelity, politics (electoral, feminist, and minority), and filmmaking--a perfectly serviceable film, with wonderful performances by Jamel Debbouze, whom we last saw in Indigènes, and Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui (both from Comme une image--Look at Me), but after the trippy Herbes, a much milder drug.

Trailer

• Mao's Last Dancer--Oh, this looks so heartwarming.