INDEX OF CHRIS KNIPP REVIEWS OF THE RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA (NEW YORK), 2013:

Augustine (Alice Winocour 2012)
The Atomic Age (Héléna Klotz 2012)
Bad Girl (Patrick Mille 2012)
The Day of Crows (Jean-Christophe Dessaint 2012)
The Girl from Nowhere (Jean-Claude Brisseau 2012)
Granny’s Funeral (Bruno Podalydès 2012)
In the House (François Ozon 2012)
Jappeloup (Christian Duguay 2013)
Journal de France (Raymond Depardon, Claudine Nougaret 2012)
A Lady in Paris (Ilmar Raag 2012)
La Maison de la radio (Nicolas Philibert 2013)--CANCELLED
My Blue-Eyed Girl (Shalimar Preuss 2012)
The Nun (Guillaume Nicloux 2013)
Populaire (Régis Roinsard 2012)--NO FSLC PRESS SCREENING
Renoir (Gilles Bourdos 2012)
Rich is the Wolf (Damien Odoul 2012)
The Suicide Shop (Patrice Leconte 2012)
Thérèse Desqueyroux (Claude Miller 2012)
Three Worlds (Catherine Corsini 2012)
You, Me and Us (Jacques Doillon 2012)
You Will Be My Son (Gilles Legrand 2012)

Roundup.

For me this was not the best Rendez-Vous; there weren't films I cared as much about as in other years. I'd most recommend the soon-to-be-US-released In the House (François Ozon 2012). It's sharp, bold, funny, and a return to form for Ozon. I personally much enjoyed Jappeloup (Christian Duguay 2013) , a biopic about a man and his champion show-jumping horse. Not very ground-breaking, but beautiful, and it has heart. Also The Atomic Age (Héléna Klotz 2012) is a little film that might look clichéd, but I found it quite poetic and beautiful; it does everything right and is highly cinematic, emotional, and very French. Those are the good ones. I might also mention the somewhat shapeless Journal de France (Raymond Depardon, Claudine Nougaret 2012). After all, it is a journalistic run-through of the whole second half of the Twentieth Century. Depardon was a hell of a photojournalist. I might also recommend The Girl from Nowhere (Jean-Claude Brisseau 2012), a small, offbeat film, a bit of a surprise from Brisseau. Three Worlds (Catherine Corsini 2012) is an ordinary film, without much originality. But in this field it was very welcome because it's watchable and exciting.
The rest were would-be's or also-rans or washouts. As for Renoir (Gilles Bourdos 2012), which some oohed and ahed about, it's too pretty and too generic, and doesn't feel like a particularly important moment in Auguste or Jean Renoir's lives. Thérèse Desqueyroux (Claude Miller 2012) may be hyped as special if it gets to US art houses, but it's a bit limp, especially if you watch the sharp, angular 1963 Georges Franju version. Something is seriously wrong with the very moody and poetic Augustine (Alice Winocour 2012), another film about psychology and women in the nineteenth century. It tries too hard and is too full of itself. Sorry not to have seen Populaire: it may be pretty thin, but it's reportedly fun and nice to look at. People liked You Will Be My Son (Gilles Legrand 2012) and think it plays well and there's even a Hollywood remake planned, but it seems to me to have a horribly deterministic and obvious plot setup. As for You, Me and Us (Jacques Doillon 2012), it may be utterly French with its endless nattering abut relationships, but I agree with the Cannes reviewer who said it was like Éric Rohmer without the charm or the sense of structure. Surely Doillon is going through an odd, self-indulgent period not worthy of his best work. The Nun (Guillaume Nicloux 2013) doesn't work. It's clumsy and overbearing and has no rhythm. You would not even want to hear what I'd have to say about some of the others.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.