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Chicago – What is amazing about the texture of this 1992 film version of the 1848 Henri Murger novel, “La Vie de Bohéme,” is that it looks like it could have been filmed during the French New Wave period of the late 1950s/early ‘60s. The Criterion Collection offers a stunning new Blu-ray transfer of a now classic adaptation.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki (“Le Havre”), a Finnish filmmaker, but co-produced by France, Italy and Sweden as well, this version of “La Vie de Bohéme” – there have been over a dozen versions, including the opera “La Bohéme” and the Broadway musical “Rent” – has an international cast and beguiling black & white cinematography by Timo Salminen. It plays like a verité documentary, as all of the performers have such a naturalistic virtue in their portrayals. They are desperate but free, and even a woman searching for love cannot resist their slovenly grace. Each ne’er...

As an entry into Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki’s filmography, his 1992 film La Vie De Boheme, which is loosely based on Henri Murger’s Scenes De La Vie De Boheme, (the basis for the famed opera La Boheme), is an excellent starting point. His first French feature, Kaurismaki’s absurdist, deadpan tone is in high gear with this lively look at a trio of disheveled outcasts eking it out as artists on society’s fray.

Three struggling creative types (composer/writer/painter) live together for support and necessity as they try to peddle their own original output. Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms) is an aspiring playwright and magazine editor, and has had considerable difficulty getting someone to publish his latest work, “The Avenger: A Play in 21 Acts.” Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpaa) is an Albanian painter illegally living in Paris, though lucky enough to have found at least one patron to purchase his works.

This is the Pure Movies review of Angèle and Tony, directed by Alix Delaporte and starring Clotilde Hesme, Grégory Gadebois and Evelyne Didi. Written by David Hudson for @puremovies A slow-burner of a hit in its native France, Angel and Tony is a small-scale drama about an oddball romance. Angel (Clotilde Hesme) is a young woman attempting to rebuild her life. She has been in prison but is now on parole, living near her estranged young son – who is being raised by his grandparents) on the Normandy Coast. It’s here, through a personal ad, that she meets Tony (Gregory Gadebois), an older and chunkier fisherman who lives with his mother. At first, the two appear to have nothing in common – Angel is troubled and struggling to get her life together. He is settled and a creature of routine. She is streetwise and he is strictly rural. On the surface,...

Written by Lewis Bazley

An African boy finds an unlikely ally in the form of a Bohemian-turned-shoeshine pensioner and a temporary home in the titular Normandy port in Aki Kaurismaki’s frustrating comedy-drama.

Marcel Marx (André Wilms) is an ex-author sleepwalking into old age in Le Havre, filling his days with the passing trade of shining shoes, the camaraderie of his local bar and the devotion of his dutiful but ailing wife Arletty. A chance encounter with Gabonese illegal immigrant Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) disrupts Marcel’s comfortable routine but before long Marcel’s enlisting his neighbours and angering the local gendarmes as he keeps the boy hidden and plans Idrissa’s escape.

It’s a premise full of promise, both dramatic and comic. How will Marcel keep Idrissa safe in such a small community? What kind of scrapes will they get into together? Will the youngster help the old man rediscover his joie de vivre?...

According to André Wilms—the star of Le Havre—during his hilarious stream of consciousness Q&A at a screening for the Toronto International Film Festival, director Aki Kaurismäki decided it was time to make a comedy/fairy tale. The Finn had created so many “desperate” films that a change was needed. And what better setting than France to bring it to life, a country who’s film history is held dear and apparently seen as dead by the director, (sentiments Wilms agreed with only half-jokingly). You’ll notice subtle nods to an older style with a lingering camera, exaggerated acting, and theatrical vibe, but that’s not to say the film itself is old fashioned. No, the color is vibrant, the characters humorous—if not overtly so—and the hard-boiled noir is subverted just enough to keep the whole light and airy.

It is Wilms’ Marcel Marx who we meet in the beginning.