Un Flic (Eng: 'A Cop') (aka Dirty Money) (1972)

All those Mission Impossible movies owe a lot to Jean-Pierre Melville's last French crime "flic" that features a centrepiece stunt distinctly Ethan Hunt in style involving a train and a helicopter...oh, and a cigar robe, a white pencil, and a horseshoe magnet (far too much detail: couldn't he have just gone into the bathroom and reappeared changed?) but unlike the Mission: Impossible movies, which plotwise are pretty straightforward, you'll need to watch Un Flic ("A cop") twice to confirm what might not be clear the first time through: that Alan Delon is a police commissioner, that apart from being committed by the same criminal gang, a drug robbery is a second crime unrelated to the first, and a second watch will help you to distinguish between far too many grey-faced trenchcoats and blonde bombshells, all of them (the bombshells AND the trenchcoats) mesmerized, transfixed by Delon.

★★★☆☆

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The Truth (La Vérité) (2019)

Individual moments are joys in themselves - Catherine Deneuve in a leopard-skin print and Audrey Hepburn sunglasses walking her dog down a tree-lined Paris street - but add the rustle of leaves in the trees, a dance of notes on a piccolo or a tinkle of piano keys and you'll feel like you are watching a Japanese anime of impossibly beautiful, painstakingly constructed handpainted images, and like the great animated dramas of Japan - the AMSR-inducing The Wind Rises, Grave of the Fireflies, and many, any others - this latest film from Kore-eda Hirokazu skips so lightly, so gracefully though its family drama, you can thoroughly enjoy it purely on a surface-level of image and sound without stopping to think about its deeply moving themes of truth, lies, story-telling, memory, childhood, motherhood, blame and forgiveness - the truth of this multi-layered delightful dance is that you can decide what you want to hear and enjoy!

★★★★★

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