Film-Forward

French

Django

The biopic of jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt is given a stifling, low-energy treatment.

Dalida & The Dancer

Two restless, intractable talents dominate European biopics of female stars, little known to the American public.

Frantz

Though set shortly after World War I, the film has surprising resonance today.

Things to Come

Isabelle Huppert delivers a gimlet-eyed, ferociously single-minded performance as yet another tense, driven character.

Being 17

A coming-out film with the novel approach of exploring the dynamic between a mother and her two sons—one biological, one she has taken in—who fall in love.

Neither Heaven nor Earth

Within the first 10 minutes, you feel you are safely in the hands of a master.

Diary of a Chambermaid

Followed by a smitten camera, Léa Seydoux’s face combines a Mary Cassatt apple-cheeked purity with the sullen roughness of a young Kate Moss in the latest take on the French classic novel by Octave Mirbeau.

Dheepan

Jacques Audiard’s moody heartbreaker, the winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or last year, daringly places a rough-and-ready, documentary-ish shooting style alongside confident, startling artistry.

My Golden Days

Arnaud Desplechin’s latest film encompasses many lives in one. Like all our parallel lives, some make more sense than others in this rich, thought-provoking, and overstuffed film.