La ChinoiseMovies like La Chinoise
- Key Features:
- Radicalization, Activism, French New Wave, Political commentary, Ideology, Terrorism, Cultural critique, Revolution, Existentialism, Intellectualism
- Tone:
- serious, satirical
- Target Audience:
- Intellectuals, Film enthusiasts, Political science students, Arthouse cinema fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Idealism → Disillusionment
La Chinoise

A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.
La Chinoise
In 1967, during the making of “La Chinoise,” film director Jean-Luc Godard falls in love with 19-year-old actress Anne Wiazemsky and marries her.

While shooting a film, the director becomes interested in the unfolding struggle of a young factory worker that has been laid off by a boss who did not like her union activities.

Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option...

Paul, a young idealist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, takes a job interviewing people for a marketing research firm. He moves in with aspiring pop singer Madeleine. Paul, however, is disillusioned by the growing commercialism in society, while Madeleine just wants to be successful. The story is told in a series of 15 unrelated vignettes.

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.

A local activist and a budding young mayor clash over the best path forward for their impoverished suburb.

Sam, a freelance journalist, decides to investigate the growing phenomenon of disaffected youth joining extremist groups. He infiltrates a group of four young people who have been tasked with the creation of a jihadist cell and whose mission is to destabilise the city centre of Paris.

Some young folks, tired of the society they're living in, plan a bomb attack over Paris before taking shelter for a night in a shopping center.

In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.

A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.

The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." - JLG

During the events of May 1968 in France, different worldviews of conflicting relatives collide in their family estate.

It's mid 19th century, north of France. The story of a coal miner's town. They are exploited by the mine's owner. One day the decide to go on strike, and then the authorities repress them.

Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.

A clique of four young teachers at a high school looks critically at their colleagues. To avoid falling in the same routine, they bring new ideas into the school lessons and play little games and pranks in their spare time -- sometimes get even more childish than their pupils. When they get opposition from the other teachers, they play tricks to get rid of them.

A troubled young woman is thrown out of a convent and forms a relationship with a radical Muslim.

A teacher, driven to exasperation from insults and insubordination, takes her class hostage.

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.

Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.

Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.

A dramatization of the Montreal Massacre of 1989 where several female engineering students were murdered by an unstable misogynist.

After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy’s intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.

A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.

A group of French students are drawn into the psychological and sexual games of a mysterious man called Duchemin. Once they sample his "fear powder" the students experience a series of hallucinations.

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.

A few days before the baccalaureate, a high school student decides to settle accounts with the most cowardly teacher in the school.

China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

Set in 1899 Paris, a young police sergeant is chosen to infiltrate a group of anarchists, an opportunity he sees to rise through the ranks. However, he soon finds himself becoming attached to the group.

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.

Pierre Gastié-Leroy is the son of a wealthy director of a factory of weapon manufacturing. Despite his parents, two generous uncles and a bishop godfather who try to inculcate him the rigid values of his social level, Pierre is a dreamer, antimilitaristic, social educator who dreams of saving three thugs, his "little guys" at the limit of delinquency. After several resounding failures that sent him to prison, Pierre is ordered by his father to join his factory to direct the social service. Tired of the venality of his father and the foolishness of the "little guys", Pierre hires them at the factory...

Housemaid Georgette loves to gossip and this causes major trouble to people around her.

Frustrated by the lack of intimacy in her relationship, a young schoolteacher goes through a series of intimidating and often violent sexual partners.

In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.

Nina is a young, carefree actress who arrives in Paris searching for her big break. There, she finds drama both on- and offstage as she becomes involved with three men: a mild-mannered real-estate agent who offers her stability, a bad-boy actor who lives dangerously on the edge, and an intense theater director who casts her in a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” As opening night approaches, the emotional extremes of Nina’s love life fuel her art.

Nineteen-year-old Laura is stressed by her first year at college when money worries distract her from her studies and so, desperate for cash, she answers an online advertisement for intimate companionship that leads her down a dangerous path.

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.

A story about 11 girls living in Paris. Each of them has its own problems: career, love life, children. Every girl has their complexes and virtues. They always look elegant, hiding their inner feelings. Will they reach all the goals and overcome all their difficulties?

Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.

The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother's discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister's suicide attempt and sadomasochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband. And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat.

After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.

Isa and Marie bond while working in a French sweatshop and soon begin sharing an apartment that Marie is watching for a hospitalized mother and daughter. Marie, hoping to avoid a life of struggle and poverty, takes up with Chriss, a nightclub owner whose most attractive asset is his money. Isa recognizes the ultimate futility of the relationship and tries to keep Marie away from him, but her interference puts their friendship at risk.

In this radical and endearing black comedy, a group of retrenched female factory workers decide to pool their compensation money… and hire a hit man to liquidate their boss.

Antoine has agreed to follow a writing workshop where some young people in insertion must write a noir novel with the help of Olivia, a recognized novelist. The work of writing will bring to life the working-class past of the city. Its shipyard is closed for 25 years, a nostalgia that does not interest Antoine, influenced by the anxiety of the present world

An explosion sends fear and terror through Berlin. Young Maxi's home is reduced to rubble and ashes, burying her mother and little brothers. Only she and her father survive the terrorist bomb attack. When she happens to meet the charismatic Karl, who tells her about a conference for young people in Prague, she seizes the opportunity to flee Berlin and her grieving father. The political movement behind the meeting claims to be working for a better Europe. Maxi has no idea how close the murderers really are to her family.

Three characters living in an unfinished painting venture out into the real world in search of their creator to convince him to finish his work.

Pierre, a devoted father in his 50s, raises his two sons alone. When Louis, the youngest, leaves home to attend the Sorbonne in Paris, Fus, slightly older and not as successful academically, becomes more and more secretive. Driven by a fascination for violence, he gets entangled in far-right extremist groups, at the very opposite of his father’s values. Between them, there is love and hate, until tragedy happens.

In the middle of a performance of the play "Le Cocu", a bad boulevard comedy at a Parisian theatre, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand.

Pierre Hoffman joins a prestigious school as a substitute teacher and soon notices, among some of his students, an unjustified hostility and a spark of violence in their eyes. Is it because the unspeakable tragedy they have just experienced? Is it because they seem to be extraordinarily gifted children? Is it because they have lost all hope for the future? From curiosity to obsession, Pierre will try to unlock their secret.

Nadine and Manu are two mad women, as tidy as can be, almost perfectionists. They have several things in common: extreme sex, drugs, beer and the trigger. They find the solution to their problems with guns and beware to those who dare to get in their way!

As everyone knows, children make no difference between social classes, skin colors or religions. But then why does Corentin, Paul and Sofia's nine-year-old son, only have friends like him at Bagnolet's school? And when his friends all leave for a private school in Paris, his parents are frightened. From now on, Corentin is the only one in his class. But the only what?

While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.

A Parisian teacher loses his cool when his teenage daughter tells him she plans to drop out of school and move in with her boyfriend.

A college student gets pregnant without having intercourse, affecting people close and unrelated to her in different ways.

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.

A filmmaker holds a series of boundary-pushing auditions for his latest project: a thriller on the subject of female pleasure.

A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.

Two aging crooks are given two weeks to repay a debt to a woman named The American. They recruit their recently deceased partner's son to help them break into a laboratory and steal the vaccine against STBO, a sexually transmitted disease that is sweeping the country. It's spread by having sex without emotional involvement, and most of its victims are teenagers who make love out of curiosity rather than commitment.

It all began when camcorders replaced cameras. Making TV programs then became within everyone's reach. Jean-Lou, Yasmina, Victor, Clara, Adonis, and the others didn't only want to create their own television channel, they above all wanted to make a revolution. Thus Télé Gaucho was born, as anarchic and provocative as the main channels were conformist and reactionary. Five years of mayhem, brutal pirate TV demonstrations, drunken parties, and thwarted love.. And that was my idyllic interlude.

A journey into the labyrinthine heart of ideology, which shapes and justifies both collective and personal beliefs and practices: with an infectious zeal and voracious appetite for popular culture, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek analyzes several of the most important films in the history of cinema to explain how cinematic narrative helps to reinforce prevailing ethics and political ideas.

Two young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure.

Émilie meets Camille who is attracted to Nora, who crosses paths with Amber. Three girls and a boy – They're friends, sometimes lovers and often both.

A journalist tries to balance the duties of marriage and motherhood while researching a piece on college women who work as prostitutes to pay their tuition.

Michele, Goffredo, Mirko and Vito are four friends who have participated in the battles of the student in Sixties. Now in the Seventies, the four friends don't know what to do, though young and with so many possibilities to find a job in life. Intellectuals marginalized and misunderstood, the four friends find themselves when they can in a restaurant to discuss their outlandish theories. A girl named Olga disrupts their life, but Michele is her favorite, although he does not know what to do with the girl.

Jérôme Varenne, a French financier, lives and works in Shanghai with Chen-Li, his life and business partner. One day, during a short stay in Paris, while paying a call to his mother, he is very displeased to learn from her and his hated brother, that the family house in Ambray is going to be sold. Jerome decides to go to the town where he grew up to see what is going on. Little does he know how eventful his escapade will be. Little does he know that it will change his life from soup to nuts...

The story centres on a group of teenagers street cast in their neighbourhood and selected to play in a feature film during the summer. The film tells the story of this film shoot and of the connections that will be formed during it.

At a peculiar all-girls academy, new arrivals, including Iris, are delivered in coffins. Guided by enigmatic teachers, the students dance through enchanted woods by day, while the night unveils sinister lessons that blur innocence and awakening.

During the French Revolution, a surprising company shares a coach, trying to catch up something - the time itself, perhaps.

An ageing punk-with-a-dog and his brother the conformist decide to get their revenge on a shopping mall. Directing duo Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, longstanding comic crusaders against capitalism, again set out to surprise and shock the bourgeois audience.

At thirteen-years-old, with an unusually high IQ and a knack for observing things about other people, Lou Bertignac is not only the youngest in her class at school; she is also the most unusual. Painfully shy, she has few friends, save for Lucas, whose company helps her get through each day. At home, Lou's life is also difficult: Her mother hasn't left the house in years and her father spends his days crying in the bathroom. Lou's world is dark and sad... That is, until she meets No.

Three friends navigate mid-life crises: a blocked writer, a disillusioned doctor, and a charming man facing bankruptcy and divorce. As their struggles strain friendships, a younger man captures the attention of one friend's wife, complicating their lives further.

A 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.

The mayor of Lyon, Paul Théraneau, is in a delicate position. After 30 years in politics, he is running out of ideas and is faced with a feeling of existential emptiness. To overcome this, Paul hires a young and brilliant philosopher, Alice Heimann. Then follows a dialogue between two diametrically opposed personalities who will turn their certainties upside down.

A young woman struggling to stay on top of everything in her life meets a married publisher and begins an affair with him.

Ten-year-old Johnny stands out from his family and his tough neighborhood in Eastern France. He's sensitive, intelligent and interested in all kinds of things way beyond his years. With curiosity, he observes the ups and downs of his young single mother's turbulent love life. Things change when a new teacher, fresh from the big city, takes over Johnny's class. Mr. Adamski believes in Johnny and wants to open a new world to him. The sophisticated young teacher also intrigues the boy.

Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a force to be reckoned with. With his silver mane and tanned, athletic body, he stalks the world stage as Minister of Foreign Affairs for France, waging his own war backed up by the holy trinity of diplomatic concepts: legitimacy, lucidity, and efficacy. Enter Arthur Vlaminck. Hired to write the minister's speeches, Arthur must contend with the sensibilities of his boss and the dirty dealings within the Quai d'Orsay, the ministry's home.

18-year-old Lina arrives in Paris for her studies. She comes to look for what she has never found in Lebanon, her country of origin: a certain form of freedom. The survival instinct as the only baggage, she sails from one Paris to another to the rhythm of her romantic encounters.

A drunken, self-destructive woman called Betty wanders into a Parisian bar where she meets middle-aged alcoholic Laure. Laure decides to take care of Betty. Recovering in a hotel room, Betty begins to recount to Laure the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy and unfaithful marriage.

Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment.

During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor's beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.

In a near future, the world order has changed. With its 10 millions of unemployed citizens, France has now become a poor country. Its people wavers between rebellion and resignation and find an outlet in the shape of TV broadcast ultra brutal fights in which the players are legally doped and unscrupulous.

When Camille accidentally becomes pregnant, she encourages her friends and fellow high school classmates to follow suit. It's only a matter of time, before seventeen girls in the high school are pregnant and the town is thrown into a world of chaos.

Mrs. Géquil is an eccentric teacher despised by her colleagues and students. On a stormy night, she is struck by lightning and faints. When she wakes up, she feels different. Will she now be able to keep the powerful and dangerous Mrs. Hyde contained?

Bahia Benmahmoud, a free-spirited young woman, has a particular way of seeing political engagement, as she doesn't hesitate to sleep with those who don't agree with her to convert them to her cause - which is a lot of people, as all right-leaning people are concerned. Generally, it works pretty well. Until the day she meets Arthur Martin, a discreet forty-something who doesn't like taking risks. She imagines that with a name like that, he's got to be slightly fascist. But names are deceitful and appearances deceiving.

Four guys from a Paris housing project fabricate a documentary about drug dealers working in the City of Lights. When a television network falls hook, line, and sinker for the prank video, the foursome are given a free three-week vacation in the upscale resort community of Biarritz. As they interact with both locals and fellow tourists, they learn about love, friendship, racism, and the differences between the rich and the poor.

In a social context deteriorated by a countrywide economic crisis, the life of several people will be turned upside down after they meet Cécile, a character who symbolizes desire.

A celebrity journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident.

At 21, Zoe is sick and tired of everyone taking her for granted, just because she’s young. She dreams of a day when all millennials go on strike, so that people finally recognize their true value.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

When an uncompromising idealist and rich, arrogant heir cross paths, their contrasting beliefs begin to shift when they fall for each other.

Three war-torn strangers posing as a family flee Sri Lanka’s civil war to start over in a troubled Paris suburb, but their past traumas resurface as they struggle to survive in their new environment.

Prof. Henri Laborit uses the stories of the lives of three people to discuss behaviorist theories of survival, combat, rewards and punishment, and anxiety. René is a technical manager at a textile factory and must face the anxiety caused by corporate downsizing. Janine is a self-educated actress/stylist who learns that the wife of her lover is dying and must decide to let them reunite. Jean is a controversial career-climbing writer/politician at a crossroads in life.

In Paris, Lulu, a passionate policeman, works with the faith of a rookie, despite the sclerotic bureaucracy and the incompetence or negligence of some of his colleagues. In his new position as a narcotics inspector, he tries to keep his sanity as he witnesses the worst of the human condition.

A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.


