BLED NUMBER ONE (12)

The word bled in Bled Number One, the title of Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche's followup to his well-regarded debut Wesh-Wesh /What's Going On, translates roughly as a dump. Which is precisely where Kamel ends up after being deported from France to Algeria, the land of his fathers, after doing time for robbery. Bled is a finely observed slice of life shot in a low-key semi-documentary style. The latest in a run of French-made movies dealing with Franco-Algerian crosscurrents, it speaks volumes about the conditions of life in today's Algeria. Ameur-Zaimeche, as Kamel, plays the male lead as he did in Wesh whose protagonist also is a young Franco-Algerian recently released from prison. But where the earlier film deals with inner-city issues in France, Bled takes a coldeyed look at life on the other side of the water. Ameur-Zaimeche's direction is unfussy, favouring a quietly reflectivemood with slow fades and several long takes of exteriors in dying light. He is never judgmental, but it's clear where his sympathies lie: In the conflict between tradition and modernity, at least in this corner of the Arab-Islamic world, the latter has a lot of catching up to do.

BOXES (15)

Jane Birkin, now 60, has based her directorial debut on her own life. The woman she incarnates moves to a new home in Brittany and, as she unpacks, un-leashes ghosts from her past – quite literally. A fine ensemble cast, including Geraldine Chaplin and John Hurt, appear to her to chat, ask questions or point fingers of blame. This theatrically garrulous meditation concentrates on the rift of understanding inevitable between parents and children. Birkin’s character Anna is in her fifties and in the throes of menopause. As she leafs through the boxes (hence the title), filled to the brims with mementos and titbits of family history she comes to termswith the past. As Anna pours over the contents, individuals from her life materialise before her eyes, including her venerable deceased father (Michel Piccoli), her three daughters by different men (Natacha Régnier, Lou Doillon and Adele Exarchopoulos), and her headstrong mother (Geraldine Chaplin). The journey into the past thus becomes a cerebral and philosophical meditation on familial relationships, and an exploration of such themes as love, faithfulness, betrayal, and changeswrought by the ravages of time.

CAPTAIN AHAB / CAPITAINE ACHAB (15)

Philippe Ramos vividly imagines the formative years of the antagonist of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick. Told in five chapters, fromAhab’s birth to his death at sea, this version of the oft-told tale has an intimate, rough-hewn feel. He sketches out the pre-novel career ofmonomaniac whale hunter Ahab, played as a boy by Virgil Leclaire, as aman by the inimitable Denis Lavant. Chapters in Ahab’s life are narrated by those closest to him: his widowed woodsman father (Jean-François Stévenin), his aunt, a pastor who adopts the boy, a Nantucket laundress who comes to love the man, and at last Starbuck (Jacques Bonnaffé), one of themariners caught up in Ahab’smad quest for the whitewhale. Using European locations, notably Sweden, Ramos recreates the sombre but savagemood of the 19th-century puritan East Coast, in a filmmixing echoes of silent cinema with a distinctive painterly sensibility. Captain Ahab establishes Ramos as amajor newtalent.

FAIR PLAY (15)

The competitive nature of office politics is given an innovative approach through the extra-curricular activities of sports, in this brilliantly controlled and cynical tale that takes place entirely outside the office with colleagues rowing, jogging, canoeing and rock climbing through their issues of desire, jealousy, insecurity and success. Bailliu expands his Academy Award-nominated short film Squash (2000) into a bitter and nail-biting commentary on the cutthroat nature of office politics with this feature debut. He deals with a shrewd businessman who takes his scheming employees on an ultra-competitive outing. Firmhead Charles (Eric Savin) may be top dog today, but ambitious worker Jean-Claude (Benoît Magimel) is determined to make hisway to the top no matterwhat the cost.

IN YOUR WAKE / NOS RETROUVAILLES (18)

After years of estrangement,Marco’s garrulous, hard-partying father Gabriel wedges hisway back intoMarco’s life, opening oldwounds but also breathing fresh air into his otherwise bleak existence. Looking for cash to open his own nightclub, Gabriel proposes a plan to rob a warehouse outside of Paris. Fueled by his desire to make up for lost time, Marco gets caught up in Gabriel’s dangerous scheme. Director David Oelhoeffen delivers a resolutely disturbing psychological drama with an added element of crime – and explores the damage wrought by an über-dysfunctional father on his straight-laced son. Jacques Gamblin stars as Gabriel, a thuggish character harbouring an irrepressible grudge over money that someone allegedly swiped from him. With bitterness in his heart, this thoughtless and slimy brute cajoles his innocent son, the dishwasher Marco (Nicolas Giraud) into first tailing a night watchman (Jacques Spiesser) and then breaking into a warehouse to reclaim the "funds" – despite the inherent dangers posed by this scheme. Oelhoeffen, an award-winning short filmmaker who also writes, Oelhoffen is less interested in suspense than in observing relationships,which is reflected in the cool, studied approach of themovie.

JUST ABOUT LOVE? / ET TOI, T'ES SUR QUI? (12A)

How would you go about having your first sexual encounter when you feel ready for it and the time is ripe? During the last weeks in high school, two girls promise each other that they will both go to bed with a boy. This causes unrest among their friends, because the biggest question is: if love is not in the air, do you choose your best friend or simply the first and best boy available? Who is fooling whom, who is hurting whom, and who ends up sleepingwith thewrong guy? The debut director and screenwriter Lola Doillon is the daughter of the veteran Jacques Doillon and she demonstrates the same ability to create a sense of proximity to and empathy towards her characters. The characters Julie (Christa Theret), Vincent (Gaël Tavares), Elodie (Lucie Desclozeau) and Nicolas (Nicolas Schweri) each face the prospect of not only crossing the one-way bridge from adolescence into adulthood, but making the irreversible leap from “friends” to “lovers” with one another, as the last summer after high school lingers before them.

A LOST MAN / UN HOMME PERDU (18)

Inspired by the photographic travels of Antione d’Agata, Danielle Arbid’s worldly drama follows a French photographer who travels the globe to seek out themost extreme experiences imaginable. Thomas Koyré (Melvil Poupaud) is a fearless shutterbug who's always willing to put his life on the line for the sake of a good shot. Upon falling under the spell of an enigmatic old man named Fouad Saleh (Alexander Siddig), the photographer travels to the Far East in hopes of uncovering the secrets of themanwho can no longer recall his own past. As the photographer soon finds out, it’s often the most innocent endeavours that yield the most profound and transformative results. Lebanese-born filmer Danielle Arbid after her flawed but promising first feature, In the Battlefields (2004) confirms her talent in this typically Gallic mix of exotica and existentialism which was presented in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

MON COLONEL (18)

A political film co-written by Costa-Gavras, Mon Colonel exposes the use of torture by French troops during the colonial war in Algeria. Young Lieutenant Guy Rossi is trapped between the cold logic of Colonel Duplan and the “special powers” law voted by the French Parliament, de facto condoning the use of torture. Taking place in both present day France and during the war, Mon Colonel addresses issues that are still hard to grapple within contemporary French society. The film circles around the relationship between the no-nonsense colonel and the young French officer who has just been drafted and sent to Algeria. When sensitive lieutenant Guy Rossi (Robinson Stévenin) finds himself under the command of Colonel Raoul Duplan (Olivier Gourmet), the stage is set for a monumental battle of wills that tests both men. Rossi - left-wing, a lawyer by training – is alternately intimidated and seduced by the nerve and sheer drive of his superior,whowill stop at nothing towin this unwinnablewar. Rossi becomes a useful – and, initially, willing – tool for Duplan. But at a certain point, the colonel crosses a line, with wide-ranging repercussions. Tough, hard-hitting, uncompromising, Mon Colonel has all the trademarks of the smart, political filmmaking that Laurent Herbiet, like so many of us, has clearly appreciated in Costa Gavras's masterworks.

POISON FRIENDS / LES AMITIES MALEFIQUES (18)

The engaging drama from Emmanuel Bourdieu is a thoroughly enticing tale of ambition, romance and fabulous deceit, centred on a group of male university students. On their first day of class in a graduate literary course at the Sorbonne, Eloi, Edouard and Alexandre meet André: good-looking, well connected, impossibly brilliant and instantly singled out by students and faculty alike as a star. Soon André is dominating their everymove, telling themhow to think and what they should do with their lives. But then, one day André is gone, said to be off doing research at an American university. For his second film, Emmanuel Bourdieu (co-screenwriter on Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life) offers a deft, fascinating journey into a world in which the life of the mind is a perpetual emotional joust. With André, brilliantly played by newcomer Thibault Vinçon, Bourdieu has created a revealing portrait of an academic vampire who sucks the life out of everyone in hisway.Winner – Critics's Week Grand Prize at Cannes 2006

THE PREMONITION / LE PRESSENTIMENT (15)

Actor Jean-Pierre Darroussin makes his first attempt at directing with this wonderful adaptation of Emmanuel Bove’s novel of the same title. The Premonition casts a striking look at modern day France and the perils its obnoxious class system projects upon its citizens. Darroussin brilliantly portrays Charles Bénesteau, a wealthy Parisian lawyer who has made the decision of abandoning his cushy, bourgeois lifestyle and moves into a working class neighbourhoodwith a predominantly immigrant population. Darroussin’s character is fed up with the narrow-minded mentality of the elite and all the lavish abuses they commit; he wants to escape. He searches for isolation as ameans to understanding, while also using the experience to write. He flees to a homely apartment where he sets up his residence and mixeswith the locals. The divide between the haves and the have-nots can be witnessed right from the get go. Bénesteau is visited by a neighbour who wants to get a divorce from his wife and seeks advice, but ends up taking advantage of Bénesteau by asking him for cold hard cash. This same neighbour beats his wife senselessly and is taken away, leaving behind a teenage daughterwho conveniently falls into the lap of Bénesteau.

THOSE WHO REMAIN / CEUX QUI RESTENT (15)

First-time director Anne Le Ny presents a remarkably powerful film with elements of charmwhen you least expect them. Lorraine and Bertrandmeet accidentally over coffee at a Parisian hospital cancer ward where they daily visit their seriously ill partners-in-life. It feels at times like a romantic comedy but it’s much more than that two people from totally different walks of life responding to a mutual attraction. Or is it a support system, a form of therapy to relearn how to live, laugh and love? Emmanuelle Devos gives a brilliantly subtle performance as the deliciously free-spirited and sexually liberated Lorraine. Vincent Lindon provides Bertrand with an electrifying and smouldering quality, a man coming apart at the seams, as he deals with a dying spouse, a rebellious stepdaughter and an untimely encounterwith an attractivewoman. Director Le Ny never shows us even a glimpse of the two hospital patients, highlighting even more intensely the emotional state of Lorraine and Bertrand and their unexpected relationship. Le Ny treats a delicate and difficult subject with a perfect touch, creating an excellent and moving film.