"Actor: Caroline Cellier"

• Que La Bete Meure | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Claude Chabrol crafts a claustrophobic and psychologically complex tale of destiny and revenge in This Man Must Die. The film begins with a birds-eye view of a young boy leaving a seaside beach and a speeding black Mustang approaching from the opposite direction. When the two collide in a hit-and-run accident the movie's action is set in motion. The boy's father Charles (Michel Duchaussoy) makes a solemn vow to find and kill the man who ended his son's life. Through a bizarre series of hunches coincidences and lucky guesses Charles tracks down Helene (Carol Cellier) the sister-in-law of the man he suspects is the killer and begins to seduce her in order to insinuate himself into her family life. When he finally comes face to face with Helene's brother-in-law Paul (Jean Yanne) he finds himself unable to act despite the man's monstrous behaviour and callous attitude. When Charles realizes that Paul's son Phillippe (Marc Di Napoli) wishes his father dead as well the forces of destiny and revenge collide. Chabrol's dense and carefully crafted narrative structure explodes in an unexpected and exhilarating chain of events leading to a cathartic and disastrous climax all portrayed through subtly evocative cinematography and terse performances. Decades later the film inspired Sean Penn's similarly themed The Crossing Guard.

• Farinelli - Il Castrato | DVD | (26/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

• The Japanese Masters Collection | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Floating Weeds (Dir. Yasujiro Ozu 1959): Floating Weeds is one of the final films directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. A remake of one of his own silent features it tells the story of a travelling Kabuki acting troupe led by Komajuro who arrive in a small coastal town. There Komajuro is reunited with his former lover Oyoshi and their illegitimate son who is unaware that the itinerant actor is his father. But the reunion provokes the jealousy of Sumiko Komanjuro's current mistress who plots a devastating revenge. Beautifully composed and surperbly played 'Floating Weeds' is one of Ozu's most affecting poignant and powerful films. The End Of Summer (Dir. Yasujiro Ozu 1961): This penultimate film by Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu examines the difficulties faced by the Kohayagawa family as they struggle to adapt their traditional values to a rapidly changing post-war Japan. As the family's generations-old sake making business begins to fail in the face of increasingly fierce competition Manbei the incorrigible elderly patriarch rekindles an affair with an old flame much to the disapproval of his daughter Fumiko. He is further distracted by his attempts to marry off his other two daughters: Akiko the eldest and a widow with a small son and Noriko the youngest who is still single. A sublime bittersweet elegy for a vanishing world The End of Summer is beautifully shot in muted colour elegantly acted and masterfully directed by one of the 20th Century's greatest filmmakers. The Lady of Musashino (Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi 1951): Mizoguchi's dissection of the Japanese reaction to the aftermath of war as a fastidiously moral woman faces upheaval with the changing times brought about by the new post-Imperial period... The Life of Oharu (Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi 1952): In feudal Japan the daughter of a samurai Oharu falls in love with a man below her station. Expelled from the castle in Kyoto her family tries to regain respectability but Oharu is forced into a new life as a concubine and then a fallen woman ever hoping to preserve some semblance of purity in a corrupt world...