"Actor: Maurice Pialat"

• A Nos Amours | DVD | (22/03/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A portrait of youth in bloom; a tale of one family's dissolution; a reflection upon the danger and the mystery in living. Maurice Pialat's serene perilous masterwork provides the movie romance a definitive check and eminently deceptive balance - the X scratched on top of the O. In one of the astonishing film debuts Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne a free spirit and the vessel for an almost Bront''an choler. She's 16 and men exist - diverse lovers an overbearing brother and the father portrayed by Pialat himself in an unforgettable turn that displays the full magnitude of the cinema giant's tenderness force-of-will and presence of being. Woven through with indelible images and heart-stopping moments (and culminating in the infamous dinner party scene) A nos amours. [To Our Romance. / Here's to Love.] is a pure creation a film that will live so long as there's still either movies or love.

• 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.