Benoit Jacquot‘s A Single Girl (1995), from France, focuses on the assuming of necessary responsibility (getting a job) when one is pregnant outside wedlock and the boyfriend is utterly unreliable. This is what young Valerie (Virginie Ledoyen) confronts. Marvelously directed as well as co-written by Jacquot, the movie shows the post-childbirth situation as less unsettled and arduous than it usually is; and is finally quite pleased with itself. I object. The film’s honesty lapses.

However, A Single Girl is a solid accomplishment in many ways. Ledoyen owns her role with sophistication. Other actors are also flawless. The film lacks the vigor and color of the finest French movies, though, everything from Devil in the Flesh to The Dreamlife of Angels. It is circumscribed art, but it is art.

(In French with English subtitles)

A police sergeant who is a Christian (Edward Woodward) is duly outraged by a truly pagan Scottish island, thinking a missing young girl might have been murdered there. The 1973 The Wicker Man is a fairly intelligent and intriguing entertainment but, to me, there is something cheap and offputting about it. This is due to the unnecessary female nudity the film offers (though some of it is necessary), especially that of Britt Ekland‘s body double. There is more to it than that, however, but what? Perhaps it’s because its depiction of human evil is too outre, too bizarre. I don’t know. All the same, Woodward’s acting is rivetingly true.

A priest—celibate, of course—in the Guy De Maupassant short story, “Clair de Lune,” is suspicious of the frequent tenderness of women. “According to his belief,” the author writes, “God had created woman for the sole purpose of tempting and testing man.” But this is false, and what occurs with the priest’s pretty niece becomes the impetus for his realization that it is false. In the beauty of the night she is with a man and . . . “Perhaps [the priest thinks] God has made such nights as these to idealize the love of men.”

An interesting concept in a sublime story. “Clair de Lune” is included in the Everyman’s Pocket Classics anthology Love Stories (2009), and a unique and incisive love story it is.

Baz Luhrmann‘s Moulin Rouge! (2001) is childish—along with colorful, gaudy and sensual—but also, to me, weird fun. By childish I mean cartoonish—inappropriately so. Then again, Satine’s solitary foreplay (provided by Nicole Kidman) may seem silly but it gives way to her pleasant fascination with Christian’s romantic feeling. It’s palatable comedy.

Christian (Ewan McGregor) breaks out in song, of course; the flick is a jukebox musical, which means Luhrmann was free to search the warehouse for tuneful hits. Never mind the unfamiliar stuff. I like quite a few of his choices but, regrettably, all brains and taste break down during the “Roxanne” number. The film’s editor, Jill Bilcock, though, is a successful hard worker, and Donald McAlpine’s cinematography is tasteful and lovely. MR can be ingratiating. When it was released in 2001, it was a big-screen wonder.

Baz Luhrmann‘s Moulin Rouge! (2001) is childish—along with colorful, gaudy and sensual—but also, to me, weird fun. By childish I mean cartoonish—inappropriately so. Then again, Satine’s solitary foreplay (provided by Nicole Kidman) may seem silly but it gives way to her pleasant fascination with Christian’s romantic feeling. It’s palatable comedy.

Christian (Ewan McGregor) breaks out in song, of course; the flick is a jukebox musical, which means Luhrmann was free to search the warehouse for tuneful hits. Never mind the unfamiliar stuff. I like quite a few of his choices but, regrettably, all brains and taste break down during the “Roxanne” number. The film’s editor, Jill Bilcock, though, is a successful hard worker, and Donald McAlpine’s cinematography is tasteful and lovely. MR can be ingratiating. When it was released in 2001, it was a big-screen wonder.