Unsweet Emotions: Molly Manning Walker – “Good Thanks, You?”

How to Have Sex ( Molly Manning Walker’s full-length debut, and surely one of the year’s best) has its obvious germ on Walker’s previous short, Good Thanks, You? Same situation, condensed to the observational basics: After a night of partying goes miserably wrong, our heroine, Amy (an excellent Jasmine Jobson), shows up at the house …

Comedy Bit 6, 7, 8 : Honore de Balzac – “An Episode Under the Terror,” “Juana,” “A Passion in the Desert.”

The Comedy Goes On. An Episode Under the Terror: "Nouvelle" in which a mysterious, penitent man commissions a priest-in-hiding and two nuns to conduct an (illicit) funeral mass for the decapitated King Louis XVI. In exchange for the mass, he assures their safety. The mysterious, penitent man turns out to be the (real) royal executioner, …

French Lies: Olivier Peyon- “Lie With Me”

I felt foolish at the end, when I looked up the cast list of Olivier Peyon’s Lie with Me, based on a novel by Phillipe Besson. (Amusingly, the literal French title is quite au contraire: “Stop with your Lies!”) Lie With Me is a French drama about a celebrated gay writer (Guillaume de Tonquédec) returning …

Yummy! : Tran Anh Hung – “The Taste of Things”

“Of all the arts, the culinary arts are the best at feeding us.”- Pierre Dac. “Not only of bread lives man. That said, you should probably pray for your bread daily.”- Jesus. The Taste of Things stars Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel: they once were partners, and the obvious remaining affection can be sensed on …

Wrongs of Passage : Molly Manning Walker -“How to Have Sex”

The coming-of-age, rite-of-passage drama How To Have Sex has few surprises in plotting. (If a coming-of-age, rite-of-passage drama surprises with its plot, it's likely because it has strayed into another genre). A trio of Brit girlfriends on a Greek vacation have a clear mission: to party, drink, and try to get laid with the “fit” …