When I was young I thought that life was so wonderful that foreign films were snooty, arthouse affairs, the kinds of flicks pretentious people only pretended to like in order to look sophisticated. That’s probably true of some foreign films (and most modern art in general), but I’ve found that the opposite is frequently the case. Some of the best movies I’ve watched lately were foreign films.
Koreans and Spaniards (of various derivations) make some of the best films. Much to my surprise and delight, the French make some excellent films, too.
To be clear, some of the crappier stuff I’ve seen have been pretentious French flicks. My beloved Shudder has a whole collection of French films that are, let’s say, experimental garbage.
But the frogs do get some things right now and then. One of those is 2004’s Calvaire (alternatively Calvary or The Ordeal).
The Portly Politico 