Why you don’t like French film: it’s not pretentious, it just doesn’t have a plot

Don’t worry, you’re not missing the resolution: there wasn’t one

I’m somewhat of a rabid cinephile. My favourite films are eclectic: I like Serbian comedy, German silent film, Brazilian melodrama and 40s American noir. In general, I like anything that scratches that part of my mind about human nature, decision making, or evil. The complex, dark, sexual, or lurid. The parts of human life you can’t really experience in Chiswick. But, like so many, after many years of trying, I just don’t like French cinema.

Naturalistic, or unbearably dull?

French cinema is now unfortunately shorthand for pretentious, unwatchable ‘foreign’ film. Consequently, convincing someone new to film to sit down and actually watch a movie from Poland, India, Germany, or Argentina is hard work. This is a bit unfair: the films that get the worst press for being overly artistic, academic, smug and unwatchable are almost always French, so other whole industries being lumped in as ‘awful’ because they aren’t British…