I have a good friend, someone with whom I talk about film, and we like to laugh about french films. Some life-altering event will occur -- someone will have been killed or raped, or had a huge blowout fight with their boss where they lose their job -- and then right after all of this, the character will be sipping coffee and asking for more sugar, or changing the oil in their car as the credits start to roll.

We could have been talking about a Pialat film.

When I heard they were showing french films an hour away, I decided to go. Sorta last minute. I had never heard of the guy, but why not? Something different to do on a Saturday night...

About halfway through the first movie, the woman next to me whispered "Is there a point to this?" And after the second, the people behind me sneered: "Sadness and depravity can be fun."

Me? I loved it! Here's a few reasons why.

First there was the cinematography. The light was studied, and then again not at all. Sometimes the colors were oversaturated like an old painting; at other times, they were washed out, sometimes so completely it was tough to make out much more than part of an image. In one part, the lighting changed during the scene, as if the sun had gone suddenly behind clouds. Other scenes used light strategically: silhouettes in lit doorways at the end of dark hallways while another character was focused in a foreground corner.

Then there was the camera work. A lot of hand-held scenes, the camera following the characters as they walked down streets or through apartments. We might follow a character into a room and the camera would stay focused on that character while they began a conversation with someone else off-screen. All you saw was one character's actions and reactions.

There was the scripting. A lot of it must have been improvised. Lots of ums and ahhs, people absentmindedly touching their faces, looking bored, just like people do in everyday life. Time would suddenly pass without a typical 'transition,' and you would have to watch and listen carefully (or in my case, watch the subtitles!) to see that someone was now married, had children, fallen on hard times or experienced a windfall.

I saw LouLou and A Nos Amours. I've read a few reviews, the general consensus is they are about awakening female sexuality. And while maybe that's partly true -- there was certainly plenty of sex! -- I got much more. To me, there were a lot of points. The 'awakening sexuality' and the characters' relationships with each other explored anything you or I might feel. The relationships change as the movie progresses, and how, by the end of the film, each has emerged as different people.

In Loulou, a woman abandons her husband for a petty criminal she meets at a club. She continues to sleep with her husband in his attempt to win her back, but eventually he's had enough and tosses her out. The movie does a good job of showing how she and her husband were more compatible -- basically good friends -- and also the husband's pain as he watches his wife slip away.

She stays with the criminal. Why? I got the impression -- maybe from all the sex, hah! -- he made her feel alive. And I say 'get the impression' because there are no epiphianic scenes where she or anyone else stops to say so, like they might tearfully reveal over coffee in an american film or soap or daytime talkshow.

At the end -- an ending that my friend and I would laugh -- she's come from having an abortion and waits for her guy on the street. He staggers from a bar, barely able to stand, and the credits roll as she helps him up.

A Nos Amours was much the same way. A 16 year old girl starts sleeping around. She seems to be desperately searching for something and not finding it. In the next-to-last scenes, she tells her father she's left her husband, running off with another man and the last scene freezes on her face looking out an airplane window. What is she thinking? It could be anything.

I loved it!

I plan to see the rest of the series here through the end of the month.