Four years ago, in a poll to mark the centenary of cinema, Irish Times readers voted Cinema Paradiso and Jean de Florette as their favourite foreign-language films, placing them sixth and seventh, respectively, on the all-time top ten. Both films are released at the IFC in Dublin this weekend. In Cinema Paradiso Giuseppe Tornatore pays an affectionate tribute to the medium of film as a world-weary director reflects back on his childhood in a small Sicilian town.
Re-issued in a new print, Claude Berri's superb Jean de Florette is a riveting rural drama of duplicity and despair in an ostensibly idyllic pastoral setting, and it features fine performances from Gerard Depardieu, Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil. Its equally compelling companion piece Manon des Sources also returns to the IFC today.