Much like the plot of Victor Hugo's source novel, Les Misérables tells the redemption story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant who serves 19 years in jail after stealing bread for his sister's starving child.
(Uh oh, here come the tears.) I don't watch Jules et Jim too often, but it's a film that will be forever etched in my memory. (Do yourself a favor and watch her sing "Le Tourbillon" from the soundtrack, which is currently one of my most-played songs on Spotify.) But even with Moreau stealing every scene she's in, it's the titular friendship that will make you melt-right up to the absolutely heartbreaking final scene, set in Paris. The two meet during the carefree days Paris before World War I, write letters to each other while fighting on opposite sides of the war, and continue to see each other in the years following the war-all while engaging in a fraught love triangle with free-spirited Catherine, played with perfectly masked sadness by Jeanne Moreau. The third full-length feature from New Wave director François Truffaut, Jules et Jim tells the tale of the decades-long friendship between Austrian introvert Jules (played by Oskar Werner) and French extrovert Jim (played by Henri Serre).
It's honestly hard for me to talk or write about this movie without getting teary-eyed, but here goes.
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It’s also full of heart, small dogs, and a goofy Sacha Baron Cohen who’s constantly out to get Hugo. (He does occasionally venture out, including one adventure to the Hogwarts-like Sainte-Geneviève Library.) Set in the 1930s, the Martin Scorsese-directed movie is visually stunning, with elaborate sets and all the interesting sounds you'd expect of a train station, which helped it to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. Instead, he peers out at the city’s most famous landscapes from up above as he tinkers with his late father’s automaton and continues to run the clocks after his uncle goes missing. Hugo, a 12-year-old orphan, lives in the clocktower at Gare Montparnasse railway station and seldom leaves. Hugo isn’t a movie about traipsing through Paris-instead, we see bits and pieces of the city through the titular character’s eyes. Lara Kramer, senior manager, audience development And if the credits roll and your heart is a mess and you can't quite part with Jesse and Céline, you're in luck: You can catch their final act in Before Midnight (2013), released-you guessed it-nine years after Before Sunset. Paris is the perfect backdrop to the film's reflection on fate and how one decision begets another (or eliminates one altogether). The dialogue is clever and poignant as you follow the pair on a walk around the city, meandering through the Marais district of the 4th arrondissement, Le Pure Café in the 11th arrondissement, and the Promenade Plantée park in the 12th arrondissement. After meeting on a train and sharing a night together in Vienna in the first film, the couple's lives intersect once again, nine years later in Paris. If you don't ship Jesse and Céline, what are you even doing with your life? Before Sunset is the second installment in Richard Linklater's dreamy trilogy following the relationship between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Deply), following 1995's Before Sunrise.