Brilliantly written and directed by Eric Rohmer protégé Jean-Claude Brisseau, La vie comme ça revolves around Agnès Tessier, who takes an office job in a chemical factory. She and best friend Florence move into a place in a low-cost apartment building in an unsavory neighborhood. It is Florence’s father, who is smitten with Agnès, who […]

“Money passed through like a cyclone.” Marcel L’Herbier’s dazzling assault on capitalism updates Émile Zola’s 1890-91 novel Money, part of the Rougon-Macquart series, from the 1860s to the 1920s and, alas, remains current. The plot turns on the rivalry between Saccard and Gunderman, two financiers. They operate in a world that reeks of money—wealth without […]