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There have been numerous TV crime series from Europe pairing cops and clergy in the sleuthing. England’s “Father Brown” is among the best known and longest running. Italy has given us “Don Matteo,” with the superb Terence Stamp as a savvy priest. The French offering “Under Law and Grace” (“Priere D’Enquentere”) is a series of four 90-minute movies pairing police captain Elli (Sabrina Ouazani) and her assistant Franck (Jerome Robart) with novitiate monk Clement (Mathieu Spinosi) for murders with varying degrees of religious involvement. While most of these programs have been relatively light in tone, this quartet plays more as straight dramas.

The requisite initial mismatch of personalities is apparent from the get-go, as Elli, whose parents were Muslim and Jewish by birth but atheists in practice, and Franck (who is going through a messy divorce), head to a monastery. A monk was murdered, and a valuable bible was stolen.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Philippe Garrel's A Burning Hot Summer (2011) is showing June 22 - July 22, 2018 in many countries around the world.There is a moment in Philippe Garrel's A Burning Hot Summer which stands out. Three characters attend a party. Frédéric (Louis Garrel), a painter, and Paul (Jérôme Robart), a budding writer, sit together discussing their work. “I’ll base a character on you one day…you won’t recognize yourself,” Paul suggests. Frédéric responds: “maybe I’ll be better…better than in real life.” In the next room, Frédéric’s wife Angèle (Monica Bellucci) dances with a number of partners to ‘Truth Begins’ by Dirty Pretty Things. Garrel’s camera, normally restrained, breaks free, loosely tracking Angèle’s path from one partner to another, only to be obstructed by the movements of other dancers as the foreground becomes increasingly abstracted by...

Love is a tricky thing. Everyday, people fall in and out of love. Films document this emotion quite effectively, French films in particular. One such piece of cinema is A Burning Hot Summer, a movie about relationships that thrive and others that suffer. It is a film with heart, harsh realism and layered performances. Premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and now out on DVD, this is the perfect movie to watch when you’re in the mood for a cinematic experience which mirrors reality.

Angele (Monica Belucci) and Frederic (Louis Garrel) are an attractive French couple living in Rome. One summer, they have their friends stay with them, Elisabeth (Celine Sallette) and Paul (Jerome Robart). While the two couples spend the summer together, trouble strikes paradise. Angele starts to fall out of love with Frederic and this shift in feelings affects everyone in the house.

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This is a reprint of our review from the Venice Film Festival.

There are certain cliches associated with European cinema -- they're not necessarily always accurate, but they do exist. Ask a layman -- a well educated, smart, nice person who might not be quite as subtitle-happy as you or I -- what they imagine they might see in, say, an average French film, and a number of things might come up. Characters who are constantly having extra-marital affairs, for instance. A vaguely homoerotic relationship between two friends. Unbroken four-to-five minute takes. Dialogue talking about 'the revolution.' An actress, perhaps Monica Bellucci, taking her clothes off within the first 45 seconds.

If you were to take this layman's thoughts and turn them into a screenplay, you'd end up with "A Burning Hot Summer," the latest from Venice Film Festival favorite Philippe Garrel. Ostensibly, it's a film about male friendship: Paul...

"Un été brûlant"" (aka "That Burning Summer") is the 2011 French-language drama, directed by Philippe Garrel, starring Monica Bellucci, Louis Garrel, Céline Sallette and Jérôme Robart, following a stormy relationship between an actress and a painter.

Lensed in Rome and Paris, the feature is the second collaboration between Garrel and the French production company Rectangle Productions, receiving co-production support from Italy's Faro Film and Switzerland's Prince Film.

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Un été brûlant"...

As Tiff 2011 winds down and festival fatigue sets in, you don't want to start your day with an awful film.  I can't blame Philippe Garrel's That Summer for my schedule or how tired I am.  However, I can blame it for attempted murder as it tried to bore me to death with annoying characters, empty drama, and thoughtless direction.  Then it threw on a big dollop of misogyny just to make me hate it even more. The first five minutes of Sleepless Night are promising.  You can't go wrong  by opening on a lingering shot of Monica Bellucci seductively lying naked on a bed.  The shot is followed by a brief scene of Frédéric (Louis Garrel) trying to commit suicide by ramming his car into a tree.  Sleepless Night then goes back in time and Paul (Jérôme Robart), a movie extra and our narrator, tells us how he met...

In the rare instances I’m not for a Philippe Garrel film, I don’t not like the Philippe Garrel film—it’s that I don’t feel it as strongly as I should. He is a unique filmmaker in this regard; he photographs emotions, delicate tenors, trembling moments, people walking on precipices, singular, stunning happinesses and spiritual dejection of an utterly unique kind. And all are fragile, very fragile—the slightest push can knock a film like Un été brûlant into collapse. This is the risk, so powerful when gambled and won, that is undertaken by earnestness and a certain, highly personal and sensitive belief in what cinema can express.

For this film, it is miscast; the central couple played by Monica Bellucci and Louis Garrel, the latter of which who was used so well in his father’s Regular Lovers, have faces here devoid of expression, sinking their bourgeois,...

#21. That Summer Director:  Philippe Garrel Cast: Monica Bellucci, Louis Garrel, Céline Sallette, Jérôme Robart Distributor: Rights Available Buzz: First showing in competition in Venice, this newest work from the provocative French filmmaker has already divided riled up audiences on the Lido. Prompting boos and catcalls at the Cannes press screening of his most recent feature Frontier of Dawn, he never the less as a sturdy following of cinephiles who consider him just about the best thing since cherry cheesecake. His collaborations with his son are cute, if not more than a little bit creepy at times. The Gist: A French romantic rectangle of the most sophisticated order. Truly divisive in his uncynical portrayal of young love and lust, Garrel has been stupefying and mesmerizing art-house audiences for decades, ever-threatening to cross over into the flat-out avant-garde. Starring his son, heartthrob Louis Garrel, the challenging filmmaker tackles, once again, his classic...

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