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Fantastique
Incorporating fantasy, horror and science fiction, the French fantastique genre offers many weird and wonderful delights.
From the very first films by the Lumière brothers, French cinema has been perceived as tending towards the real; but there’s an alternative tradition that also stretches back to the dawn of cinema – that of the fantastique.
It incorporates elements of fantasy, horror and science fiction into bizarre, atmospheric tales in which the unexplained and the supernatural intrude into reality.
From the magical illusions of Georges Méliès, the fantastique flourished again during the German occupation, reached poetic heights in the films of Jean Cocteau and Georges Franju, and was revitalised in the post-New Wave 1970s and beyond.
Eyes without a FaceEyes without a Face
Horror195990 minsDirector: Georges Franju
Georges Franju’s gorgeous, poetic horror film about a surgeon’s dark obsession with restoring his daughter’s disfigured face.
Successive Slidings of PleasureSuccessive Slidings of Pleasure
Drama1974106 minsDirector: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.
The Nude VampireThe Nude Vampire
Horror196985 minsDirector: Jean Rollin
Jean Rollin’s second vampire film is a mesmerisingly surreal art-horror, short on logic but steeped in gorgeously sensual imagery.
Fantastic PlanetFantastic Planet
Animation & Artists Moving Image197372 minsDirector: René Laloux
René Laloux and Roland Topor’s surreal, psychedelic sci-fi animation imagines a world in which humanoid creatures are kept as pets by a race of giants.
FascinationFascination
Horror197982 minsDirector: Jean Rollin
Jean Rollin’s best-known film is the most full-blooded of his vampire tales, teeming with sex and lavishly filmed gore scenes
Shiver of the VampiresShiver of the Vampires
Horror197095 minsDirector: Jean Rollin
Newlyweds visit their cousins at a remote rural chateau, finding them under the spell of two vampire girls.
Celine and Julie Go BoatingCeline and Julie Go Boating
Drama1974194 minsDirector: Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette’s biggest commercial hit is an exhilarating combination of theatricality, paranoia and ‘la vie parisienne’, around an entrancing examination of making and watching films.
The BeastThe Beast
Comedy197598 minsDirector: Walerian Borowczyk
An outrageous classic of erotic cinema, Walerian Borowczyk’s playful and subversive fantasy finds a horny heiress courting the ravenous desires of a wild beast.
Eden and AfterEden and After
Animation & Artists Moving Image196998 minsDirector: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s sensual fantasy follows a group of students who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic realm after taking a mysterious drug.
Trans-Europ-ExpressTrans-Europ-Express
Thriller196695 minsDirector: Alain Robbe-Grillet
This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.
Night of the HuntedNight of the Hunted
Horror198091 minsDirector: Jean Rollin
Jean Rollin’s stylish and futuristically surreal horror about patients at a mysterious clinic whose memories are disintegrating.
Requiem for a VampireRequiem for a Vampire
Horror197287 minsDirector: Jean Rollin
Two female fugitives hide out in a deserted castle, only to become embroiled in a plot to extend the bloodline of a horde of blood-crazed vampires.