Young Yakuza

In the French-made documentary about Japanese gangsters, "Young Yakuza," director Jean-Pierre Limosin follows 18 months of ups and downs within one yakuza clan, and the results are, by turns, riveting and incisive and bland and boring. A young trainee, previously a shiftless slacker, seems to find himself in the regimentation and emphasis on procedure that comes with yakuza life, while the higher-ups [...] Vai alla recensione »

For the beguiling and bittersweet "Love Songs," French writer-director Christophe Honoré has imaginatively strung together the plaintive music and lyrics of 13 Alex Beaupain tunes, some of them already extant, others written specifically for the film. So well integrated are the songs, which enrich the story and its characters immeasurably, that dialogue flows into them with an easy naturalness.