European Film

Best European Films

From Alfred Hitchcock to Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman to Jean-Luc Godard, Europe has birthed many of film’s greatest innovators. And that’s just to name a few. The more you dig into the world of European film, the more and more gems you find. Scroll down to find the best European films currently reviewed on FilmRoot, or pick a country if you know what you’re after:

Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Three Lives and Only One Death (France) – Enter a Dream World+

Three Lives and Only One Death Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

Do you want to get lost in reality? Try watching Three Lives and Only One Death. It follows Marcello Mastroianni as a character that spans a few storylines in and around Paris. At times the story lines seem normal, but before long you’ll realise that they are just illusions. See if you can find your way around Raul Ruiz’s world – free to watch here on YouTube.

Image result for three lives and only one death

Why Watch Three Lives and Only One Death?

If you like your films mysterious (think David Lynch or Ingmar Bergman)
For Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last roles (the great actor from La Dolce Vita, Divorce: Italian Style, and many more)
To question your own reality
You can watch it here on YouTube

The Breakdown

A narrator that looks like a late night news anchor starts the film. As he starts narrating about a man who wakes up because of a baby crying, we see the man he is talking about. The narrator tells us that the man has a headache and goes to the pharmacy, and then, as if controlled by the narrator, the man on screen does the same.

In the pharmacy queue, another man starts talking to our protagonist. It starts off like the normal expected small talk before becoming much more unnerving for our protagonist. This stranger reveals that he knows exactly where this man lives, who he is, and who his wife is. Our protagonist wants to get away from him but the man offers him a lot of money just to sit down and chat with him.

From then on, it gets even weirder. The man reveals that he was the previous husband of our protagonists wife. He tells him he didn’t disappear for 20 years but rather lost 20 years of his time watching these little fairies (yes that wasn’t a typo). He even takes our protagonist into another room to show him these fairies. At this point the camera goes completely red and zooms in and out to disorientate us. Where are we? And what is real? Only the director Raul Ruiz knows!

Conclusion

You’ll experience a lot more of the unnerving world that Raul Ruiz has created if you watch the full film. There’s plenty of things to throw you off. Just like in the great David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman films you’ll be questioning a lot by the end of this film, but it is a great ride!

Only The Animals – International Competition – SBIFF

Only The Animals features a bunch of interconnecting narratives spanning across France and Cameroon. Each narrative is connected to the murder of a French woman during a snow storm in rural France. It’s weird, entertaining, and satisfying as every piece of the puzzle falls into place. Even the initially out of place opening of a man riding his bike through Abidjan with a goat on his back is eventually linked in and understood.

It’s a fun ride but I haven’t figured out what’s the point or message beyond ‘things happen by chance’. Not saying that it has to have a message – this film was enjoyable to watch – but it would turn a showy multiple narrative film into something better. Maybe I’m asking for too much after seeing the Trump era unravelling of a white upper class family in 2019s stand out murder mystery, Knives Out.

If anything it could be that everything the people aren’t grateful for gets reversed on them. E.g. Joseph is an inanimate loner who can’t love that ends up loving an inanimate loner who can’t love.

Only The Animals covers a lot but doesn’t feel slumped. While every character could have been given more of a backstory, it does fit the movie to not dwell so much. The fun is in watching the transcontinental story slowly unravel as each characters viewpoint layers onto the next.

Side note: slightly stereotypical story of witch doctors and scammers in Africa, even if it is hilarious watching them do their work to a horny middle aged white guy.

Viridiana (Spain)

Viridiana Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

Who said you couldn’t make fun of a dictatorship whilst living in under a dictatorship? Luis Bunuel proves us wrong by returning to Spain to deliberately make this film that satirizes Franco. Would anyone dare do this today?

Check out this sleepwalking scene for a mere taste of the controversy.

Why Watch Viridiana?

Get to know one of the dark side of one of the most famous directors of the 20th century: Luis Bunuel
To see a film that savagely pokes fun at Spain under Franco, dictator from 1939 until 1973 (the film was banned in Spain until his death in 1975)
For a ‘Last Supper’ scene which got it banned in the Vatican
If you like laughing at human nature and the absurdity of life

The Breakdown

We meet Viridiana in the courtyard of her convent talking with her mother superior. She is told to go visit her uncle before she takes her vows to become a nun. A strange request as she hardly knows him. In a Bunuel film, this can only mean trouble.

Sure enough after Viridiana arrives at her uncle’s house, she is fetishised by Bunuel (meaning she is made into the object of her uncle’s sexual fetish). Bunuel shows her taking off her stockings and nun frock in one scene and has the uncle’s maid spy on her through a key hole.

Bunuel makes it even weirder when the uncle asks Viridiana to wear his dead wife’s wedding dress (she died on her wedding night). Sure enough she looks just like her.

Bunuel’s depiction of the weird uncle is a satire of the aristocracy under Franco. He paints them as perverted and stuck in tradition (his house is full of old artifacts and looks like Mrs.Faversham’s from Dickens’ Great Expectations).

But Bunuel does not just satirize the aristocracy. Everyone is a victim in this film!

Conclusion

Bunuel has a pretty dark view of humanity. No one in this film gets away without being made fun of from the creepy old uncle to the group of beggars Viridiana takes care of. Even Viridiana is made fun of with her saintly actions.

One scene which perfectly depicts Bunuel’s world view is a scene in which Jorge (the uncle’s son) buys a dog that is being dragged along on a lead under a running horse cart. He buys the dog to free it. However, as he walks off with the dog, he does not see another cart drive past with another dog being dragged along under it.

The Fourth Man – Dutch Thriller Full of Symbolism

The Fourth Man Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

“I lie the truth, until I no longer know whether something did or did not happen.” Who can you trust in this psycho-thriller from Verhoeven.

From: Netherlands, Europe
Watch: Trailer, Buy on Amazon
Next: Oldboy, Who Killed Teddy Bear?, The Shining

Echo – Paint Your Own Picture of Icelandic Society

Echo Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Why Watch Echo?

If you want to see a composite 80 minute film made from 56 parts
Experience a wide range of Icelandic society
Join the debate on the current state of Iceland

From: Iceland, Europe
Watch: Trailer, Mubi, IMDb
Next: Involuntary, Hale County This Morning This Evening, Coffee and Cigarettes