Marion Vernoux's romantic drama Love Etc. is based on a novel by Julian Barnes, but it echoes Truffaut's Jules and Jim (in spirit more than plot) in its examination of an impossible ménage à trois. Shy Yvan Attal and unlucky-in-love Charlotte Gainsbourg meet through a personal ad. Attal sent a picture of his handsome best friend, confident womanizer Charles Berling, but it matters little as they fall for each other's charm and sincerity. Inevitably, Berling joins the couple and the trio pals around until the marriage, when the outwardly confident but secretly lonely and desperate Berling realizes he too loves Gainsbourg and begins hounding her. Vernoux gets the best from her cast: Gainsbourg's awkward beauty and Attal's ruffled passivity create a sweetly believable couple, but there is room for lingering doubt. Berling has a lock on self-centered intellectuals in the French film industry, but here reveals a sad desperation and jealousy in his performance. Vernoux's light touch and playful asides suspend the film in a state of romantic comfort before the inevitable, sympathetic, but painful climax. What gives her modest tale character is the loving attention she gives each of the lovers and the generous, unexpected coda she rewards them-and us-with. -Sean Axmaker.

François Truffaut again tackles the elusive nature of creativity and the elusive creation in this thoughtful, sumptuous, 1980 film. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar, and a winner of various Césars, The Last Metro is a tale of the theater in occupied France during World War II. Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) manages the Theatre Montmarte in the stead of her Jewish husband, director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent). He has purportedly fled France but is really hiding out in the basement of the theater. The one hope to save the Montmarte is a new play starring the dashing Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu). The attraction between Marion and Bernard is palpable, and as usual Truffaut creates tension and drama from even the most casual of occurrences. The theme of the director locked away while his lover and his creation are appropriated by others makes for interesting Truffaut study, but first and foremost this is a well-spun romance. -Keith Simanton.

One of the best films of 1994, To Live is a bold, energetic masterpiece from Zhang Yimou, the foremost director from China's influential "fifth generation" of filmmakers. Continuing his brilliant collaboration with China's best-known actress Gong Li (their previous films include Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern), Zhang weaves an ambitious tapestry of personal and political events, following the struggles of an impoverished husband and wife (Ge You, Gong Li) from their heyday in the 1940s to the hardships that accompanied the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. They raise two children amidst a Communist regime, surviving numerous setbacks and yet managing, somehow, to live. Both intimate and epic, Zhang's film encompasses the simplest and most profound realities of Chinese life during this controversial period, and for their honesty, Zhang and Gong Li faced a two-year ban on future collaborations. To Live is a testament to their art, transcending politics to celebrate the tenacity of ordinary people in the wake of turbulent history. -Jeff Shannon.

The press kit's historical notes should be standard issue for anyone who sees Alan Rudolph's (The Moderns, Choose Me) look at the famous intellectuals who dotted New York's finest hour in the 1920s. If you only know the names of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, et al. in passing, this movie will hardly generate more study. These writers and thinkers, most famous for having lunch daily at the Algonquin Hotel, seem as weightless and thin as the fictional ones in The Moderns. Most luminous is Mrs. Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose passion for unhappiness is rarely interrupted. Leigh, in a performance that viewers seem to love or loathe, swirls "witty" dialogue with pure force and must be praised for keeping your interest in a life that was so dreary. The chief problem is not the performances (Campbell Scott is quite fun in a change-of-pace role); it's that the movie comes off as a taped show on stage: the characters are not real and it's all dress-up. Rudolph illustrates his main character's writing (done far too seldom in writers' bios) by having Leigh speak Parker's poetry directly into the camera. -Doug Thomas.