Claude Lelouch, Roman de Gare

Ever since his double Oscar win for 1966's A Man and a Woman with Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay, Claude Lelouch has been synonymous with hand-held cameras, insistent melodic soundtracks and woozy romanticism. But the decades since, while productive - he's now made 41 movies -, found him defensive with critics. Feeling he could never be treated fairly, Lelouch filmed Roman de Gare, an intricately plotted murder mystery with Fanny Ardant as a popular writer whose assistant may be dead or a serial killer, under the pseudonym Hervé Picard. Something obviously worked. Roman de Gare, which opened the Rendezvous with French Cinema series at Lincoln Center before its commercial release, is considered Lelouch's best film in years. In English AND French.

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