French cinema has long inspired people to fall in love not only with a place, but with a language and culture too.
In our latest blog, Ana de Medeiros, co-author of Complete French: Beginner to Intermediate, reflects on the French films that shaped her relationship with the language and inspired a lifelong engagement with Francophone culture, literature and cinema, from Manon des sources to Amélie and Les Triplettes de Belleville.
French cinema has played a deeply personal role in shaping my desire to learn more about the French language and the cultures it represents. For me, these films were not simply important in an abstract sense – they were formative encounters that transformed my relationship with language, literature, and cultural identity. Below is a reflection on some key films that have helped shape my relationship with Francophone culture and which have also influenced how I teach French.
One of the films that first drew me in when I first lived in France was Claude Beri’s Manon des sources (1986). What struck me immediately was how powerfully it brought a literary text to life. Knowing that it is adapted from Marcel Pagnol’s L’Eau des collines, and part of a longer process of adaptation across theatre, novel and film, I became aware – perhaps for the first time – of the centrality of literary culture within French cinema. Watching the film, I felt that language was inseparable from place: the Provençal landscape, the rhythms of rural life, and the social dynamics of the village all shaped the way people spoke and interacted. It made me want not only to understand the local accent but also to grasp the deeper cultural codes embedded within it. More than anything, Manon des sources highlighted that learning French meant entering a world of regional diversity and historical depth and that the learning process would be a lifelong one.
Another film that profoundly shaped my understanding is Jean-Jacques Annaud’s L’Amant (1992). For me, this film opened up a more complex and challenging dimension of French-language culture, one tied to colonial history and its legacies. Through its portrayal of relationships in colonial Indochina, I became more aware of how language is implicated in power, memory, and identity. Watching the film prompted me to reflect not only on French as a European language, but also as a language shaped by colonial encounters. It was an important moment in recognising that learning French also involves engaging with its postcolonial contexts and the histories that underpin them. I would later on discover the work of Claire Denis and continue to explore the postcolonial tropes especially as they relate to filial relationships.
In contrast, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001) had a very different impact. I remember being immediately captivated by its highly stylised depiction of Paris, with its vivid colours, whimsical narrative, and distinctive voice-over. While I was aware that the film presents an idealised version of French culture, it nevertheless played a crucial role in sparking my enthusiasm for using film in the classroom. It made French culture feel accessible and inviting, and it became an important element that I could bring into a language classroom both as a film but also working on the published storyboard which was extremely powerful and engaging.
On a different level, Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003) fascinated me because it challenged my expectations about how language operates in cinema. The film’s minimal dialogue and reliance on visual storytelling made me realise that understanding a culture does not always depend on words alone. I found myself paying closer attention to gesture, music, and visual references – elements that convey meaning in ways that are no less rich than spoken language. Its stylised animation, rooted in caricature and surrealism, also revealed to me how contemporary French culture engages playfully with its past while addressing global audiences. In this sense, the film broadened my understanding of what “learning French” could mean: not just mastering vocabulary but developing sensitivity to multiple forms of cultural expression.
My engagement with cinema and literature came together particularly strongly in Philippe Le Guay’s Alceste à bicyclette (2013). Watching Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson rehearse Molière’s Le Misanthrope, I became acutely aware of how classical texts continue to resonate within modern French culture. The film made me feel that canonical literature was not distant or inaccessible, but something living, dynamic, and open to reinterpretation. I was particularly struck by the precision and musicality of the language, and by how the performance of Molière’s lines created a bridge between the seventeenth century and the present. At the same time, the setting on the Île de Ré reinforced a theme I had already encountered in Manon des sources: the importance of region in shaping cultural identity. This film made me think about how literature continues to inform everyday cultural practice. It also made me want to explore the islands around La Rochelle even more.
These are some of the films, actors and directors that have shaped not only my interest in French, but also my understanding of what it means to engage with a language through culture. They highlight the fact that French is not a fixed entity, but a living, evolving form of expression – one that moves between literature, cinema, history, and everyday conversation. It is through these cinematic experiences that my curiosity deepened into a sustained intellectual and pedagogical engagement with French language and culture and I have enjoyed sharing these and many other films with students over the last 30 years.
Find out more about Complete French: Your all-in-one guide to learning French (Beginner-Intermediate) by Ana de Medeiros, James Fowler, Thomas Chaurin, here.