Jean-Jacques Beineix dominated the Eighties with his "cinema du look", now maligned by some as stylish and superficial. But his two best films sparkled with a reinvented Paris, opera, motorbikes and Beatrice Dalle in her pouting pomp. Also catch the angsty romances of Leos Carax, such as the legendarily costly Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf, which broke his then-lover Juliette Binoche and made fireworks pogo.
Gael Garcia Bernal's starring turn as the young, idealistic Che Guevara is as stunning as the sublime panoramic landscapes through which he's depicted on his travels with buddy Alberto Granado. Moving and memorable in equal measure, The Motorcycle Diaries shows director Walter Salles at the very peak of his career, and offers a remarkable insight into the formation of the revolutionary. And not a student's Che Guevara t-shirt or poster in sight!
Claude Berri's simple rural tales of greed, carnations and water, which starred Depardieu and made Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Beart, cost (in the late Eighties) eight times as much as the average French film. Something in their lyrical charms struck a chord. Lots of grass.
Wim Wenders' mystical blend of fantasy and reality, Heaven And Earth, borrowed from Cocteau and Rilke but rang with its own compelling beauty, making wannabe Berlin trapeze artists and angels of us all, and doing Nick Cave's career a huge favour. Later remade by Hollywood in typically crass style. But this'd make a dead man weep. Wenders, increasingly pretentious, never matched it.
Polish master Kieslowski topped an inspired portfolio with this early Nineties swansong - Blue (liberty), White (equality) and Red (fraternity). Less political and more personal as he aged, he was the king of "cinema of moral unrest". Featuring Binoche at her best, this is subtle, human drama refined to near-perfection.