oh, get me started on French movies:
In my youth I saw two French flicks that sucked so bad it put me off the genre for years (and by two I mean trois):

First was a 'histerical historical' snoozefest which we had to see for school. It was called "Louis Cat-horse." It was all in French and it doesn't matter if it was subtitled because it was pretty much edited in real time, the main scene being an interminable dinner which went on forever. When the king was going through the many halls of Versaille (which the movie showed being constructed pretty much in real time) on the way too (and from) dinner, various standing extras were reqired to yell "Le Roi!" a appropriate intersections. This went on for so many times that when he vanished from the corridors for a moment, one of my schoolmates yelled (imagine a coarse New England accent here) "Where's 'Le RWAAAAAAA?'" the only bit of levity to this mass expenditure of le film. The only known cure for this movie is a quick round of Gilbert & Sullian but at the time the films of Gilbert & Sullivan were being strangled by the courts and actor's equity.
My fellow schoolmates reacted with the same benumbed reflexes as myself, and the effect was so noted by the school authorities that next month, as we showed signs of recovery, they sent us to see it all over again.

Sometime later, and probably on my own nickel, I saw a suspense thriller called "Le Boucher" (The Butcher). It was a thrill-a-minute, and by that I'm talking about a minute on Jupiter which takes about a billion years to go around the sun one time (It's gone around about twice since God made Darwin). Anyhow, a byoutifull French gal is visiting a charming town in the suburbs of Paris which is about fifty miles out, and she's caught the eye of the local boucher which is French and sounds kinda like he could be a baker or a bootcher but he's really a butcher. He takes a shine to her and she keeps coming by because she gets hungry. He saves the good cuts for her. But all around, people keep on dying. And well, the screenplay comes to life and wanders up and down the aisles screaming alternately c'est le boucher! and occasionally in a French accent: "heet's thee bootcher, heet's thee bootcher!" which the entire audience can here and often responds telling the animated script "yeah, like that's a surprise!" so anyway the distraction is welcome, but the movie is still rolling slowly on, and the cute gal is still showing up for her regular meat pies. There is no tension, there is no flirtation. There is no nothing. There is animated stasis. People die, young French woman shows up to get the cut de jour, and butcher guy looks shifty. Finally for some reason, probably to avoid being hit under the chin by the closing credits, he confesses, to the pretty French girl. He is the killer. He feels bad about it, too. And that's pretty much how the film fin'd. The cute gal was still alive, too, but the audience had died.

Some years later, full of dread, and with a cute blonde, I attended a French film for the third time in my young life, this time by a great director full of la criticisme de la nouvelle ague: It was by Bunuel and it was called "La Charme Discrete de la Bourgeosie". It totally does not matter if it was subtitled, which it was. The film was a surreal critique, which either means it was a critique of class done in a surreal style, or it was a surreal critique or it was a critique of a surreal class. It involves a bunch of upper class nimrods trying to have a meal together so they can talk about those not present, which is one of the standard human conditions (talking about those not present OR not being there, take your pick). In the early part of the film they are at a restauranat where the waiter is on the table, because he's already seen the script and passed himself off as dead (or not speaking, or trying the clever third position: Being there AND being spoken about).
Ultimately these hungry well clothed people playing hookey from their jobs (as actors) wind up in a restaurant which gets attacked by terrorists, but not the new terrorists, the old kind who wore red berets and liked to shoot up airports. Many of them (the real terrorists) later became lawyers and bankers, but that's an entirely different, much scarier story than this. The best scene in the whole movie is when a terrorist goes up to a restaurant table and lifts the tablecloth, exposing one of the nastier wealthy bourgeois characters, who is holding in his hand a chicken leg, and defiantly chews it in his the terrorist'sface. Earning him his just reward, the same reward I'd've cheerfully awarded Bunuel had I had my Kalashnikov with me. The only only good thing to say about this movie was that the film was like a bludgeon to my cute blonde friend and she was helpless before the crude advances of youth.

So anyhow, this is just to say that I do love French films. I think they are great and I heartily endorse them and am probably going off to see one right now.