Inspired by my good friend Adrian Curry, whose Movie Posters of the Decade post over at The Auteurs led critic (and Twitter fiend) Roger Ebert to issue forth a "bleh" (and then respond with his own choices), I thought I'd join in on the fun and put together a post on posters as well.
Yet rather than "best" or "favorite" I decided to focus on films and/or posters that aren't as well known here in the States -- things I saw at film festivals, or in a Paris Metro station, a billboard in Shinjuku, etc. Others I simply stumbled upon online.
Not all of these are great films. Some are quite bad, in fact. Also, I'm not making any claims as to the design quality of these posters -- some might violate every rule or standard -- but each of them caught my attention (sometimes for embarrassingly simple reasons) and remained memorable enough for me to recall them for this little divertissement.
Where applicable, I've made some attempts at grouping them either by theme or style, but please don't read too much into that. It's simply an alternative from the numbered list approach.
Oh, one or two are NSFW so you might want to think twice before peeking below the fold. Then again, who has W anymore?
Les Plus Belles Femmes...
La Belle Personne (2008)
Another tale of
l'amour fou from director Christophe Honoré, but this time set in high school. It's nowhere near as interesting as
Love Songs or
Dans Paris, but there's something about the poster -- is it the red background or simply the haunting Léa Seydoux and her disembodied head? Come to think of it, this might just be a bit of poor Photoshopping. Regardless, there was something about seeing this plastered all over Paris that left its mark. Bonus bit of trivia - actress Léa Seydoux can be seen, briefly, in
Inglourious Basterds, playing one of the farmer's daughters in the opening sequence.
Hadewijch (2009)
Speaking of Photoshop, there's a bit too much magic applied to Julie Sokolowski's skin (see comparison here), but I guess the designer wanted to give an angelic, ethereal look to the young actress who gets her Christ on in this magnificent film. Look -- she's staring right at you, but thinking of him...
Pas Douce (2007)
Though not quite as inappropriate as the The Death of Mr. Lazarescu poster that Adrian referenced, this one for Jeanne Waltz's film is both extremely odd and misleading. A drama about the relationship between a young woman (Isild Le Besco) and the teenager she cripples during a failed suicide attempt is here marketed like....what...a magazine cover? A deodorant ad? The poster may say nothing about the film, but there's something spontaneous and natural about it that works. Bonus points for using a somewhat unflattering picture of Le Besco.
