Films and TV series to improve your French in June

Learning a language has never been easier, given the mass amounts of immersive resources at our fingertips. 

When learning French in the traditional manner, for example, from a textbook, the words lack context which makes them harder to retain. 

In a film or TV series, a word is tied to a facial expression, a tone of voice, body language, and a physical setting, which in turn creates contextual learning. It allows your brain to naturally assume and equate meaning to the phrase, rather than looking up the word and having no cues to attach it to. 

Aside from speaking with natives, it is one of the best ways to tune your ear to real-spoken French and allows learning to take place in a passive manner. It is one of the best habits to incorporate into your everyday life to ensure you are consolidating skills and developing all parts of your language toolkit. 

Juste une illusion

Directing and producing duo Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache are behind some of France’s most successful films, including Les Intouchables.

Their latest release is likely to be added to the list of their greats - Juste une illusion is set in the Paris suburbs in 1985 and is a retro, coming-of-age family comedy. It follows Vincent, a nearly 13-year-old boy in the lead up to his Bar Mitzvah, as he struggles with his bickering parents. 

Starring Camille Cottin and Louis Garrel, it is a Toledano and Nakache classic; funny and explorative while packing an emotional punch. 

The film also employs lots of French slang that was typically used in 1985 and is frequently still used by lots of adults today. Revolving around an everyday family household, it is a great way to tune your ear into familiar French which is always the French that you are most likely to need when going about your everyday life. 

The film is available to watch in cinemas in France now. 

L’Éclipse

Thriller is really the genre of the moment and L’Éclipse will not disappoint on this front. 

After the locals gather in the village to watch a rare solar eclipse, everything starts to go wrong when Luca, one of the village teenagers, accidentally fires his police mother’s gun in the darkness. The bullet hits his girlfriend, Nour, but when he returns with help, Nour has completely vanished. 

It offers a range of different spoken French - the teenagers speak in slang and more modern French while the police officers use standard, formal French that you will be more familiar with from professional environments.

The series is available to watch on Canal+ or on Channel 4 if you are in the UK. 

Vie privée 

Vie privée see’s Jodie Foster play her first lead role entirely in French, speaking flawlessly throughout. The American actress went to a French speaking school in the States as a child, and in Vie privée plays a Parisian psychoanalyst who becomes ultra paranoid after one of her patients dies from so-called suicide. 

Convinced foul play was involved, Foster’s character employs the help of her ex-husband to investigate the case together.

Listening and watching Foster speak French is great for learners as she too has learned French as a second language. Phonetically, she speaks very clearly with a perfect Parisian accent which means if you generally struggle when people marmonnent (mumble), this should be a lot easier to understand.

The film is available on AppleTV. 

Recalé 

Written by François Uzan, one of the lead writers on French-hit Lupin, Recalé is a realistic representation of what teachers face today. Uzan went undercover in real French schools to research the show. 

The plot follows Eddy, who manages to avoid trouble with the police by agreeing to go undercover in a school as a substitute maths teacher to help the police identify which student is the child of a dangerous criminal mastermind. 

Watching French comedy is a great way to fully develop your language skills as it allows you to fully integrate into the culture. Fluency in a second language goes so much further than just the words themselves; it is also the comedic timing, the tone and the cultural reference points. 

En fanfare

En fanfare proved a huge success in France and further afield, with nominations for Césars amongst the acclaim. 

This comedy-drama follows Thibaut, an acclaimed Parisian orchestra conductor who is diagnosed with leukemia. 

While searching for a bone marrow donor, he discovers he was adopted and has a biological brother, Jimmy, who works as a school cook in northern France. As it turns out, the long lost brothers have more in common than they ever could have thought.

The film offers good insight into a mix of accents; it is a useful exercise in trying to identify how different words are pronounced in different regions. 

It is available to watch on Canal+.