Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.

Do you ever see a new movie that rings a bell in the back of your mind? And wonder why?

This week I’m investigating two such movies. One’s a political thriller from Israel, the other’s a swashbuckler from France.

Angelique
Dir: Ariel Zeitoun

It’s the 1600s in France. Louis XIV – the future Sun King – is heir to the throne. In a remote convent, beautiful Angelique (Nora Arnezeder: Safe House) is busy being educated by nuns. But just when she thinks she’s off to marry a minor noble she’s pushed into an arranged marriage. Le comte de Peyrac is a rich powerful noble but is much older and has a badly scarred and disfigured face.

His rival, the archbishop of Toulouse, says the count is into witchcraft and alchemy. He holds perverse orgies in his dungeon, worships the devil and turns sand into gold! So Angelique decides to make a run for it with her best friend Nicolas (Matthieu Kassovitz: Amelie, La Haine). But she is discovered and sent to marry him. But before she leaves, she confesses to a priest about a letter she’s held since childhood. The letter reveals who was responsible for a plot to murder the crown prince.

Angelique is fiery and tempestuous with a mind of her own. She refuses to sleep with him. To her surprise he doesn’t force her. Instead, he defends her honour. Will he change her mind? Or will she leave him? Hmmm…

So Angelique goes to live with the Count and gradually discovers the truth. Peyrac (Gerard Lanvin: Mesrine) is actually a modern man. His witchcraft? Understanding that the earth goes around the sun. His alchemy? It’s just a gold refinery. And his sex orgies? (Well, that part seems to be true.)

So the local archbishop wants Peyrac burned at the stake; this is still the era of the inquisition. The future king Louis XIV (German actor David Kross: Krabat, The Reader) is interested in the count’s gold mine. And Angelique still holds that secret letter.

The movie follows their plight. When Peyrac is thrown into the Bastille, she is forced to darken her hair, disguise herself as a poor woman, and go undercover in the streets of Paris to rescue her husband. There are sword fights, a huge trial, a lawyer with a mastiff, a lusty cousin (hints of incest?), assassinations, secret identities, Church corruption and palace intrigue. And in movies with castles you always get torch-lit chase scenes down hidden staircases and through underground tunnels.

At first I thought it was a new version of the Three Musketeers, told from a woman’s perspective. But I was totally wrong. Apparently it’s based on a French movie from 1964, which in turn was based on the Angelique series of French novels, bestselling potboilers in the 1950s. Anyway, Angelique is a fun and fascinating film that breathes new life into a genre I thought was long dead and buried. Swashbucklers – what the hell’s a swash? …And how do you buckle it? No idea, but I liked this movie. (Can’t wait for Part 2.)

Bethlehem
Dir: Yuval Adler, Wri: Yuval Adler, Ali Wakad

Young Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i) lives in Bethlehem in the West Bank. His older brother Ibrahim is a member of Al Aqsa, the militant wing of Fatah. Al Aqsa and their rival Hamas – based in Gaza – are battling for influence in Bethlehem.

Sanfur hangs with his friends, daring each other to prove who is the toughest. Like putting on a bullet proof vest and shooting each other at close range… what are they thinking?! Sanfur’s tough, but he also has a secret: he’s an informant for the Israeli secret service. They want to keep track of his secretive brother because something big is about to happen.

Then a bomb goes off at the King George Hotel in Jerusalem, killing many. Who did it – Hamas or Al Aqsa? And was Ibrahim involved?

Razi (Tsahi Halevi), Sanfur’s Arabic-speaking Israeli “handler”, wants to find out. His superiors expect him to catch Sanfur who regularly passes money to his brother. But Razi pulls a fast one: he gets him to disappear for a few days. That way they can catch who they want without Sanfur being killed. But that means Razi has to lie, both to the secret service and to Sanfur.

This is a good spy thriller about the dual allegiances of the numerous Palestinian informants in the West Bank and their Israeli handlers. Apparently, it was written by a Palestinian and an Israeli, to tell the two sides of the story.

But it may ring a bell: I talked a few weeks ago about another, very similar movie called Omar. Omar is also about a young Palestinian man who is an informant for the Israeli Secret Service. The plot is amazingly similar, but subtly different in crucial ways.

In Omar, the young men shoot an Israeli soldier. In Bethlehem, someone bombs a Jerusalem hotel killing dozens of civilians.

In Omar, the Arabic-speaking Israeli handler is devious and not to be trusted. In Bethlehem, he’s kind and sympathetic, and lies only to save lives.

In Omar, Israeli police cruelly harass an innocent man. In Bethlehem, The police bulldoze a hole into a killer’s house.

In Omar, Palestinian militants are driven by feelings of anger, vengeance, and loyalty. In Bethlehem, they seem more concerned with money — getting paid what they’re owed.

Omar (the character) is a handsome and noble hero in love with a beautiful woman. Sanfur (which means Smurf) is a troubled and confused teenager, driven to tears and easily influenced. His only “love affair” is the father/son relationship he has with his Israeli handler.

Omar is a straightforward romantic thriller, while Bethlehem is more ambiguous and troubling, less black and white. Which one’s better? They are both good movies.

Angelique played at CineFranco, Toronto’s French language film festival, which continues to show great movies all weekend. And Bethlehem opens in Toronto today: check your local listings. And, coming soon: imagesfestival.com with great art films and moving images, and TIFF Kids film festival, at tiff.net .

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com