Fanny Cottençon

You can almost smell the hairspray in Akerman’s exuberant but subversive musical about the many romantic entanglements of salon workers in a shopping mall basement. Its natty 1980s style, witty song lyrics, rapturous dance sequences, not to mention a gloriously bitchy male-suited quartet, deliver all the joys of the genre.

Recently transferred to Strasbourg, Cesar tries to adjust to his new team and an uninhibited medical examiner. The catch? His mother is the mayor, so it’s hard to earn any trust. From Walter Presents, in French with English subtitles.

In this steamy romantic drama, a beautiful woman in her 60s betrays her marriage by falling into a passionate love affair with a much younger man.