On the basis of the five films I sampled in the 20th edition of Lincoln Center’s annual “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” series, I’m not inclined to make any diagnoses of either the state of French cinema or even this year’s edition. All five were worth seeing but only one skirted essential status, so let’s start there. Inelegantly labeled 40-Love in English (the French title, Terre batue, translates as “clay court”), Stéphane Demoustier’s first feature grows logically from his documentary short Fille du calvaire, a look at the long and difficult path awaiting young men training to be tennis pros. 40-Love initially appears to […]