Wild Reeds

The work of the great French director is celebrated in this three-disc collection of four films. André Téchiné's 1994 coming-of-age drama "Wild Reeds," winner of the Cesar awards (France's equivalent of the Oscar) for Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Film, is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Set in the France of the early 1960s (where the Algerian war creates tensions much like Vietnam in the United States), two boys strike up a friendship and share their thoughts and feelings as they reach toward maturity. Techine shows great sensitivity toward the difficult ages of adolescence and creates a subdued, elegiac portrait of both the pleasures and the pains of growing up. Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil star in his deft 1993 drama "My Favorite Season" as estranged siblings forced to come to terms with one another when their mother becomes infirm and they are brought back together to care for her. Also features "Hotel America" (1981), with Deneuve and Patrick Dewaere, and "I Don't Kiss" (1991) with Manuel Blanc, Philippe Noiret and Emmanuelle Beart.