Special Screenings : 2 WINNERS, 1 LOSER IN FILM SERIES

You can skip Caroline Robah’s ultraprecious “Clementine Tango,” a last-minute replacement for “L’Arbalate” in A Salute to New French Cinema at the Monica and the Town & Country, but the other two final entries in the 15-film series, “Vive Les Femmes” (Monica 4-Plex today, T&C; on Wednesday) and “Le Jeune Marie” (Monica on Thursday, T&C; today) are winners.

“Vive Les Femmes,” from Claude Confortes, is about as misanthropic a view of human folly and frustration as has ever been committed to film--yet it is oddly compassionate and often hilarious. Since its key setting is a holiday resort, it’s reminiscent of Jacques Tati--but as a remake by Robert van Ackeren. “Le Jeune Marie,” which marks an impressive directorial debut for Bernard Stora, is a classically French story of unrequited love, starring Richard Berry as a highway construction worker who drifts into marriage with the ingenuous Zoe Chauveau only to be thunderstruck by gorgeous, sophisticated Brigitte Fossey. Note: “Clementine Tango,” (Monica 4-Plex on Wednesday, T&C; today), which is set in a bizarre Paris nightclub, screened last April in the Nuart’s Perspectives: New French Directors series.

It’s always revealing to see the first feature of a film maker who subsequently hits it big. As it turns out, Jim Jarmusch’s “Permanent Vacation” (playing Wednesday only at the Nuart), made in 1980, is virtually a warm-up for his “Stranger Than Paradise,” one of the most original American films of 1984.

His 16-year-old punker (Chris Parker) is as much a minimalist as Jarmusch’s later heroes as he drifts through New York’s seedy back streets. While this film is visually striking (and worth seeing), it lacks the pacing and abundant humor that make “Stranger Than Paradise” such a joy. With it is the 50-minute “You Are Not I,” photographed by Jarmusch (and made by his “Permanent Vacation” production manager/assistant director Sara Driver from a Paul Bowles short story). It takes us inside the mind of an escaped mental patient (Suzanne Fletcher, who has a bit in “Permanent Vacation”). A bit tedious at the start and much in Jarmusch’s style, it becomes progressively audacious and involving.

Edna Politi’s “Anou Banou: Daughters of Utopia” and Itzhak Zepal Yeshurun’s “Noa at 17,” both focusing on the role of women in the life and political history of Israel, mark a strong start for the Nuart’s three-week Thursday evening Israeli Film Festival.

The first is a tender, comprehensive documentary on six remarkable, liberated women who emigrated to Palestine in the ‘20s and dedicated their lives to building their new country, which today they find lacking in the idealism that inspired them.

The intense, even claustrophobic “Noa at 17” is quite flatly one of Israel’s finest films. The beautiful, headstrong Noa (Dalia Shimko) is coming of age in 1951, just as her country--and her family--is torn by political strife as a result of the Cold War which provoked a bitter split between left and right. This is one of those films that makes us feel like eavesdroppers, its cast seeming to live rather than to act their parts.

This week’s films in the “Before ‘Rashomon’ ” series at UCLA were unavailable for preview. Shimizu’s “A Star Athlete” (1937), which unfolds in five episodes and cumulatively suggests that it’s the group, rather than the individual--no matter how talented--that counts. Kajiro Yamamoto’s “Horse” (1941), perhaps the most famous of all the films in this series, tells of a girl (the teen-age Hideko Takamine) devoted to her horse. Kurosawa was the second-unit director on this film, shooting all its location sequences, and has cited it as a major influence. The films screen Sunday at 2 p.m. in Melnitz Theater.

UCLA’s “Archival Treasures” series this week includes “Behind the Scenes in Hollywood (1918-1949)” (Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz), which sounds tempting indeed, and “A Tribute to Jack Oakie” (Saturday at 7:30), with clips from the beloved comedian’s career and capped by the delightful Rene Clair fantasy “It Happened Tomorrow” (1944), in which Oakie starred with Dick Powell and Linda Darnell.