The French thing you're talking about is the known as the Mignet system.
A staggered biplane with lots of dihedral. The rear (lower) wing is fixed, the forward (upper) wing is all moving in pitch and is the pitch control. The tail has no horizontal stabiliser, but the rudder is driven by the cockpit roll control. There's no primary roll control, roll is through secondary effect of rudder.
I've flown two variants. The HM1000, which is approved in the UK as the "Balerit" is a 2-seater. Slow, sluggish, Dutch rolls all over the place - but essentially easy to fly and utterly viceless. In aid of my profession I spent several hours trying to spin one once and failed dismally. Very effective folding wings...
The other, the HM293 is a single seat taildragger, feels to fly like I imagine a WW1 fighter would. I timed 1.8 seconds from 60° (steady) to 60° (steady) - incredibly crisp and responsive in roll. Pretty reasonable in pitch. Still Dutch rolls all over the place, and I didn't get enough flying in it to come to terms with landing a taildragger where the rudder is driven through the stick. Thoroughly good fun however, I strongly recommend it if you ever get a go in one.
The original Mignet Flying Flea (Pou du Ciel) was the HM14, which killed people by virtue mainly of a very unforgiving wing section. The modern ones in France usually use the HM293's wing section which lacks the original (and severely inadvisable) sharp leading edge.
G