Writer/director Olivier Dahan (Crimson Rivers II) helmed La Vie en Rose, the screen biopic of tragic French songstress Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard portrays Piaf, the superstar once raised as a young girl by her grandmother in a Normandy bordello, then discovered on a French street corner -- as a complete unknown -- by cabaret proprietor Louis ...
The legend of Therese Martin, canonized as a saint and popularly known as "the Little Flower of Jesus," is affectionately related in this 1986 French film. At 15, Therese (Catherine Mouchet) enters the convent, hoping to become a Carmelite nun. While preparing for her life as a "Bride of Jesus," Therese begins keeping a journal, eloquently pouring ...
The title character in the Belgian-French The Music Teacher is a retired opera star, played by Jose Van Dam. The teacher's most gifted pupil is singer/musician Anne Roussel. Her love for her teacher is one of the motivating factors of the story, as is Roussel and Van Dam's relationship with another pupil, petty thief Philippe Volter. Complicating ...
L'Argent de Poche (Small Change) is an episodic comedy drama composed of several sequences that explore childhood in director François Truffaut's signature humanistic style. Filmed in Thiers in South Central France, each vignette is seen from the point of view of a kid from two weeks to 14 years old. There is no real plot, just little scenes ...
Two siblings with practically nothing in common are brought together by a real estate deal that threatens to leave them even more at odds than they were before in this semi-improvised comedy. Graham (Paul Rudd) and Rex (Romany Malco) are about as different as two brothers can get -- Graham is sloppy, lackadaisical, and in a state of puzzled ...
Based on the same infamous murders that inspired Jean Genet's play The Maids, and the earlier film Sister My Sister, this French drama explores the difficult family life, professional pressures, and forbidden bond that in 1933 led sisters Christine and Lea Papin to murder the mother and daughter who employed them as maids. Based on Paulette ...
French director Alain Corneau delves into the painfully irrational world of office politics, which are further complicated by a severe case of culture clash in his 2003 comedy, Stupeur et Tremblements (Fear and Trembling). Based on the similarly titled memoirs of author Amélie Nothomb and her employment experiences with a Japanese mega-corporation ...
The grim Emile Zola "naturalist" novel Therese Raquin has been vividly cinematized by director Marcel Carne. Simone Signoret plays the title character, the long-suffering housewife who dreams of a more romantic life-partner than the bourgeois Camille (Jacques Duby). Therese enjoys a torrid affair with burly truck-driver Laurent (Raf Vallone), only ...
The last film by veteran writer/director Robert Bresson, the French crime drama L'Argent (Money) was based on a short story by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Looking for some quick cash, young man Norbert (Marc Ernest Fourneau) gets a phony 500 franc note from his friend Matrial (Bruno Lapeyre). After he spends it at a photography shop, the ...
Director Chantal Akerman helmed this offbeat comedy about a mother and daughter who find themselves living together again for the first time in many years. Still reeling emotionally from the recent death of her husband, Catherine (Aurore Clément) has chosen to leave her old home and move in with her grown daughter, Charlotte (Sylvie Testud). While ...
Markus Heltschel writes and directs the whodunit Der Glässerne Blick (Dead Man's Memories), a co-production of Austria and Germany. Prolific French actress Sylvie Testud stars as Alice, a music student from Vienna who travels around Lisbon. Portuguese actor Miguel Guilherme plays the detective, Pinto, who investigates the murder of archeologist ...
Every child who has lost a parent early in life (whether due to death or the separations of divorce or for any other reason) longs to see that parent again. Many have kept up a running dialogue in their heads of things they would say to them if they ever see them again, and many of these things are bitter indeed. In this story, Camille (Marianne ...
The Return of Martin Guerre is set in France during the Hundred Years' War. Imagining herself a widow, Nathalie Baye is astonished when her husband Gerard Depardieu returns after nine years. He looks like her husband and sounds like her husband, and certainly has a working knowledge of the couple's prior relationship. Still, neither Baye nor her ...
Inspired by Proust's short story La Prisonniere, renowned filmmaker Chantel Akerman creates this challenging meditation on love, desire, and obsession. The film opens with grainy Super-8 footage showing Ariane (Sylvie Testud) and her female friends rollicking on a beach. Now Ariane lives in third empire splendor in the tony Parisian apartment that ...
The influence of genetics and the ability to identify oneself as a separate entity from family lineage lies at the heart of award-winning short-filmmaker Louise Archambault's slice of life drama concerning a nomadic mother and her teenage daughter. Affectionately known as Mimi by her friends, Michèle (Sylvie Moreau) is an aerobics instructor with ...
Three popular avant garde musicians headline the concert film Sylvie Courvoisier Trio: Abaton: German cellist Anja Lechner, Manhattan-based violinist Mark Feldman, and the Swiss composer-pianist Courvoisier. In this set, the trio performs Courvoisier's 2004 composition Abaton; dances by Cyril Davy and Marielle Girard and graphic animations by ...
Insurance investigator Ronald Fox Terrier (Michel Serrault) looks into a questionable claim of disability feigned by Papu (Jean Poiret) in this situation comedy. When both men are dunked into the waters at a holy shrine, the faking Papu finds himself unable to get out of his wheelchair, while Ronald's mute voice is miraculously restored. Terrier ...
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