Andréa Ferréol
Several high-budget epic films became Omar Sharif (1932-2015) a film star. He was an actor, but also a bridge player, a womanizer, a bon vivant; he was a man full of contradictions, who enjoyed card games more than movies; he was an eternal nomad who spent half his life in a hotel…
After 10 years of struggle in Paris, Emma Peeters has to face the facts: she will never be an actress. She decides to commit suicide on her 35th birthday. That is when she meets Alex, a funeral home employee.
After many years of confrontation, the treasures of Spain and France are empty. In 1721, the regent of France draws up an ambitious plan to inaugurate an era of peace and prosperity that will heal the economies of both nations: his intention is to build a solid network of marriage alliances that will involve four children of very different ages who know nothing of betrayals and power games…
Doctor Knock is a former thug who has become a doctor and arrives in the small village of Saint-Maurice to make his fortune according to a particular method. It will make the villagers believe that they are not as healthy as they might think. It is thus that he will find in each one an imaginary symptom, or not, and thus will be able to exercise his profession lucratively. Under his seductive looks and after gaining the confidence of the village, Knock is on the verge of achieving his ends. But his past catches up with him and an old acquaintance disrupts the doctor's plans.
Every year, Bruno makes a tour of all the wine stands, without setting foot outside the Show’s premises and without ever finishing his wine trail. This year, his father suggests they finish it together, but a real wine trail, across the French countryside. Accompanied by Mike, a young, quirky taxi driver, they set off in the direction of France’s major wine regions. Together, they are going to discover not only the wine trails, but also the road that leads back to Love.
After spending 10 years in Paris becoming a talented chef, young Laura Fanton decides to return to her hometown in the mountainous Cevennes area of France to turn her family home and property into an hotel. She was raised by her grandfather after the death of her parents. Many bad rumors about her family circulated in the small village so her grandfather took her away at a young age. Upon her return she discovers the rumors still circulating and she gets the feeling she is not wanted there but can't get anyone to tell her why. Shortly after her return, the brutal murders of two of her closest friends occur, and she herself is terrorized. It's obvious someone wants her out of the way. As she investigates, she discovers some frightening truths.
The French Trilogy showcases a series of 62 photographs taken by Philippe Terrier-Hermann with 25 actors in 6 French regions echoing his previous project, The American Tetralogy. Questioning the relationship between cinema, landscapes and representations, this project features a song by Edward Barrow and was visible in public space in France during the summer of 2013, through a distribution system borrowing from advertising strategies.
This absolutely top-notch documentary by Robert Fischer is a fascinating look back at not just the film in question, but Fassbinder's meteoric career which ended all too soon with his untimely death. Archival footage of Fassbinder is utilized (including several fascinating snippets culled from interviews he did at the disastrous Cannes premiere of Despair), as well as many others involved in the film and its release. Even if you're not a particular fan of Despair, or even in fact of Fassbinder, this is stellar documentary film making and is an intriguing look at one of the most enigmatic masters of the New German Cinema.
In this romantic comedy Thomas moves back in with his parents after his girlfriend throws him out. He runs into Florence, an old school friend, who invites him to dinner with her husband and two children.
In Brussels, one discovers the bodies of young women buried behind the tombs of famous painters… In each of them, it lacks the right forearm. Yarn needles, Commissioner Leon, whose secret passion is knitting, unravels the intrigue of this dark history, with the heart of this case Mrs. Edward Island, transvestite housekeeper bistro "In Sudden Death," where one encounters a high wildlife colors.
A young female character, Nikki Douka, from Samothraki, is sailing to the U.S. to fulfill a marriage contract and save her family honor. Her skills as a seamstress keep her busily sewing throughout the voyage to alter wedding dresses for the third-class voyagers. But along the way, she meets a young American photographer who is returning from the Middle East where he was snapping shots of the war in Smyrna, 1922. Her honesty, pride, and beauty attract the attention of the American who falls in love with her. Tribulations abound during the voyage, following the dramas of several unfortunate young women upon whom nasty characters preyed, as Nikki struggles with her feelings for the photographer.
Maverick director Melvin Van Peebles translates his own satirical novel to the screen with this multi-national portrait of race, class, and hypocrisy. The film's title refers to the name of a haute cuisine restaurant run by a self-satisfied conservative couple, Henri and Loretta. When the two find themselves overworked in the kitchen, they retreat to the local orphanage to find some cheap waitressing help, and the teenaged Diamantine fits the bill perfectly. The haughty couple has more plans for the girl than just waiting tables, however -- the conspicuously accommodating Henri and Loretta are actually bad-mouthing the girl behind her back to the townspeople and the restaurant's patrons. They go so far as to ask the naive Diamantine to pretend that she's pregnant, and she complies under the assumption that it's a harmless prank. When their intentions are revealed, however, the girl becomes wise to the couple's self-satisfied scheming, and sets her sights on revenge.
A young talented painter dreams of glory. A man promises it in exchange for his talent and his soul.
Corruption on the boxing circuit at the turn of the century provides the basis of this French drama. The story centers on a talented young fighter, a logger that Abel Ginoux and his Italian partner Zipolino, a crooked doctor, discover during a fight in a woodland town. The logger, Passe Partout, is in a fight with Ginoux's best fighter and ends up accidentally killing the pugilist. Ever the opportunist, Ginoux lures Partout into the ring to replace the late fighter. Partout proves to be the classic provincial innocent with high, rugged ideals and little knowledge about the modern world. Ginoux takes him to town for the first time and the logger is delighted to discover amenities such as electricity and silent films. He soon falls in love with the beauteous Camille who works in her late father's cafe with her mother. Her father made many of the films, most of which are boxing matches, because he believed that the presence of a camera rendered a fight unfixable.
Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made. Also a line of movie stars comes to visit him giving him back the pleasure of life - but amongst them there are also some young students only striving after his money for the realization of their film projects. The two stories - Monsieur Cinema's and the young people's life - are told in parallel until they come together in the end when the old man plays a role in the film made by the students.
The Emperor of a European country demands new clothes to wear every day, in fact sometimes several times a day. He imposes a heavy tax on the poor citizens to pay for his vanity. An itinerant man and boy come to the capital city and see the injustice, and make friends, but they soon have to flee. They return disguised as Arab tailors, and offer to make the Emperor a new suit of clothes. But only the wise will be able to see it; fools, or those unfit for their public office, will not see anything. The Emperor orders the suit made, and much money is needed to purchase the raw materials. Eventually the suit is ready, and the Emperor and his officials pretend that they can see a wonderful outfit; will anyone prick the bubble of the illusion?
Spino, a pathologist, receives an unidentified body which looks familiar to him... himself, 30 years younger.
A documentary about the life and work of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
A man returns to the hotel he grew up in and recounts the quirky goings on of his youth.
A modern Cinderella in Paris: While the plain Kelly Carter jobs as a gadrobiere for the famous fashion designer Francesco, she dreams of designing shoes for him. However she can't win his attention... until she meets a good fairy on the street, who enchants a pair of Kelly's shoes, so that she turns into supermodel Prudence whenever she wears them. She attends one of Francesco's balls and immediately wins his heart. Now, how can she make him love her real self?
A famous movie actor claims that he has written a book. As result, a real author, not a very well known writer, vengefully kills him but then dies as a result of an accident. Next, they both find themselves in after-life, where souls of all famous people are gathered.
Venice. March 1735. The carnival is in full swing Everybody's happy mood and the lively streets are filled with musicians, mimes, clowns and acrobats of pickpockets who practice their craft each, displaying a colorful rainbow and sounds. At every corner, there is something going on that should not be missed - especially if it's something forbidden. However, some people are concerned about something else. One is Carlo Goldoni young lawyer of 27 years, he dreams only theater and he thinks only the part that wants to ride. Alas, the money was also hard to find at that time than now. His two friends, Antonio Vivaldi and Gian Battista Tiepolo are better known than him but they are also looking for this rare bird: a patron, who was not on ONLY the desire but also the means to sponsor a work of art.
A rock star-turned-bum, his vocal chords severed at the height of his career for the love of a woman, reclaims his forgotten past after viewing a music video and seeks revenge against the mobster who maimed him.
The life of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) as related by followers who gather after his death to tell stories so that Leone can record them: a privileged and virile youth, a prisoner of war, an heir who turns away from his father and gives all to the poor, a beggar for others, and an inspiration to friends who accept the Gospels' life of poverty. He seeks the Pope's blessing, and he endures persecution at the hands of the family of Chiara Offreduccio (1194-1253), who becomes St. Clare. Many join the order he has established and then rebel at his expectations. In near despair - and ill - he writes a Rule to take to the Pope; then, the Lord sends him a message. He dies smiling.
A renowned conductor suddenly pulls out of an evening rehearsal of Madame Butterfly. The opera director senses something is going on and forces the musician to explain himself.
Elvio Battistini works as a ticket taker in the local cinema of the small town where he lives. He has a prosthesis in one leg, the result of an accident, but he tells anyone who will listen it is a war injury. Giuseppe Mondardini, is also an older man living alone in what was the splendid family home. When Elvio and Giuseppe meet, they hit it off immediately. A trip to a cooler area is in order, so Mordardini unveils his ancient automobile.
The life and love affairs of a 12-year-old boy Pierre who lived in France during the Nazi occupation in 1944. We see his family, his chubby friend, the girl who ignores him - and the German defector who hides in the cellar. He suffers from a slightly more prominent nasal appendage than the average of his congeners. This complex initially serving it, will ultimately be the detonator of his success with women and the entire population of the city.
Molinat is assigned to the case of a man found with a bullet in his ear on the shore of a little Atlantic coast resort he knows well. Indeed, he used to live there before his wife disappeared at sea, never to be found again. As the ocean rejects a new corpse everyday, the mystery thickens and the list of potential suspects grows longer. This slows Molinat's progress as much as the cumbersome Leroyer, sent in to spy on him and hopefully impede his progress. The tension mounts and the ring involving the three young ladies in the grey mansion, the village idiot and the real estate agent starts spinning out of control.
During World War II, two allied soldiers escape from a Nazi POW camp to Lyons, where they accept the hospitality of mademoiselle Helene.
Twin zoologists lose their wives in a car accident and become obsessed with decomposing animals.
The Two Lives of Mattia Pascal is based on Le Deux Vite di Mattia Pascal, one of Luigi Pirandello's many stories concerning the transitory nature of the intangibles "Truth" and "Identity" Marcello Mastrioanni is a downtrodden average man, treated like trash by his fiancee, scorned by his associates, and cheated out of his inheritance by contemptuous relatives. The dispirited Mastrioanni heads to Monte Carlo, where he accrues a fortune. He also assumes the identity of a less fortunate gambler who has committed suicide. The "new" Mastrioanni is treated with a dignity and respect that overwhelms him--and nearly kills him.
In a futuristic society, contestants pit their survival skills against each other in a fight to the death for cash prizes, and the contest is aired live on television.
Jacques Darnay has served 8 years for robbing a jeweller. Now he is out of prison and looking for his loot worth 6 million francs.
In June of 1791, a group of passengers in a stagecoach find themselves caught up in the events of the French Revolution, when they find themselves in the city of Varennes when revolutionists arrest the fleeing King Louis.
A middle-aged artist (Ben Gazarra) sketching on the beach witnesses a young woman (Ornella Muti) being rescued from drowning. He loans her a blanket. Later she returns the blanket and they have sex several times, but she always leaves right afterward, leaving the man to wonder who she is and where she goes. Things become more complicated as he begins to fall in love with her, and after his regular girlfriend (Mimsy Farmer), with whom he has a curiously open relationship, returns. He eventually begins to realize his mysterious new lover may be very much insane.
In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come: Raffaele imagines his death, Rocco dreams of lifting the youth of Naples out of violence, drugs, and corruption, Nicola pictures embracing his estranged wife. Meanwhile, the old man and his young granddaughter explore the rhythms of the farm and grieve together.
The time is the 1930s and two Soviet spies (both Frenchmen by nationality) have been helping Communist factions during the Civil War in Spain. It is the time of Stalin's iron rule in the USSR, and the two agents are suddenly called to Moscow by the KGB. Knowing that they are in trouble for no fault of their own, fear drives one of them to suicide while the other gets his lover and her child and begins a run for his life, knowing that the KGB will never let him go free.
Michel left Marseilles to Italy when he was twenty years old. Courageous and active, he has succeeded in the construction industry. Thirty years later, his return to Marseilles, for his aunt's burial will abruptly change the life of all of his family, who was first fascinated by his social success. He is regarded as the son who made it like wonder. Michel is the only one who has emigrated. They have all remained in the home country ("le pays") and their social status has hardly changed: workmen, small employees, craftsmen, all living in a modest framework.
The life of workers and their families in a construction site of a highway in 1965.
In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
Piero arrives in Paris from Luino after having won a pool tournament with friends. In the train he meets the famous place Ramazzini and has so many incidents that culminated with his arrest and the confiscation by the commissioner Juvet. Released, find randomly hospitality at the madame Lenormand and know the great painter Valentine. Both women are tied up, as a wife and lover, Maurice, in prison for robbery. A day Piero wears a mistake and the coat of astrakhan, Maurice, and then...
Oskar is born in Germany in 1924 with an advanced intellect. Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, he refuses to grow older after his third birthday.
American actress on vacation in Italy falls for her friend's married Italian lover.
Germany in the early 1930s. Against the backdrop of the Nazis' rise, Hermann Hermann, a Russian émigré and chocolate magnate, goes slowly mad. It begins with his seating himself in a chair to observe himself making love to his wife, Lydia, a zaftig empty-headed siren who is also sleeping with her cousin. Hermann is soon given to intemperate outbursts at his workers, other businessmen, and strangers. Then, he meets Felix, an itinerant laborer, whom he delusionally believes looks exactly like himself. Armed with a new life insurance policy, he hatches an elaborate plot in the belief it will free him of all his worries.
This is an Italian sex comedy that, like the earlier sex comedy "Il Gatto Mammone", combines the comic stylings of Lando Buzzanca ("The Eroticist", "Il Domestico") with gorgeous, oft-nude body of Gloria Guida (Miss Teen Italy of 1974). Actually, Guida gets to demonstrate a few comic styling of her own as a bohemian theater "actress" who lives in cramped apartment with a whole bunch of other clothing-averse bohemian types. She is very devoted to her older beau Buzzanca, but his life is very complicated due to his own devotion to his very big and very old dog, the ironically named "Piccolo" (basically "Tiny"), and his even older grandmother. In order to take care of these two dependents, he forsakes his loyal girlfriend for a rich female pharmacist (Andrea Ferriola) and moves in with her and her haughty bourgeois mother and aunts--with disastrous results for all involved.
"The Pocket Lover" tells the story of Julien, a 15 year-old boy who falls in love with an older woman, later discovered to be a prostitute. Now, Julien will have to face several obstacles, which includes his parents opposition with this affair, and Julien's own perceptions about the woman's line of work, going out with wealthy guys.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder reflects on the various stages of his career, discusses how his motives behind filmmaking evolved up his film Despair.
While hiding from the royal authorities, Giacomo Casanova, the famous romancer, encounters his look-alike: Giacomino, a fugitive petty con man. Meanwhile, the Arabian Caliph and his wife are arriving in Venice for a state visit, and she insists on a night with the legendary lover. Through a series of erotic encounters and mistaken-identity comedies, Giacomo and Giacomino make their way back to Venice for their appointment with the Caliph's wife.
When a rich man' dies and his maid Maria unexpectedly becomes his heir, she is now the mistress of the man's household. In order to get revenge on the man's nephew Jerome, for slights on her person which he committed while she was but a maid, she has kept him on as her personal valet. The two of them engage in a form of rivalry bordering on warfare, because the nephew thinks he should have gotten the money. However, every mean trick she plays on him makes her feel even worse, because he accepts them all without a qualm.
An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel. An English language lesson turns into a killing of a black dignitary of an embassy by a CIA agent and then into his own killing by another colleague. In a television film, the police are befooled by a fake bomb and put a real one in order not to be derided by the public. In a film inquisition show, the bishop of Naples speaks highly of the importance of the family, but a child who lives a miserable family life kills himself. In the debate that follows it is proposed that they should eat the children, as Swift had said. In the next episode, a general who is in the toilet is called for the NATO parade, but the flasher breaks and in his effort to fix it, he dirts allover and kills himself. In a children's show an inspector finds excuses and delays the arrest of a powerful man...
Marie (Jeanne Goupil), who was orphaned as a young girl, has a case of arrested development that makes her act younger than her age. One day she stops to look in a store window displaying various ornate dolls. Claude (André Dussollier) the affluent, eccentric store owner, sees her and becomes infatuated which leads to her and him meeting and deciding to go and take a look at Claude personal doll collection at his house. Marie unaware of Claude bizarre obsession with dolls, decides to marry him.
In wartime France, Pharmacist Elaine (Lisa Gastoni) begins a torrid affair with her shop assistant Armand (Franco Nero), but she soon becomes dominated by him. He demands more & more from her, humiliating her & putting her family at risk.
Medieval soldier of fortune Ettore is travelling through Europe with his partners looking for fight where they can earn some money. When they come across a Spanish castle under siege by the French army, Ettore first bides his time to determine which side is the winning one (and thus more likely to pay his fee). This is as first the French, but the treatment he receives from them is unpleasant enough to make him change his mind and turn to the Spanish side. Somehow, Ettore must rally the weakened Spanish troops to battle their enemy long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Werner Schroeter's rhapsody of excess leaps from 1949 Cuba to contemporary France to points in between, while its feverishly shifting visual style evokes and parodies everything from kitschy Mexican telenovelas to silent French art films.
Henri Serin, a sales rep in umbrellas who lives in Saumur, is bored with his life. Married to an unloving, uptight wife, who, unlike him, has no interest in sex, he is also rejected by his children. Thus, he spends most of his time travelling from town to town, flirting with women and meeting all kinds of people in the hotels, restaurants, shops and places he visits. He also dabbles in painting, particularly portraits. After his car breaks down as he is driving through Brittany, he meets a rough, foul-mouthed painter who offers him to stay at his house, near Pont-Aven. There, Henri falls in love with Angela, the painters model and fling, and soon they run off together...
A second coming? This time our savior chose a shantytown outside Turin, in the north of Italy, overcrowded by poor families coming from the south in search of a job in a factory, or less legal ways to survive. Young Maria (Cinzia De Carolis) can predict the future during her epileptic seizures, or at least that's what everyone believes, and her mother (Clelia Matania) sells her predictions and responses to the superstitious neighbors, after inducing her "trance" with electricity. One night the shock is too strong, and Maria seems to die: when she wakes up, she is found pregnant. And being a honest unmarried girl from the south, she is obviously still virgin... Notwithstanding the opposition of the local priest (Turi Ferro), everyone, including her, believes in the miracle, and prepares for a second coming, in a crescendo of fanaticism that is soon noticed by the press, and by the official church..
Leopoldo Lalumera, grandson of a wealthy eighty-four-year-old baron, infuriated during a galactic convention with a prosaic maid, discovers, on the eve of the wedding with his cousin Mariantonia, that he has become impotent.
Sicilian baron, Mimì Galluzzo, will be able to enjoy the legacy of his deceased father-in-law on two conditions: that his wife accepts the will and that there is a compromising document to be delivered to the mafia. While, however, the precious "dossier" is, in reality, in the hands of an avid widow, Donna Maria, willing to sell it only if Mimi marries her. Rosalba, obsessed with the absence of a child, suddenly goes mad or pretends 'go crazy. Recommended by Donna Maria, of whom he became the lover Don Mimì tries, with the help of his friend Langatta, undertaker, and a nurse in the clinic in which Rosalba was hospitalized, to get rid of his wife. Instead, he finds himself without having reached his goal, involved in an obscure series of crimes that will make him lose his mind.
Victor Vautier is incorrigible: he's in constant motion, working several cons at once, using different names and changing disguises. He's charming and outrageous, incapable of uttering a sentence that isn't embellished or an outright lie. His life goal is to make enough money to build a sea wall to protect Mont-Saint-Michel. Charlotte, a parole officer, shows up: she's young and seems taken in by Victor. He discovers she lives above the Senlus Museum, where her parents are the curators. With two pals he decides to steal a priceless El Greco triptych and then ransom it back to the cultural ministry. What will Charlotte do when she realizes he's used her to make a fortune?
Emerging from a lengthy dinner where his mother was exhibited without restraint for the favor of a man, Daniel returns alone, sickened. Without imagining the trap closes on him, he later agrees to have a drink with a neighbor he just help carry packages. She "vamp" and keeps her house without a very fierce resistance opposes too happy to escape his solitude. Taking advantage of the absence of his mother, Daniel finally leaves the high school and moved to the neighbor who, having close to her more often, gets him a place in the clinic where she is employed.
"In Serieux comme le plaisir, two men and a woman live quite happily together in a romantic liaison. The woman is probably wealthy anyway, so the trio doesn't worry much about money. One day they decide to take a trip in their beat-up car, managing the whole affair in their own special, insouciant manner. They are followed by a suspicious policeman who thinks there's something fishy about this group..."
Marseilles, 1919. Georges Sarret is a distinguished and respected lawyer, recently honoured for his services in the First World War. He takes as his lover Philomène Schmidt, a young German woman, who has just lost her job and home. To enable Philomène to remain in France, Georges finds her a husband – who dies conveniently of natural causes a month after the wedding. Georges repeats the trick with Philomène's sister, Catherine – marrying her off to an old man who dies suddenly so that the scheming trio can profit from his life insurance. When an accomplice in the scheme, Marcel Chambon, threatens to blackmail them, Georges and his two lovers have no option but to kill him and his mistress...
Ottavia is left completely alone this summer, but not for long. Walter, who is to change her entire life, now come into it. He is very young, very good looking and cruel.
In Luino, on Lake Maggiore, during the fascist twenty years, a group of friends belonging to the bourgeoisie spend the nights in the underground gambling den of the Metropolitan Hotel between poker games, gossip, manly goliards and escapades to the house of tolerance.
The guardian of a nursing home lends a compassionate ear to the complaints of two new pensioners who love each other and have only one dream: to see the sea. To help them realize their dream, the brave man steals the car of the director. She quickly discovers the crime and drags her pale husband to the pursuit of the trio, aboard a tanker truck...
A group of men hire some prostitutes and go to a villa in the countryside. There, they engage in group sex and resolve to eat themselves to death.
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.
