Annie Mercier
Three tales, three ages, three worlds. At the time of Ancient Egypt, a young king becomes the first black pharaoh to deserve the hand of his loved one. During the French Middle Ages, a mysterious wild boy steals from the rich to give to the poor. In 18th-century Turkey, a prince of pastries and a princess of roses escape the palace to live their love.
Marona, at the end of her dog days, reflects on those that she has loved unconditionally throughout her life. From her puppy days, through to her last woof. Marona’s life is a lesson in love.
Lise (16 years old) is accused of murdering her best friend. As the trial starts, her parents stand right by her side. But once her secret life is revealed in court, the truth becomes indistinguishable.
1959, France. Colonel Breitner is given a secret mission : find the body of his former aide, Colonel Delignières, who is reported missing in French Algeria, before the French army burns the whole place to the ground. Breitner puts together a team of five outlaws, who are promised freedom if the mission succeeds.
In a bizarre Breton library that collects rejected, never published manuscripts, a young editor discovers a novel that she considers a masterpiece. It was written by a certain Henri Pick, a cook who died two years earlier and who, according to his widow, had never read a book in his life or written anything but a shopping list... Did he have a secret life? When the book becomes a huge best-seller, Jean- Michel Rouche, a skeptical and stubborn literary critic, teams up with Joséphine, Pick’s daughter, to unravel the mystery.
Tired of being a banal architectural ornamental, a sculpture runs from the Louvre to confront real life on the streets of Paris.
Marithé works in a training center for adults. Her mission: to help other people to change direction in their work and to find their vocation. Carole, who lives and works in the shadow cast by her husband, Sam, an energetic and talented Michelin-starred chef, arrives in the center one day. It's not so much a change in job that Carole seems to need, as a change in husband. Marithé does everything she can to help Carole set out down a new path. But what are the real motives behind this devotion? After all, Marithé doesn't seem to be impervious to Sam's charms, or to his cooking.
Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini) is at the pinnacle of his acting career when he decides to turn his back on show business and become a hermit living off of France’s Atlantic coast. Three years later, Gauthier Valence (Lambert Wilson), a beloved TV actor, shows up on the island to offer Serge a role in his directorial debut – a rendition of Molière’s classic play, “The Misanthrope”. Serge refuses at first, but then suggests that they rehearse the first scene and after five days he’ll decide if he wants to dothe play or not. What ensues is a battle of brawn and wits and peculiar encounters with a hotel maid who longs to be a pornstar and an Italian divorcée.
Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.
Grieving after the death of her young son Joseph, novelist Betty Fisher enters a dark depression. Hoping to bring her out of it, her mother Margot arranges to kidnap another child, Jose, to replace the son Betty lost. Although she knows it's wrong, Betty accepts Jose as her new son. Meanwhile, Jose's mother Carole is looking for her son with the help of her boyfriend Francois and some of his criminal cohorts.
This somber drama chronicles the writings of Paltiel Kossover (Michel Jonasz), a Rumanian Jew who was incarcerated in a Stalinist prison. Zupanev (Erland Josephson) is a sympathetic court registrar who smuggles the documents and later presents them to the poet's son Grisha (Vincent David).
First of all, "La chanson de Roland" is a great film. But, unfortunately, it's quite an unknown one. Unlike other "medieval" films (e.g. Anthony Mann's "El Cid") there's no "sword-battle-american-pulp-shit" stuff, but a hard intellectual effort in order to offer us a realistic version of the European Middle Ages.
