Bernadette Lafont
A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress. Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey. Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity. Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.
Monique, happy and about sixty, is at the head of a small meeting agency, specializing in the third age. Her friend Madeleine is a regular and does not hesitate to make her organize meetings with the gents that she finds to her taste, more out of curiosity than of desire to find the soul-mate. While, the meetings follow each other and are all different. Love does not, necessarily, knock where we expect it too !
Paul is a sweet man-child, raised — and smothered — by his two eccentric aunts in Paris since the death of his parents when he was a toddler. Now thirty-three, he still does not speak. (He does express himself through colourful suits that would challenge any Wes Anderson character in nerd chic.) Paul's aunts have only one dream for him: to win piano competitions. Although Paul practices dutifully, he remains unfulfilled until he submits to the interventions of his upstairs neighbour. Suitably named after the novelist, Madame Proust offers Paul a concoction that unlocks repressed memories from his childhood and awakens the most delightful of fantasies.
Caroline and Olivier are sixteen, in love and would like nothing more than to be left alone. Unfortunately, be it parents, grandparents or even teachers, everyone seems to want to meddle and interfere in their affairs.
It is 1979 and Albertine, 10, and all her family members have gathered in Brittany to celebrate the birthday of her grandmother. Everyone thinks that the Skylab space station from NASA will fall on their heads this summer. The meeting turns into a crazy weekend full of revelations, love and song.
A thrilling mystery that unfurls in the alleys and on the rooftops of the French capital, Paris, over the course of one adventurous evening.
A married father of three, lives in Créteil doing odd jobs and spends his time at the local PMU bar. One day, to please his daughter, he promises a little too quick to take the whole family on vacation to ski. The only problem: if he breaks his promise, his wife will divorce him.
A young professional woman takes radical action to force her husband's help with the household chores.
Two divorced fathers Mathias and Antoine, decide to raise their children together in London. Their lives consist of Sophie the pretty florist secretly in love with Antoine, Yvonne who runs the 'bistrot français' and has a very maternal outlook on life and Mac Enzie, the boss of Antoine's agency who is completley in love with Yvonne despite the big age difference.
Danielle (Bernadette Lafont), a grandmother in her sixties, is planning to take her two grandchildren to their father’s house for the Easter vacation. Since retiring as a schoolteacher, Danielle has regularly taken on this responsibility after her daughter’s divorce. This time, however, the children’s father is not there to welcome them, giving Danielle the opportunity to spend a bit more time with her grandchildren and to take them out for the day. Jumping at every opportunity presented to them, Danielle soon transforms this day-outing into an impromptu holiday. Only what starts out as a fun adventure gradually turns into an inexorable deconstructing experience, and it soon becomes impossible for Danielle to contemplate taking the kids back…
Whilst seeking out locations in the South of France for his next film, director Luc Moullet comes across a male corpse. He immediately decides to use this to his advantage. By swapping his passport with that of the dead man, Moullet hopes that the world will believe he is dead, thereby ensuring a renewed interest in his work. Unfortunately, the scheme backfires, since the dead man was someone rather important...
September 1960: on a purely punitive basis, eight scouts must climb the solid mass of Brévent to 2500 meters of altitude. The so beautiful and so majestic mountain which draws up face them very quickly reveals dangerous. All the techniques of orientation learned at the scouts will do nothing there. The teenagers find themselves delivered to themselves. Lost in the abrupt throats, the eight boys are confronted cold, with the hunger and the fear.
Since her parents passed away, Princess Mona lives by herself in a castle with two hideous, ghastly characters, Goomi and His Lordship. One day her sobs draw the attention of a unicorn, called U, who wants to comfort and protect Mona for as long as she needs. U becomes Mona's companion, her confidant and her inseparable friend. While Mona grows into a beautiful princess, a group of charming, peaceful and fanciful Yeah-Yeah’s settles in the neighboring forest. They have no particular special powers, yet they soon bring about major changes in everyone's lives, especially in Kulka, the dreamy musician.
Life is easy for 43-year-old Luis, a happy single guy, fulfilled in his job of star nose with a perfume creation company, cosseted by his mother and five sisters. It could have lasted for a whole life, but fed up with mollycoddling and helping him, his mother and sisters decide it's time he got married, and the sooner the better!
A thoroughly researched documentary on Chabrol, exploring the creative process and the great artistic process of the master of cinema.
Documentary about the making of French director Claude Chabrol's first film Le Beau Serge in 1958.
Voilà dix ans que les chemins de René et de François se sont séparés. De l'époque glorieuse où, flics, ils écumaient le quartier Montmartre, il ne leur reste qu'une poignée de souvenirs, l'argent de leurs ripouseries s'étant évaporé avec le temps. Tout à une fin. Jusqu'à ce que ça recommence. René, à la limite de la clochardisation, survit avec pour domicile un bateau déglingué...
Didier never knew that a wrong film review of a film which he did not bother to watch would land him in numerous troubles.
An Australian woman searches for her soldier brother in Cambodia during the civil breakdown from which Pol Pot would emerge.
At her son's funeral, Solange, a lawyer famous for losing hopeless cases, agrees to defend René, her son's age, accused of murdering his wealthy aunt, Jeanne, who's part of the Franco-Belgian Psychoanalytic Society, known for odd views and methods. She reads Jeanne's journal, documenting René's criminal tendencies. Solange believes him innocent, manipulated into the murder or framed. Odd psychiatrists turn up, including Georges Didier, who runs FBPS, and his rival, Christian, who believes crime originates in a story's taking hold of a person. After the verdict, René and Solange's relationship changes, Georges and his society commit a bizarre act, and the police record Solange's story.
Two housewives discuss philosophical themes (actually an updated dialogue of Plato and Socrates) while doing the house work, the husband of one of them rehearses his part in a play (reading a 20th century philosophical text about totaliarism) at the theater. Returning home, the couple decide to go on vacation in the mountains.
Pierre and Maryel have the same mother but have never met even though they have been writing to each other for fifteen years. One day, Pierre decides to see his sister and goes to Saint-André where she lives. The local youths don't exactly appreciate his presence.
You're a provincial kid in Paris and suddenly you're the center of attention: Movie stars, famous directors and sexy women are doting on you because they all think you're the son of their long-dead legendary friend. You never knew your dad, but the facts of this famous guy's life suggest that he might have fathered you. Your mom tells you nothing. All the fuss makes you uncomfortable at first but soon you find it's rather fun to be the son of the famous Gascogne. And in the midst of it all you fall in love. It is, after all, springtime in Paris.
Several lives intersect when a middle-aged woman is left by her husband, and she decides to trek him down with the help of her equally troubled sister.
The immature young ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, was extremely shy around women but (according to this film) was constantly being propositioned, lewdly or otherwise, by ambitious courtesans. When he was finally married to his Empress, the teen-aged Bavarian princess Sisi (Elizabeth), it seems that his relief knew no bounds, for he was now sure that he would never have to think about sex ever again. According to the filmmakers, this is the true history of that marriage. This story is a complete reversal of the romantic legend depicted in the popular 1955 film Sissi, which helped brighten the emerging stardom of Romy Schneider.
A woman who only has a couple of months left to live decides to go on a final journey, crossing several countries.
The leader of a nudist colony enlists the help of left-wing militant when he mistakenly believes he should receive the Legion of Honor.
Nicole (Agnes Soral) is sent up the river for infanticide in this routine woman-in-prison feature. There she meets Marthe (Annie Girardot), a fellow murderess who receives special treatment from the warden Dessombes (Marie-Christine Barrault). The warden frames Nelly (Bernadette Lafont) for drug possession and has her thrown into solitary confinement. Sabien (Corinne Touzet) is a newcomer convicted of armed robbery who latches on to the lesbian Lucie (Milva), a longtime prisoner slated for release.
Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.
Inspector Lavardin is called to a provincial village to investigate a murder – only to find that one of his ex-lovers is the victim’s widow.
After a feminist is found murdered in her own home, a police detective investigates the crime with the help of several determined women.
Can a loving relationship of eight years go down the drain because of a single moment of carelessness? Virginie and Laurent have always treasured fidelity, but Laurent's opinions and appetites are starting to shift with the times.
A tribute to the late, great French director Francois Truffaut, this documentary was undoubtedly named after his last movie, Vivement Dimanche!, released in 1983. Included in this overview of Truffaut's contribution to filmmaking are clips from 14 of his movies arranged according to the themes he favored. These include childhood, literature, the cinema itself, romance, marriage, and death.
Charlotte is being raised without a mother. She is only 13 but ready to be an adult. She meets an older boy and begins a relationship while teaching a young friend about life and learning the ropes herself.
A beautiful woman hires an intrepid adventurer to help find her father, who has disappeared in the jungle while searching for a rare and priceless butterfly. Along the way they run into cannibals, a race of Amazon warriors and all the usual attractions one would expect to find in a lost jungle.
One of the comtesse de Ségur's most popular works,it tells the tale of an orphan ,Charles,mistreated by his wicked old cousin Madame Mac Miche;nevertheless,Charles has many friends including sweet blind young Juliette and her sister Marianne, Mac Miche's maid ,Betty,her boyfriend Donald ,and even the judge. (by dbdumonteil)
It's about a couple owning a small hotel who are trying to sell it.
Martial Perrin is the president of a right-wing political party which is gearing itself up for a forthcoming election. When he learns that a notorious criminal named Kraus has escaped from prison, Perrin panics and goes into hiding. His deputy, Constant, hires Perrin’s cousin, Gilbert, an actor who is a perfect double of Perrin, to replace him. What Gilbert does no know is that the killer Kraus is bumping off the people who were implicated in the affair for which he was arrested, and that Perrin is next on his list.
Caleb, "son of nobody" (Enrico Montesano) lives in Galilee in Jesus' day and struggles as a thief and con-man, pretending to be a magician. When he witnesses Jesus turning water into wine, he thinks he's found a competitor. So Caleb goes on, convinced that Jesus is a fake just as he is, always trying to figure out his tricks. In the meantime, he gets involved with a prostitute (played by Edwige Fenech), but also with the wife of a Roman patrician (played by the equally alluring Bernadette Lafont), he steals a few goats and cons a few people, he befriends a lovable dog and gets in trouble with some Roman soldiers.
Unable to put a single word on paper, a youngish man with one novel to his credit finds that his life is crumbling to ruins around him because of his severe case of writer's block. He tries every remedy known to man and makes up a few new ones in this comedy. All his efforts are futile: he loses his girlfriend and his apartment and has a succession of misadventures until finally, homeless and hospitalized, he rediscovers his inspiration.
After her brother was killed by a notorious all-female pirate gang, Morag dedicates her life to bringing the murderers to justice. Soon, she has become an important member of the pirate gang and has begun acquiring the loyalty of key members. Eventually, she makes her move and challenges the leader, a demi-god, known as "The Daughter of the Sun."
Because he dishonored the daughter of a mafia boss, Ernesto must leave Rome and take shelter with his uncle in Paris. There, he thinks of only one thing: to seduce girls.
This is the tale of a father-son duo who are unable to leave each other. The trouble begins when the son decides to destroy his father's image.
In this black comedy, Fred (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) works for an insurance company as a computer engineer. Fred is bored with enduring the trials of his shrewish wife, so, after using actuarial tables to calculate the most common means of death, he cleverly prepares the family bathroom and brings about her demise. For a while he is content with his new freedom, but then he recognizes that a friend is in a similar situation.
After having been rescued from suicide, a young man is the object of a bet by his doctor that the doctor can help him recover his joy in life. Ironically, the doctor's life is not a very happy one either, and his boast has a hollow sound. For one thing, although he seemingly has a "happy divorce," in which he, his ex-wife and her new husband are all great pals, it's not true. He wants his wife back. All sorts of complications arise out of these lies and distortions.
Bernardette is feeling bored in a country house. She decides to send weekend invitations to a lot of people.
Little did this pretty brunette know when she applied for a babysitting job that her employer was an artist and that everything at his place differed from the outside world. What struck her the most was to find out that her boss had shrunk his wife and kept her in the fridge in order, as he said, to keep her safe from a hostile world!
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
Colinot's world is turned upside down when his fiancee is kidnapped.
Alain Cluny is Balthazar, a bumbling middle-aged intellectual who spouts off from time to time about leftist causes, usually to his current girlfriend. Then Edwarda (Bernadette Lafont), who is active in the political underground, comes into his life. From that point on, he begins to act on his beliefs. Edwarda's underground political action group stages a little drama to test Balthazar's commitment and reliability, putting him through an interrogation by what appear to him to be French secret police. Having passed this test, he is given a real assignment. This film is a comedy with elements of satire, and it explores the humor to be found in left-wing pretentiousness of all kinds. - Rovi
Jane Birkin, Bernadette Lafont, Elisabeth Wiener and Emma Cohen are 4 pretty girls rooming together. After witnessing and accidentally helping several thugs get away with a heist, the women notice through their telescope that the stolen loot is in the apartment right across the street! They plan their own burglary of the already stolen loot in this lighthearted caper comedy with a bit of nudity! Serge Gainsbourg did the bouncy score.
Stanislas Previne is a young sociologist, preparing a thesis on criminal women. He chooses Camille Bliss as his subject of study and begins to visit her in prison for interviews. Camille became acquainted with trouble at a young age and justifies her actions by "fate-bets." She is currently in prison for allegedly murdering one of her lovers. As she tells Stanislas of her life and love affairs, his interest in her grows to more than just professional. Can he resist her charm?
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...
While on vacation, a woman's husband is taken by the Russian government. After one attempt fails, she begins looking for a suitable spy to capture and trade in exchange for her husband, but she develops an attraction to the one she thinks is a good candidate.
Celine (Bernadette Lafont) is a free-spirited woman who marries a dull, middle manager named Philippe (Michel Duchaussoy) in this comedy drama. The union results in her being pegged as a household ornament for her husband by her husband's coworker. She makes friends with a woman who shows her how to juggle the couple's living expenses to get whatever material goods she desires. When the couple entertains the coworker and his wife, the drunken men suggests they swap wives. Celine strips the man and makes him look at himself in a mirror to prove he is not desirable. Celine turns to painting and writes papers on the inequity between genders as she asserts her independence and gradually frees herself from her husband's claustrophobic world.
In a cul-de-sac in the Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, Leon shares two rooms with his sister Marie. In one, he receives his clients: he is a tailor. In the other, Marie receives her own: she is a clairvoyant. Leon was happy until he learned what Marie was hiding from him. She is actually a prostitute, and Maxime, her supposed fiancé, is her pimp. On the same day, Leon also discovers love in the form of Arlette, a provincial young woman picked up by Marie.
A fake documentary on the life forms of the Paris Suburbs, viewed through the eyes of homeless, unemployed people the sharks of politics and building societies push to hopeless life.
A year and a half after "Le Lit e la vierge", Zouzou and Pierre Clémenti are in another bed, this time in front of a window, with Sacré-Coeur in the background. Filmed in two days, in July 1970, with a stolen film from the ORTF, this film, a tribute to these two vedettes of the French underground, is of immense beauty. The title is inspired by the silhouette of Pierre Clémenti, evocative, for Lagrange, of the male physicist during the Renaissance. Grandson of Léo Lagrange and nephew of the chief operator Ghislain Cloquet, Yvan Lagrange is two years younger than Philippe Garrel. "Renaissance", his first film, shows to what extent his generation was influenced by Garrel.
Sex-Power is a sweet bit of candy-colored psychedelic fluff with an astringent dose of agitprop militancy in its chewy center. While most of the film is in English there is occasional French dialog without the benefit of English subtitles, but you hardly need to know French to get the gist of what is happening. This is the tale of a young Frenchman who arrives in Northern California looking to forget a lost love (Jane Birkin) and ends up encountering various forms of feminine power as embodied by Bernadette Lafonte as Salome and Catherine Marshall as “la fille moderne.” The film moves through space and time in an impressionistic, lysergic dreaminess.
Elise (Marie-Josee Nat) is a young provincial woman working in a factory in Paris. Her revolutionary brother secured the position for her, and she falls in love with an Algerian native who works with her. She becomes painfully aware of the prejudice he experiences from the police and his superiors. The recent conflict between France and Algeria only compounds the problems of Algerians in France. Her love and concern for the man causes her to search for him after he disappears one day. Elise considers moving to Algeria to find the man she loves in this bitter social drama.
A genuine performance film as Bernadette Laffont and Bulle Ogier engage, with reckless abandon, in a flurry of senseless destruction in a house at night. Somewhere between a hallucination and a nightmare. Both the explosive soundtrack and narration that accompanies the mayhem was provided by François Tusques.
Marie is a young woman who lives in sheer poverty in the fictional village and commune of Tellier (an allusion to La Maison Tellier) with her mother, a woman of obscure origins suspected to be a Romanichel sorcerer, and her pet buck. Marie and her mother are despised by the locals although Marie is also a sexual object for them, including her lesbian boss Irène. One day, when her mother dies after a hit-and-run accident and the locals do not even care to bury her, Marie decides that things have to change and starts to charge people who have sex with her. Eventually, she plans to take revenge on those people who take advantage of her.
Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) leaves his wealthy parents behind to go on a spiritual quest. He meets up with Yvan (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), leader of a vegetarian cult whose members survive by begging for food in uncomfortable robes. The religious fanatics draw the ire of local peasants when they are arrested for stealing eggs. Yvan butchers a goat and has a carnivore carnival orgy on the meat. Marianne (Bernadette Lafont) is one of the followers, and she and Paul go to a remote island to live off seaweed and vegetation, but a development company moves in to wreck the paradise. Paul is brokenhearted when Mariane goes off with one of the greedy developers in this symbolic film that decries the allure of the material world.
A man witnesses a suicide and starts imagining that it was a murder committed by himself.
A 4-year-old child is the element from and around which the action develops, and brings sentiments and emotions to light
This satire concerns three French singing idols and their attempt to stay in the public eye. A press conference, backstage hedonism, psychedelia, manipulative managers and disc jockeys are portrayed as the pop culture is thoroughly and effectively lampooned in this independent feature.
A writer goes through a prolonged ritual of preparation but is unable to put a word on paper.
Lamiel (Anna Karina) is a poor orphan girl who climbs her way to the social elite in this 19th-century costume drama. A doctor (Michel Bouquet) lives vicariously through Anna as he oversees the progress of his female protégé. Lamiel finds love with a young thief who steals into her bedroom after her marriage to a penniless count (Jean-Clause Brialy), and the two experience a romantic rendezvous of forbidden love after Lamiel goes from being a poor peasant woman to living a life of comparative luxury.
In Paris around 1900, Georges Randal is brought up by his wealthy uncle, who steals his inheritance. Georges hopes to marry his cousin Charlotte, but his uncle arranges for her to marry a rich neighbour. As an act of revenge, Georges steals the fiance's family jewels, and enjoys the experience so much that he embarks upon a life-time of burglary.
A priest succumbs to the charms of his lovely cleaning lady and decides to find a husband when she finds herself pregnant with her works.
Goubi, the simpleton of his village in the French Department Allier, has but one wish: to see Paris. One day, the truckers Grafouillère deposit a drunk Goubi in the biggest market of Paris (the "Halles"). The poor man is completely lost, but the meat merchant Dessertine takes him under his wings when he hears that Goubi was likewise 'raised by the State'...
Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.
The film consists of three novels. The film begins with the fact that the Bernard Blier hero removes a lantern from the entrance to a brothel. The second part is about how the lantern and jewelery were stolen from a young baroness. And in the third part the hero of Louis de Funes hangs a lantern at the entrance to his house.
The most secret agent Stanislas Dubois, tired of saving the world alone decides to retire and to start writing his memoirs. The enemies of humanity, progress and peace in the world found out about it and created an international network of espionage "13 columns". Unfortunately they platted a slot in the good old France. They should think better...
A young woman lives sadly in a small garrison town with a soldier. Little by little, won over by boredom, sadness, total inaction, she develops a relationship with plants and starts talking to plants.
On a sun-kissed beach, six people linger lazily, each confident of fulfilling his or her desires before the day is out. A wealthy heiress, Emmanuelle, has designs on a handsome adolescent, Ivan, but his interests lie elsewhere. Having gratified Emmanuelle’s womanly needs, Ivan immediately sets out to make his next conquest, the mistress of a well-known writer...
Eddie Constantine stars as a reporter mixed up in the spy world in this routine espionage actioner by first-time director Pierre Grasset. After taking some illicit photos for a new story he is working on, Eddie (Constantine) is coerced into doing a job for the French Secret Service. There is a mole in the French missile sites who is passing on classified information, and Eddie is enlisted as bait to draw the culprit -- or culprits -- out. Along the way, he finds himself running for his life, fighting, and romancing until the final denouement.
Jean Lerat begins his military service at an army camp. Despite his aunt’s attempts to pull a few strings to his advantage, the unfortunate Lerat manages to get on the wrong side of his bullying colonel…
Miléna is living in her grandmother's baroque château when the rich lady dies. The lawyer Miguel, who had a previous relationship with Miléna, insists the other two grandchildren, Fifine and her brother Jean-Paul, visit the château for the reading of the will, even though they have been estranged from the family at an early age. However Robert, who had been living with Fifine in an open relationship, arrives and impersonates Jean-Paul. Robert falls for Fifine's cousin Miléna while Fifine has designs on Miguel. In the meantime, the butler César is focusing his lecherous intentions on Prudence, the maid he had just hired.
Ginette, Rita, Jacqueline and Jane try to find fulfillment and love in their lives. Rita has a fiancé whose family is obsessed with social distinction; Jane has a boy-friend in the army, but does not hesitate to enjoy herself with chance encounters; Ginette has a mysterious passion that keeps her away from her colleagues at nights. Jacqueline is lonely; but who is that mysterious bike-rider who is
The mistress of the wealthy Henri Marcoux is murdered and the family accuses the milkman of committing the crime. But Marcoux's daughter's fiancé suspects that she may have been murdered by someone else.
Martine is a young woman plagued both by poverty and by uncaring, problem parents who in no way can provide the kind of nurturing that Martine needs during her adolescent years. As a result of her family situation, Martine runs away from home and gets involved with a group of teens and young adults from the wrong side of the moral tracks.
François returns to his village after a long absence. He finds his friend Serge who has married Yvonne, and has developed an alcohol problem after the death of their stillborn child. Serge has become an angry, bitter figure not unlike the roles of James Dean, refusing to face reality and adulthood and François must help him.
A group of young boys who have a collective crush on Bernadette. As a result of this, they have an unreasoning jealousy of Gérard, and do everything they can to disrupt their relationship. When Gérard catches one of the young boys spying on them, he thrashes him severely. In retaliation, the children try to inspire Bernadette to doubt Gérard’s love.
