Bulle Ogier
The story revolves around Joëlle and Kamel Mrabti, key members of staff for Montfermeil's new mayor, Emmanuelle Joly—but the couple is also in the process of divorcing. The whole staff is working together on the implementation of a wacky new policy that features the creation of the Montfermeil Intensive School of Languages, where seven of the 62 languages spoken in this town on the outskirts of Paris will be taught. The policy is a great success and effectively revitalises the town, but life is no less complicated for the mayor's staff. Joëlle and Kamel are at war with each other and are each in love with mysterious blind dates. Shadowy traitors in the administration are seeking to sabotage Ms Joly's good work. Suspicions fall on Kamel.
A view of the religious tensions between Muslims and Buddhist through the portrait of the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, leader of anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar.
Dorante, an impoverished young man, is taken on as a secretary by Araminte, a rich widow with whom he is secretly in love. The valet Dubois does all he can to get Araminte to fall in love with Dorante. Following his staging of Marivaux’s comedy at the Odéon theater, Luc Bondy turns the whole theater building into a film studio, placing his actors in the foyer, under the stage, in the kitchens, using the most unusual and unexpected spots to invent a new dynamic between theater and film.
Okay, Marie is a little tired of the insouciance of her husband Sam, framework sup unemployed for 2 years. Agree, it is very tempted to be seduced by this beautiful stranger who made him the Court. Okay, there is also the daughter piano competition... If this balance light and crazy about standing, an unexpected event throws the family on an even crazier way.
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.
Antoine Rey looks for a special gift for his sister Melanie on her 40th birthday. He decides to surprise her with a trip to the French Island of Noirmoutier, where they spent many summers as children until their mother's death. On the drive back to Paris, Melanie is seriously injured in a car accident...
Holed up in a small Normandy town, Louise hides from her ghosts as she looks after grumpy old Theo, the retired lighthouse keeper who shares her passion for ornithology. As she wanders the twisted shores, observing birds and people alike, Louise also keeps track of old Florelle, another broken soul who searches the beaches, seemingly waiting for the crashing waves to return something to her. Observing the locals' reactions to Lambert's return, the heir of a family lost at sea, Louise is intrigued by his past but, at the same time, attracted to him. As their relationship deepens, they start to unravel the web of secrets that have haunted the small village for decades. Together, they struggle to uncover the truth that could set them both free.
A documentary about the making of Luis Bunuel's 1972 film.
Emile is a 70-ish former horticulturalist who once raised bonsai trees "because they don't take up too much room." Indeed, his whole existence is safe and uneventful to a fault, somewhat juiced by friendship with raucous fishing companion Edmond. Still, they trade pleasantries rather than confidences -- so Emile is shocked when it turns out his elderly pal watches porn, paints nudes and shags women who are his contemporaries that he meets online.
Werner Schroeter directed this dark and surreal tale of a man determined to save a lost lover from a grim fate at the hands of a violent mob. The city of Santa Maria is falling into chaos as an armed military faction is poised to take power in a coup d'etat. Ossorio used to call Santa Maria home, and he has returned in its darkest hour to find the woman he loves, hoping to rescue her from the violence that is lurks around the corner. As Ossorio searches for his love, he meets Victoria in a shabby hotel, who in turn introduces him to her father Barcala, who for the right price is willing to take Ossorio and another passenger away on his boat. While Ossorio is willing to pay Barcala what he wants, can he find the mysterious woman before the ship sets sail?
In Majorca, in 1823, a French general, Armand de Montriveau, overhears a cloistered nun singing in a chapel; he insists on speaking to her. She is Antoinette, for five years he has searched for her. Flash back to their meeting in Paris, he recently returned from Africa, she married and part of the highest society. She flirts with him, and soon he's captivated. His behavior is possessive, insistent. Then, it is her turn to become obsessed. Letters, balls, scandal, a kidnapping, and an ultimatum bring her to the cloister and him to melancholy.
38 years after the events in the Luis Buñuel classic Belle du jour, Henri Husson thinks he sees Séverine one night at a concert. He follows her and makes her face her past and then takes a slow revenge on her.
As Gentille opens, Fontaine Leglou (Emmanuelle Devos) is walking down a Paris street, and stops to confront a man whom she suspects is following her. She tells him he looks normal, but she's sorry, she doesn't have time to have coffee with him. When he convincingly protests that he was not following her, she apologizes and asks him to have coffee. Fontaine would seem to have a relatively good life. She works as an anesthetist at a fancy mental hospital, and she's got a live-in Nobel Prize-winning arctic scientist boyfriend, Michel (Bruno Todeschini), who seems to love her. But there's clearly something nagging at her. She walks around in a perpetually distracted state, and frequently mistakes other peoples' identities and their intentions. When Michel proposes to her, she needs some time to digest it before she responds.
Marianne, a young cellist discovers that her father had a mistress who is still alive. Her journey to find this mysterious woman takes her to places and people from her childhood that she thought she'd left behind forever.
Tired of their stressful parisian lifestyle, Caroline and Bertrand decide to start a new life, running a traditional gîte in deepest Provence. It is not long before they start to question the wisdom of this move – the buldings are in a state of near-dilapidation, their friend and supposed partner Sophie has walked out on them, and they are but a stone’s throw from a far more attarctive holiday home, catering for gay men. Will this change be as good as a rest or the start of a nightmare?
A gay young man is recruited into an illicit love triangle to watch a much older man’s sexual liaison, but ends up witnessing what turns out to be his murder. The next day the young man's opera diva mother informs him that his estranged father has been in Paris... until the previous night when he was murdered. Seeking help with a psychiatrist, the young man comes across an eccentric actress who has come totally unhinged by the death of that psychiatrist, the infamous Docteur Rey. At first mistaking her for the doctor, the young man embarks on a madcap mystery, reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel, with Paris as the backdrop.
Seaside takes place in a small coastal town on the Bay of Somme. The year-round inhabitants find ways to make their lives work; Paul, a lifeguard in the summer, works at the grocery all winter. His mother, Rose (Ogier) likes to play the slots just about anytime; his girlfriend Marie works in the local factory - the town's biggest business - but watching the summertime vacationers each year just makes her increasingly curious about what else might be out there. From these and several other stories, aided by close, revealing observations, we see a community perched between transition and stasis.
In a small Breton town, a 10-year-old girl is found murdered. René, her art teacher, a professional painter, is the last person to have seen her alive. The inspector in charge of the investigation immediately questions him. In this small provincial town where people all know each other and regularly meet at the Bar des Amis, René is increasingly unsettled by the other inhabitants' suspicions and by the inspector's investigation. Children stop coming to him for lessons. His wife, Viviane, a district nurse, protects him and supports him with her love. However, a self-centred media-star writer adds to René's confusion...
Madam Nadine manages with pride the "Vénus Beauté" Salon which offers relaxation, massage and make-up services. The owner and her three beauticians: Samantha, Marianne and Angèle are pros. Contrary to her friend Marianne, who still dreams of the big day, Angèle no longer believes in love. Marie, the youngest of the three employees, discovers love in the hands of a sixty year-old former pilot, who risks everything...
Confusing realities surface in this paranoid film dealing with the fragile nature of a young woman (Anne Parillaud) recovering from rape and an apparent attempted suicide. In one reality, she is a killer destroyer of men. In another she is the new wife on a Jamaican honeymoon with her husband (William Baldwin), who is trying to help her recover. Which is real is the question as the story unfolds.
Three women live together in an old rectory on the seashore. Alda lends her body to a string of carnal relationships but never commits her feelings. Olga, the elder sister, has opted for a reclusive life as the soul of the household. Her daughter, Sigga, is a young adolescent. The house harbors a finely balanced marriage between desire and memory—until Olga’s destiny tips the scales.
Benoit has planned out his life. Unfortunately he has forgotten the military duty. After he is called to duty he tries everything to get around. He goes to a psychiatrist who gives him medicine against depression. As this doesn't work out he tries suicide. The story gets even worse as he is told by a military doctor that he is HIV positive. Benoit tumbles down into the drug scene. Then he goes to Italy and meets Claudia. Things seem to improve, but only for a short time...
The quiet agony of a mother whose daughter grows up to pursue her own life is chronicled in this realistically presented French drama. The Circuit Carole of the title refers to a motorbike racetrack. Jeanne and her 20-year old daughter Marie share a small apartment in a working-class Parisian neighborhood; the two live harmoniously, but the daughter is restless and anxious to set out on her own. Marie then takes a job in a northern suburb and their lives are forever changed. The racetrack is near her work; Marie is enthralled by the racers and their fast machines. Along with her new boyfriend, a racer, Marie begins riding herself. She then moves out of her mother's flat, leaving Jeanne bereft of companionship and a purpose in her life. Her silent, deeply internalized grief eventually drives her completely mad.
Pierre, a middle-aged tourist guide, is the victim of a sudden failure : he does not recognize anything about him any longer. He goes back home and in his apartment he finds a mysterious young man who tells him he is here to avenge a young woman who has taken her own life. What share of responsibility does Pierre hold in this situation?
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.
This film of interviews with the film director Jacques Rivette was produced in collaboration with Serge Daney, film critic from “Cahiers du cinéma”, then of “Liberation”. In the course of their conversations, the two speakers discuss Rivette’s career, his relationships with the other film makers of the new wave, his use of “mise en scene” and his working with actors.
Simon is a sales representative about fifty. When Mickey, his cop friend, is being shot, he leaves everything to find the murderers. Two years before, Marx, an old gambler, met Frederic, a young man that does not look very smart and started to follow him everywhere (as a puppy) and changed his name to Johnny to please Marx. Of course, Simon's story is related with Marx and Johnny's one. But the thriller is only a pretext for a psychological description of the three main characters.
A quartet of aspiring actresses live together while studying with a demanding coach (Bulle Ogier). As they rehearse Pierre Marivaux’s La Double inconstance, offstage drama creeps into their lives in the form of a menacing mystery man (Benoît Régent) with a sinister story to tell.
Joa (Bulle Ogier), an archaeologist from Mexico, comes to Paris in search of her sister Anna (Mireille Perrier), of whom she is suddenly without news. Anna, a theater actress, was in the title role in Sade's "Justine" when she disappeared. The investigation leading Joa to the people who have known her sister, turns into an initiatory quest. Her journey, her stroll through a subterranean marginal Paris, leads also to the emergence of a new woman.
A mediocre musician goes on the road in search of the world's greatest guitar maker
The Distant Land (German: Das weite Land) is a 1987 Austrian-German drama film directed by Luc Bondy. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler, which is generally referred to in English as The Vast Domain and was also adapted by Tom Stoppard as Undiscovered Country.
Manoel de Oliveira plays his film in three stages: the first part - a play, the second can be roughly defined as a silent film (with the behind the scenes read excerpts from Beckett works), but in the end the director brilliantly performs the same material of the avant-garde exercise. Surprisingly, a joke, repeated three times, each time everything sounds fresh and develops into an almost verbatim adaptation of the biblical "Book of Job" - a spectacular point in a parable about how hard to empathize with other people's misery, when you have your own.
Like every year, five old friends come together in a chalet in the middle of a Canadian snow desert. Henri, his wife Apolline, brother-in-law Maxence, Jean and Paul are waiting for cozy evenings with board games and good food - a typical ski holiday. But on the first day Henri announces that he knows about the affair between Apolline and Jean. An oppressive mood spreads in the secluded hut until the spiral of jealousy and sadism kills one from its midst.
Marie, is just out from prison when she runs into Baptiste a young paranoid needing companionship. In their pursuit of a mysterious briefcase carried by Marie's former lover, they roam the street of Paris, transformed into a giant board game, a maze spotted with mysterious traps, puzzling clues, and chance encounters. Maybe they are bricks in some sinister scheme, maybe they are playing a board game, maybe it's a fairy tale, maybe it's yet something else...
A woman goes to Cannes and, lost in its chaos and unable to obtain tickets, ends up watching it on television from her hotel room.
Jean (Niels Arestrup), the lead character in this psychological journey is torn by a search for his lost childhood, the overwhelming need to love a woman of his dreams (someone he has invented), and a struggle with his latent bisexuality. Jean finds some photos inside an automatic photo station that look like his mother who died soon after he was born. He starts to fantasize about the woman, giving her a name and identity and waiting for her to appear. During this time, he meets Carole (Christine Boisson) and has an affair with her, all the while pretending he has this other relationship with the woman in the photo. Significantly, the couple who introduce him to Carole is childless, and they eventually split up - perhaps a comment on the importance of childhood to the adult world. In the end, Carole discovers that Jean's "other woman" has no real existence, causing a crisis that finds a symbolic expression as the last scenes close on the story.
A man and his sister meet at a seaside village to discuss their relationship.
One of Werner Schroeter's most important and inventive works, this threadbare evocation of Jean Genet's notorious Querelle depicts the erotic adventures of two sailors through the world's seaports in the manner of a cut-rate silent movie.
Each night in Paris, hundreds of men and women anonymously use telephone lines that date from the German Occupation and are no longer listed to talk to each other, to love each other. These people, shipwrecked lovers, are dying to love, to escape the abyss of solitude.
A mogul merrily funds terrorists to boost his computer sales, by panicking West German government and industry c. 1980, as the third generation of Western European left-wing activists forms, after crippling of the violent Red Army Faction. International capitalist PJ Lurz's secretary is a gang member, while her police commissioner father-in-law/lover hired Lurz' corporate security force.
In this thriller, a UNESCO translator stumbles across a group which is hiding and supporting Nazis and facilitating their travel around the world. She had been given an assignment to study the work of a writer who recently had died, and the conspiracy is revealed in materials he left behind. She comes upon a young man who is going through the writer's papers, and she immediately assumes he must be one of the conspirators. However, he soon convinces her of his innocence in that regard, and the two together begin a search for the ringleader.
Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.
An old lady returns from Africa where she made a fortune to find her son in Paris, whom she has not seen in five years, with the intention of bringing him back with her. But this project fails.
Eric (Corin Redgrave) is a novelist whose imagination is unusually powerful. While exploring a run-down mansion in the French countryside, looking for sites for his stories, he meets a girl dressed in clothes from another time. Returning to the site, he encounters a modern woman who says he probably met a ghost. He is fascinated by the situation which cannot be what it seems.
After breaking into a house he believes is empty, thief Olivier is caught by the owner, Ariane, who turns out to be a dominatrix. Improbably falling for her, Olivier returns periodically, and an impulsive romance blossoms despite Ariane's profession. Soon Olivier becomes more familiar with her work, even joining in on occasion. However, when he discovers that Ariane has a son, he attempts to "fix" her, hoping to give her a better life.
Claire (Bulle Ogier) returns to France following the death of her actress friend Agathe (Loleh Bellon). She attends an auction of her friend's possessions, provoking memories of the past. As her camera glides across the auction house bric-a-brac, Yanick Bellon mixes past, present and future to create a delicate piece of cinematic poetry. Set to the music of Georges Delerue.
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.
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.
Nico is an ethereal poet haunting the gaps between scenes of Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Bulle Ogier, Laurent Terzieff, and Garrel’s father, Maurice, discussing the filmmaker’s staple topics: love, psychoanalysis, and the failures of May ’68.
A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives pre-empted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.
A bored undertaker, married to an ex prostitute, falls in love with a transsexual.
Complications abound in this French film, which tells the story of a filmmaker who is attempting to put his real life into a movie; his interactions with the people in the movie he is filming create reverberations in his "real" life, although the past remains unchanged. Among the complications is his growing regard for the woman who plays his cinematic wife. She may wind up replacing his actual wife in real life. One of the highlights of this film is the insight it gives into the actual mechanics of filmmaking.
Pierre used to be a top level football player but he quit. Now he is both a prestidigitator and a stool pigeon, benefiting from the protection of the chief inspector. In his dreams he is haunted by the horrors he saw (he took part in ?) during the Algerian War. Pierre lives with Marie, a young singer who performs at the same cabaret as him. Lately Marie has decided to start a career in the showbiz and Pierre is worried. Nothing alarming happens though, until a diabolical inspector, jealous of his superior, decides to manipulate Pierre. He also puts pressure on Poussin, Marie's pianist, and on Joseph, the night club's master of ceremony. What he wants is to compromise his superior and take his place. Will Pierre escape this ruthless trap?
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
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...
Viviane, a French Consul's wife, is in New Guinea to find exotic feathers for export to Paris. She encounters four European travelers who are en route to "la vallée": The Valley, high in the Guinean mountains, is shown on maps as 'obscured by clouds' and is beyond their previous experiences. Viviane joins their trek to find rare feathers and soon becomes entwined in their journey. Their extended stay with the Mapuga tribe brings a denouement between western and indigenous values before their final quest toward the 'Valley of the Gods'.
Two men, arty though somewhat staid, are drawn to the spirited and quixotic Rosemonde....
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 1917, the First World War is raging. Julien is from Luxemburg, so instead of having to go to war he studies piano in Paris. One day his friend Jacques, also a musician and now a fighter pilot on the front, invites him to spend a few days in his family's empty house in Bray. The housekeeper, a beautiful but mute woman lets Julien in, but his friend is late and he is obliged to wait. In the meantime, he starts reminiscing of the pre-war days spent with his friend and Jacques' girlfriend Odile.
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.
Pierre is a middle-aged factory worker with plenty of unresolved anger. After his father's death, his mother feels compelled to move in with him. Having just moved there with his beautiful girlfriend, he begins to feel the pressure. When the May Day revolt begins, he goes crazy.
Follows the dissolution of the marriage between Claire, an actress and Sebastien, her director.
Paulina leaves the apartment where she lives with her two brothers, Nicolas and Olivier. Her departure is mark by chaotic and sometimes violent confrontations.
Ingmar, a young Swedish architect, is engaged to Monika but, marriage being paradoxically a serious thing in Sweden, he wants to put his future wife to the test. For this purpose, the couple made a trip to France during which Monika saw her former lover, Jean-Pierre, who is now married to Pauline, who assured her husband that, if he cheated on her, he would their marriage is over.
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.
