Claude Miller
A French video artist traverses Canada on a train that takes her from the east to the west through the snow. This journey leads her to encounter the last girlfriend of her ex-husband, an internationally respected showman who is now dead. Each of the two women will try to understand how the "man of their life" loved and lived with the other. See how they dance.
This finely acted, delicate and provocative new film by one of France’s most impressive filmmakers—working here with his son, Nathan—depicts the troubled life of an adopted boy who, as a taciturn adult, visits his birth mother and strikes up a relationship fraught with tension and emotion.
In 1953, a sensitive French boy finds out from a neighbor that his family's Jewish. François Grimbert becomes a physician, and gradually peels the layers of his buried family history which resulted in his difficult upbringing, raised as Catholic by his "Aryan" appearing parents. His athletic father labored to stamp out stereotypical Jewish characteristics he perceived in his son, to keep the family's many secrets, as most relatives fought in World War II, and later were hauled off to labor and death camps by the Gestapo.
This film, loosely inspired by Anton Chekov's The Seagull, weaves a story about sex, family and the business of making films. When the young and overly sensitive filmmaker Julien screens his new DV art-film starring his girlfriend Lili (Swimming Pool's Ludivine Sagnier) --a sexy young local girl--to his famous actress mother Mado, and her lover Brice, an accomplished film director, an unraveling of the delicate peace in their house begins. The graceful beauty Lili, who dreams of becoming a famous actress like Mado, is immediately fascinated by Brice, who gladly falls prey to her charms.
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.
A lawyer is asked to come to the police station to clear up a few loose ends in his witness report of a foul murder. "This will only take ten minutes", they say, but it turns out to be one loose end after another, and the ten minutes he is away from his speech become longer and longer.
Claire Weygand, a thirty-year-old young woman who is about to defend her anthropology thesis, unfortunately not only feels bad but even worse and worse with each passing day. The migraine attacks she suffers from indeed keep her from working as hard as she should and in despair she decides to consult Doctor Fish. When the medicine the physician prescribes for her fails, Claire, who can't take it any more, asks him to hospitalize her. In hospital, Claire shares her room with Odette, a young woman who has lost the use of her legs and Eléonore, a frightening old woman. The third episode from "The Blindfold" by Siri Hustvedt.
A schoolboy Nicholas always worries about something. When he goes on a school skiing trip, all his visions and nightmares take him over.
This French documentary is comprised of almost 300 clips from the past 100 years of cinema Francaise. The images within the documentary are free flowing and not in chronological order; they are also not hindered with unnecessary narration or lengthy introductions. The film represents the collaborative efforts of a collective of the country's finest filmmakers.
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes. The results run the gamut from Zhang Yimou's convention-thwarting joke to David Lynch's bizarre miniature epic.
In Nazi-occupied Paris, a young accompanist named Sophie Vasseur gets a job with famed singer Irene Brice. As Irene's husband Charles, a businessman collaborating with the Nazis, wrestles with his conscience, Sophie becomes obsessed with Irene, taking on the role of maid as well as accompanist, living life vicariously through Irene's triumphs and affairs.
The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.
In a small town in post-World-War-II France, an unhappy sixteen-year-old (Janine Castang) tries to escape her dreary situation by any means at her disposal. Three successive friends (Michel Davenne, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette Dargelos, a photographer and fellow prisoner) help her learn from her mistakes.
Roland and Martine, once child stars in a TV series, have sunk into a life of crime. Answering an ad from Isabelle, a young girl seeking work with children, they abduct her with the intention of selling her into prostitution. At the last moment, having become fond of her, they relent and set out to take her home. She rebels, insisting that she enjoys their exciting life of stolen cars, stolen cheques, hotels and restaurants left without paying the bill, and the threesome become a formidable team. Then Isabelle's mood changes again and she disappears with a hitch-hiker. Worried over her future, Roland and Martine trace her to the town where she is about to get married and abduct her, this time from the church steps. Roaring off in a stolen ambulance, the three are happily on the run again.
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.
Beauvoir, lonely, aging private detective, is put on the bloody track of beautiful Catherine Leiris who kills and robs her rich husband(s) on their wedding night. Although he never approaches her directly, he follows her and increasingly feels to be telepathically connected to her, because she reminds him of his daughter he never met. After he led a blind artist, Catherine's truly beloved spouse, into a bus accident, she makes a living by bank robbery with young Betty till Betty gets shot. Alone again, Catherine leads a sad, uneventful life as a waitress, when she meets her follower.
Martinaud, an illustrious notary suspected of being the perpetrator of two horrendous crimes, voluntarily agrees to be questioned by Inspector Gallien on New Year's Eve. What initially is a routine procedure, soon becomes a harsh interrogation that seems to confirm the initial suspicions.
In France in the near future, revolt and chaos erupt. A right-wing politician, Philippe Muphand, is set to take control when his lady friend Caroline walks out, announcing she will take up with the first fool she sees. The fool is Serge Laine, a professor and author of the prize-winning "Le voyage qui ne finit pas," headed to the train station for tickets to Barcelona where he and his wife will enjoy a second honeymoon and he will lecture at the university. Caroline seduces Serge, and he soon abandons wife, family, job, and honesty to embrace Caroline, the romanticism of Jack London, and murder.
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.
French filmmaker Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness is based on a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, of Strangers on a Train fame. In the original, the murder-protagonist was a psychotic, pure and simple (if such words are appropriate here!) In Miller's version, the "hero," David, is a pathetic creature, motivated by humiliation and sexual inadequacy; thus the emphasis is not on his heinous crimes but on his warped personality. The director's noirish decision to stage much of the action in the dark, or the rain, or both, is a function of David's deep depression. As in his other films, Miller uses water as an omen of evil; you've seldom seen a more foreboding swimming pool than the one in This Sweet Sickness. The film was originally released as Dites-lui que je l'aime.
In a vacation camp somewhere in the French country, 1960. Marc et Philippe are two of the counsellors. Marc is very virile, while Philippe is more reserved. A night, Marc surprises Philippe dressed and made-up like a woman. From now on, he will keep on humiliating Philippe.
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.
A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Roc, a young middle-class Frenchman meets in Paris Ann Brown, a young Englishwoman. They become friends and Ann invites him to spend holidays at the house where she lives with her mother and her sister Muriel, for whom she intends Claude. During these holidays, Claude, Ann and Muriel become very close and he gradually falls in love with Muriel. But both families lay down a one-year-long separation without any contact before agreeing to the marriage. So Claude goes back to Paris when he has many love affairs before sending Muriel a break-off letter...
Camille invites some soldiers to spend a Sunday in the country with her. When they arrive, they find that something is amiss.
Sagamore Noonan vit reclu dans une ferme de l'Alabama où il distille de la gnôle au temps de la prohibition. Il reçoit la visite de son frère Doc Noonan et de son fils Billy. Une jeune strip-teaseuse et son compagnon gangster viennent troubler leur tranquillité.
Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.
In 1798, a feral boy is discovered outside the town of Aveyron, France. Diagnosed as mentally impaired, he is relegated to an asylum. A young doctor named Jean Itard becomes convinced that the boy has normal mental capacity, but that his development was hindered by lack of contact with society. He brings the boy home and begins an arduous attempt at education over several years.
Delphine and Solange are two sisters living in Rochefort. Delphine is a dancing teacher and Solange composes and teaches the piano. Maxence is a poet and a painter. He is doing his military service. Simon owns a music shop, he left Paris once month ago to come back where he fell in love 10 years ago. They are looking for love, looking for each other, without being aware that their ideal partner is very close...
A young student, alone in Paris, is engaged in strange and bloody experiences of which she is both the authorizer and the victim.
