Henri Garcin
Few films describe the conventions, misconducts and eccentricities of the upper reaches of the French bourgeoisie with such accuracy and elegance. With its phenomenal cast, La Sainte Famille casts a tender, ironic, sometimes melancholy glance at contemporary Balzacian characters, torn between their desires, their perception of duty and the temptation to let life follow its course.
On 23 May 2010, 21-year-old Tonio van der Heijden was hit by a car and taken in a critical condition to hospital, where he died. A tragic event that drastically changed the lives of his parents, who watched their only son pass away in intensive care. Reminded of his life by everything around and inside them, Tonio's life left a legacy of phantom pain for his parents who mourn, and struggle to prevent their own lives from being dragged into a downward spiral of sorrow.
On his birthday, a hitman reluctantly takes on the easy task of killing a writer, only to find the job a lot more difficult than expected.
Renata's heroine silently walks through the fields, an autumn garden, an old mansion, an abandoned greenhouse to the lyric melody of Ludwig van Beethoven, only occasionally turning to the camera. In the frame, Litvinova appears as a brunette who wears long dresses to the floor, capes, hats and expensive jewelry.
The story of a farmer, Helmer, who realizes that his life has been influenced to an unhealthy extent by his aging father. An adaptation of a bestselling and critically acclaimed novel by Gerbrand Bakker.
A chance meeting between Nicolai and Nina, a friend from the past, makes Nicolai return to an abandoned hotel in which, many years ago, he experienced his only love, full of tragedy and an overwhelming feeling.
When the coach of the France soccer team is killed by a poisoned dart in the stadium in the end of a game, and his expensive and huge ring with the diamond Pink Panther disappears, the ambitious Chief Inspector Dreyfus assigns the worst police inspector Jacques Clouseau to the case.
Catherine refuses to believe that her business partner, the unlikeable François, has a best friend, so she challenges him to set up an introduction. Scrambling to find someone willing to pose as his best pal, François enlists the services of a charming taxi driver to play the part.
Edward Schneider is asked to sing the St Matthew Passion in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. This is a great opportunity for him to avenge the eternal mockery to which he is subjected. However what no one sees is that the is having trouble with himself. He is not able to come to terms with the music of Bach and sing it credibly. Then there is Schneider's prostitute, Miriam. While she despises her client, she is also financially dependent on him. Miriam is also at a turning point in her life through her battles with her daughter, who does not have much respect for her mother's profession.
A retired woman befriends her neighbor without suspecting that it is her own daughter whom she abandoned at birth.
Georges has Down syndrome, living at a mental-institution, Harry is a busy businessman, giving lectures for young aspiring salesmen. He is successful in his business life, but his social life is a disaster since his wife left him and took their two children with her. This weekend his children came by train to meet him, but Harry, working as always, forgot to pick them up. Neither his wife or his children want to see him again and he is driving around on the country roads, anguished and angry. He almost runs over Georges, on the run from the institution since everybody else went home with their parents except him, whose mother is dead. Harry tries to get rid of Georges but he won't leave his new friend. Eventually a special friendship forms between the two of them, a friendship which makes Harry a different person.
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.
Camille, a mercurial César-winning actress, has seen better times. Estranged from her husband, she's with her children only every other weekend. It's her weekend, but her agent has booked her to MC a Rotary club dinner in Vichy. She takes them with her, and when her husband learns this, he demands to pick them up at once. She bolts in a rented car to the seaside, trying to improve her relations with the children, especially the precocious and distant Vincent. He loves astronomy. A rare meteor shower is due in a few days, so she suggests they go to a plateau in Spain hoping to see it. He agrees, but the relationship remains difficult, and her husband is on their trail.
Placide's dad tells him on his deathbed he'll haunt Placide if he doesn't find a wife soon. Placide cautiously agrees, but he only wants to settle for a very beautiful woman. That might be easier said than done, since he is a vagabond. When he accidentally enters a photo shoot, Placide meets Sarah. He falls in love, but she is way out of his reach.
An extremely weird comedy about the life of 31- year-old Abel, who has never left home. After failing with doctors and psychiatrists, Abel's father Victor brings home Christine, a friend, in an attempt to teach Abel basic social skills. After that trouble starts and Abel is thrown out into the street.
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.
Three friends begin to work the rent collectors. Fee collection goes with a lot of comic episodes...
Michael is a successful actor, but he has a scandal in his past: at a tender age he knifed his father to death. He and his girlfriend Deborah go to his mother's for the weekend, and are joined by the director and others from a recent film project, who are given a rather cool reception by the superstitious housekeeper Oliver. Soon rude things begin happening to some of the guests, and Michael fears a repeat of his nightmare past is in progress.
Madame Jouve, the narrator, tells the tragedy of Bernard and Mathilde. Bernard was living happily with his wife Arlette and his son Thomas. One day, a couple, Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard, moves into the next house. This is the accidental reunion of Bernard and Mathilde, who had a passionate love affair years ago. The relationship revives... A somber study of human feelings.
"Cocktail Molotov" is the story of the adventures of this threesome, who reach Venice only to learn of the outbreak of the May 1968 disturbances at home. Once again, Anne, Frederic and Bruno realize that the important things of their time are happening somewhere where they are not. Swindled out of their car and virtually broke, they hitchhike back to Paris, hoping to arrive in time for some of the excitement.
Ten years old Phil who is living with his mother and likes skateboarding with his friends has fallen in love with a girl of his age.
Jean-Marie Fayard is a young examining magistrate in a large provincial french city. He belongs to that generation of judges who are endeavoring to re-adapt the notion of justice to our changing times. His methods are not agreeable to every one. Criticism and pressure are brought to bear upon him but he is aware of his value, professionally, and refuses to make any concessions. He follows an unwavering course. He uses dynamic methods and takes uncustomary initiatives. He behaves like a crusader, a battler, whence the nickname given him by the reporters : the sheriff.
An enterprising young Paris based British prostitute decides to incorporate as an official escort business after learning about corporate practices and business ins and outs from her clients. Searching for people to invest in her scheme, she encounters both interest and setbacks.
As every summer, Georges Lajoie, his wife Ginette and grown-up son Léon go on holiday to Loulou's campsite. They join old friends, the Schumachers and the Colins. Brigitte Colin, the daughter, is quite a pretty young girl now. One day, Georges rapes and murders her. He hides the body near the barracks of the immigrant Arab workers. The racism of the campers will do the rest... A virulent lampoon against the average Frenchman's racism.
Nicholas Mallet, an inconspicuous and shy bank employee, one day successfully invites Marie-Paul, a young woman he hadn’t known before, in the streets of Paris to a café and sleeps with her the next day. When he tells his surprised friend Claude about the incident, the disillusioned and handicapped writer develops a plan to control and manipulate Nicholas’ life. First of all, he procures him to Roberte, a professor of philosophy’s frustrated and bored wife...
A desperate woman, whose son is on trial for murder, blackmails the judge and kidnaps his wife.
A youngish sales employee of a computer firm is blackmailed into helping a group of mysterious Bulgarian industrialists who have come to his office. A government contract is being sought for a businessman who is in danger of bankruptcy.
A young couple of burglars, waiting for trial, marry in jail. Annick writes down her observations of the women's ward. When she hears that her lover must serve a twice as long prison sentence, she plans their escape.
A brain doctor (Anthony Perkins) with an unfaithful wife (Jill Ireland) brings home an amnesiac (Charles Bronson) and gets him to commit murder.
A crackdown on drugs leads a burned out cop (Michel Bouquet) to take the law into his own hands and seek revenge against villainous drug dealers. Word comes down from above that the United States feels French authorities have been lax on their arrests of the dealers. A violent action feature finds the harried inspector battling his colleagues as much as the criminal element targeted for extermination.
A bourgeois couple check into a hotel. All seems fine until a man loses his nail clippers
In a secluded hotel circumscribed by a dense forest Max and Alissa Thor meet Stein and Elisabeth. Max, a professor of future history and an aspiring author, is immediately attracted to the brooding wife of industrialist Bernard Alione, Elisabeth, who is recovering from a miscarriage. Stein, a German Jew and potential writer, is infatuated by Alissa, Max's young wife and former student. During their sojourn the guests' identities gradually meld. While playing cards, for example, each guest anticipates the others' observations. Although her friends remain at the resort, the insecure Elisabeth leaves upon the arrival of her worldly husband. (TCM.com)
The harsh life of a troubled young man provides the basis of this grim French tragedy that begins when the fellow stops into a shop to buy a pack of the title cigarettes. There he meets a pretty shop girl with whom he falls in love and eventually marries. It was a foolish choice, for the two cannot get along and constantly fight. Things get worse when the husband resumes his criminal activities and gets caught. The two are about to divorce when the woman gets pregnant. The time comes for their baby to be born and while sitting in the waiting room, the husband reflects upon his past activities, which are revealed via flashback.
Marc is a French secret agent whose only weapons are judo and karate. With the help of his sidekick Jacques, the duo goes to protect a noted scientist from falling into the hands of a gang of underworld thugs. Marc finds love with one of the female gang members who turns out to be a double agent with the British Secret Service.
Catherine is left unmarried and pregnant when her mobster sweetheart is killed in this gangster comedy. With the help of another unmarried mother-to-be, Catherine goes looking for the stash of cash buried by her lover before his death. Soon other thugs and her suspicious neighbors are following their every move in an attempt to recover the lost loot...
In the countryside near Normandy's beaches lives Marie, unhappy. It's 1945, she's married to Jérôme, a somewhat fussy milquetoast, diffident to the war around him and unwilling to move his wife to Paris, where she longs to live, shop, and party. A German outfit is bivouacked at Jérôme and Marie's crumbling château because its commanding officer is pursuing Marie. She's also eyed by a French spy working with the Allies as they plan D-Day. He woos her (posing to the Germans as her brother) and, in his passion, forgets his mission. Heroics come from an unexpected direction, and Marie makes her choice.
A story about Caroline, a young girl who decides to start dating only men after forty.
Hollywood producer Alexander Meyerheimer has hired drunken writer Richard Benson to write his latest movie. Benson has been holed up in a Paris apartment supposedly working on the script for months, but instead has spent the time living it up. Benson now has just two days to the deadline and thus hires a temporary secretary, Gabrielle Simpson, to help him complete it in time.
This French version of the notorious spy's life centers less on her romantic escapades, and more on those that reveal the person she actually was during WW I when her German superiors ordered her to seduce the French captain Trintignant so she can steal classified papers from him. Instead she falls in love with him, blows the cover, and ends up convicted of espionage and shot. (AllMovie)
Seeing an opportunity to make a financial recovery for the family, a nobleman attempts to wed his son to his wealthy friend's daughter. His plan is to send the boy for a cruise on the SS France with the prospective female. Upon arriving to meet the lovely girl, the young man switches places with his valet. Unbeknownst to him, however, is the fact that the girl has pulled a similar deception. Though Jean-Marc Ripert is responsible for much of the cinematography in this New Wave comedy, it is Francois Reichenbach who handled the camera for many of the ocean-liner scenes.
A boy is kidnapped and murdered on the French riviera. The police, who had watched the delivery of the ransom to TWO men gives chase once they determine that the boy is dead. The police never loses sight of the TWO men who flee on a speedboat and run into an old lighthouse after landing. However, when the police surrounds the lighthouse, THREE men come out, each one claiming that he was there on a stroll and the following investigation can not determine who is lying. The three men are put on trial, but the jury finds them innocent, because they can not determine which two are guilty. Summary justice is made by a mob when the three men leave the court after their aquittal.
Sénéchal, an actor touring the provinces with the "Tournées Carlini" does not meet the success he thinks he deserves. One night in Dreux, he finds himself without his luggage and dressed up as a Foreign Legion officer, he is invited to a party thrown by a colonel. He creates a sensation there and does not leave the colonel's wife ... indifferent! Back in Paris, Sénéchal goes through a similar experience. This time around, wearing tuxedo and top hat, he gets mistaken for a diplomat and charms the guests of a wedding party. Arrested by the police, he chooses to do without an attorney at his trial and his brilliant eloquence has him acquitted. A question remains unanswered though : will all those people who give an ovation in real life ever go to see him on stage ?
