Jean-Claude Dreyfus
A man goes to the church in order to confess his last sin to an exasperated young priest.
After getting into a cemetery to take pictures for his website, Ludovic is caught by the old grave keeper. Waiting for the police, he shows Ludovic his book of tombs inside which are the most bizarre and intriguing stories he's witnessed.
Ulysses, an idealistic, novice film director, invites Clothilde, his young and pretty neighbor, to accompany him to the Love Film Festival on Réunion Island, where his debut film has been selected. Unfortunately, the day before they're due to leave, Ulysses learns that his film has been removed from the program. Afraid of disappointing Clotilde, he hides the truth and flies with her to Réunion, determined to do everything in his power to get his film back in the official selection and, at the same time, win the favors of the young woman, who dreams of becoming an actress. But Ulysses must cope with internal rivalries and struggles behind the scenes if he wants love and cinema to triumph.
In a futuristic France, computers decide the fate of the unemployed and the homeless.
A forest full of animated animals encourage a pair of snails, who are fully clad in black because they are in mourning for a dead leaf, to celebrate the new spring and reclaim the colors of life. Based on the children's poem by Jacques Prévert entitled "Chanson des escargots qui font à l'enterrement" ("Song of the snails who are on their way to a funeral").
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.
Eléonore is a gorgeous twenty-year-old who has lost her parents and one of her arms in an accident. She lives in an orphanage in Burgandy.
Lucretia is a killer for hire. Specialised in poisoning and passionate about opera, she'll have to fulfill a difficult contract in the heart of the Swiss alps. Posing as a singer, Lucretia will have to appear on the scene of the higly exclusive Festival d'Ermeux and try to kill one of her partners: British bariton Alexander Child. Having recently acquired a Scottish distillery, he remains the only obstacle to a strategic pipeline project with considerable economic stakes; having recently won a tough legal battle against British Oil, their last resort is to eliminate him. Complicating everything is Rico, sent by the French contra-espionage, who tries to infiltrate the orchestra and stop the plot against Alexander Child.
Italian-French-British TV film targeting the US audience, about the fashion icon Coco Chanel. The film begins with the fashion goddess (deftly played by Shirley MacLaine) in her twilight years, steeped in wealth and fame, still issuing game-changing designs and collections. From here the biopic looks backwards to the woman's upbringing in an orphanage, and traces her path to ubiquity as it winds through poverty, wars, doomed romances, and rather glamorous betrayals.
This is the story of too nice girl who one day decides to become evil. And who will find out it is not so easy to do wrong when you have always been nice.
400 years ago, in Japan, a revolutionary art was born and would influence the greatest Western artists of the late nineteenth century, the Ukiyo-E "floating images of the world." A wonderful trip in a world of beauty and discovery. The concept and objectives of this documentary are, on the one hand, to show, teach and discover Japanese art (Japanese stamps and prints) and, on the other hand, to demonstrate the influence of Japanese stamps on Western modern art, showing in comparison some of the Most famous paintings (impressionism or paintings by Van Gogh).
In a Mediterranean city, the association of volunteers The Rescue is expecting a new director. A former trade unionist, Birgos, who’s just escaped from an asylum with Cleo, another internee, is believed, by mistake, to be this new director.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
David buys a pack of cigarettes, smokes one, takes the metro and gives the rest of the pack to François, whom he meets on the platform, before walking away without further explanation.
Romance meets farce against the backdrop of a quiet campaign to legalize gay marriage. Laurent loves his roommate Dan, who's straight and a playboy. Laurent can't bring himself to tell Dan, but is content to share a flat and to party with him. Then Camille comes along, Dan falls hard, and Laurent is beside himself: he tries to sabotage the relationship, but each effort backfires. After Dan moves in with Camille, Laurent enlists the help of Sam, his new lesbian flatmate, and Nick, a long-time gay friend. As the lovers head toward marriage, Laurent becomes more desperate. His efforts may be having an effect, if not on Dan, then on Camille. Which love will triumph?
Jean-Pierre is a hit man in Paris. He wants to stop; an incentive is reconnecting to Michelle, a childhood friend. He's ready to commit himself to her, but she has her own secrets: she sells bomb components to thugs. He hears rumors of a missing briefcase, which he finds in Michelle's flat. He asks no questions, and soon both of them are in trouble with Jean-Pierre's ex-employer and with her bomb buyers. Two other characters complicate the maneuvering: Jean-Pierre's best friend, who's always losing money on the ponies, and the ex-employer's new contract killer, a seemingly fragile woman. Is there any way that Jean-Pierre can protect Michelle and escape with his life? Written by
In 1919, Mathilde was 19 years old. Two years earlier, her fiancé Manech left for the front at the Somme. Like millions of others he was "killed on the field of battle." It's written in black and white on the official notice. But Mathilde refuses to believe it. If Manech had died, she would know. She hangs on to her intuition as tightly as she would onto the last thread of hope linking her to her lover. A former sergeant tells her in vain that Manech died in the no man's land of a trench named Bingo Crepescule, in the company of four other men condemned to die for self-inflicted wounds. Her path ahead is full of obstacles but Mathilde is not frightened. Anything is possible to someone who is willing to challenge fate...
Two tigers are separated as cubs and taken into captivity, only to be reunited years later as enemies by an explorer (Pearce) who inadvertently forces them to fight each other.
Edgar Lamarck - an accountant and auditor is coming to the the shipyard on Cote d'Azur in order to check the statements. After completing his mission, he decides to relax and spend the night with the green-eyed blonde with a curvy shape who he met on a porn site. Coming to Rita, he discovers weedy brunette with a pistol in her hand, standing over a fresh corpse. It's not a girl Edgar was looking for but now it's too late to retreat...
This breathtaking, visually experimental film from New Wave director Eric Rohmer tells the true story of Grace Dalrymple Elliot (Lucy Russell), a British aristocrat trapped in Paris during the French Revolution. Determined to maintain her stiff upper lip and pampered life despite the upheaval, Grace continues her friendship with the Duke of Orléans (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) while risking her life and liberty to protect a fugitive.
Edward is an editor in a small English publishing house. The story concerns what happens when he receives a very good manuscript from Nicholas, an old friend, who up until now has been a hack writer. The manuscript sheds light on events both men lived through, and Edward comes to the conviction that it reveals that it was Nicholas who raped the woman Edward loved, and that he is therefore responsible for her subsequent suicide. Very carefully, he plots his revenge.
A young French sailor falls in love with a Russian tourist during a passion-filled three-day furlough, but is whisked away for a months worth of submarine duty before he can learn her last name and Moscow address. When he is finally freed again, he embarks upon a search for his lost love. Unfortunately, while his aim is true, his timing is off. His first stop is the broadcast headquarters of a major television network. He arrives shortly before the place blasted apart by a bomb. Later, he goes to the apartment of a noted talk-show host in hopes of receiving air-time during which he will plead for information concerning his lost love. But things don't come out as planned for somehow, the sailor ends up considered the prime suspect in the bombing while the real-life terrorist and his cohort, who happen to be in the same apartment building in hopes of knocking off a crooked judge.
t's 6:20 a.m. The camera pans a slew of alarm clocks that start to ring simultaneously, all set to awaken a solitary middle-aged man. The alarms are elaborate: in addition to traditional clocks, horns blow, bright lights flash, and a pot even blows smoke at the sleeper. After several minutes, the bed itself finally bounces him to his feet and he begins to make his way through his house, slowly, keeping only a step ahead of things falling, or cutting through the air head high. He grabs his coat, shambles out the door - and it becomes apparent why it is he must wake up. These surprising duties completed, it's time for an espresso. It arrives like clockwork, right on schedule.
A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.
An elderly paper-crusher branded a fool in Prague secretly stashes condemned books, preserving their contents and extrapolating from them eccentric scenarios of wit.
This a beautiful May evening. The sun has just set behind the hill. Tonight the inhabitants of the Le Corbusier housing unit are going to experience a slight change of program. They are all sitting in front of their TV sets and in twelve minutes the face of the new President of the Republic will appear on the screens..
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.
Having first lost his wife then his job as a tweed tailor, Alex Ponttin has devised a novel way to keep himself in touch with society. He admits himself into people's homes, by pretending to be a relative or an official, and persuading his victims to give him a night's free board: He finds at first a lunch at the horrible couple Dumont, where a thief follows him for a robbery. Alex spent an evening in front of TV at Marie, mother of seven children. He runs from Marie to find an evening and a new bed at the home of charming but shy lesbian Caroline and her funny lover Gloria. To save her inheritance, Caroline - accused for her homosexuality by her horrible sister Catherine - tells her aunt Amélie, that Gloria is her secretary and Alex her lover. So Alex has to present himself nude in Caroline's bed. He saves Carolines inheritance. The police officers investigating the case are so terminally stupid that Alex has little chance of being arrested.
Zina, young theater opener, hesitates between the love of Slim, taxi driver who hopes to become a lawyer and that of Frederic, who holds the poster at the theater. Why not keep her two loves?
A film with emphasis on visuals and music, the plot concerns characters who meet in present time, mainly the male gypsy Jesus, and the female thief and con-artist Odona, who share parallel experiences from lives 2000 years in the past. These stories are juxtaposed.
Who would have expected Brigitte to marry a prisoner with a long sentence in the first place? In this romantic action movie, that is only the first in a long line of surprising actions by the young woman. Somehow, she manages to get hooked to the young prisoner before realizing that he'll be locked up for another three or four decades. She decides that this is much too long to wait to spend time with her sweetheart and decides to learn how to fly a helicopter. Why? So she can fly in and take him out of his prison yard, which is exactly what she does, thrilling romantics all over France and seriously upsetting the authorities. This award-winning film is based on a true incident from 1986.
It's late 17th century. The viola da gamba player Monsieur de Sainte Colombe comes home to find that his wife died while he was away. In his grief he builds a small house in his garden into wich he moves to dedicate his life to music and his two young daughters Madeleine and Toinette, avoiding the outside world. Rumor about him and his music is widespread, and even reaches to the court of Louis XIV, who wants him at his court in Lully's orchestra, but Monsieur de Sainte Colombe refuses. One day a young man, Marin Marais, comes to see him with a request, he wants to be taught how to play the violin.
This bizarre surrealistic black comedy takes place in a small fictitious post-apocalyptic town where food is scarce and butcher Clapet has the macabre business of using human flesh to feed his customers. Yet when his daughter falls in love with his next slaughter victim things turn into chaos.
This fast-paced mystery is in part based on a novel by Yves Ellena and is at least equally based on the 1943 classic Le Corbeau, which in 1951 was produced in English by Otto Preminger as The Thirteenth Letter. In this movie, someone is using a pirate radio broadcast to dish the dirt on the lives of the elite of a small French town.
An Austrian diplomat assigned to Paris wakes up after having a strange nightmare and finds himself emotionally distanced from his world. He feels absolutely nothing as he attends to his daily routine. He gradually begins to behave in an increasingly strange manner. The story is based on Moment of True Feeling, a novel by Peter Handke.
Wang Fo, the greatest master of medieval China, aided by his assistant who has given up everything to follow him, desperately seeks aesthetic perfection. A day comes when he thinks he has achieved it. But his genius arouses both the curiosity and the jealousy of the Emperor. Wang Fo will be able to escape the Emperor's vindictiveness only by going to the limit of his talents.
Michel Mortez travels around France hosting a radio game show he created 25 years ago. He is famous among the average Frenchmen. Rivetot, his assistant and technician, always goes with him. He is the only one who knows what really lies under Mortez's appearance of a playful don Juan. When the program is canceled, Rivetot delays telling Mortez as long as possible... Both malicious and tender, this bitter comedy also shows nostalgia.
Robert Avranche, a middle-aged, alcoholic garage owner, is sitting on a train, reflecting on the emptiness of his life. An attractive young woman, Donatienne, suddenly enters the compartment and offers to make love to him. Robert accepts but, when the woman leaves the train afterwards, he decides to follow her...
Two brothers who can feel each others' pain and pleasure mess up the French revolution.
In a futuristic society, contestants pit their survival skills against each other in a fight to the death for cash prizes, and the contest is aired live on television.
After losing both her parents, young Sylvie is enrolled in a strict boarding school of Victorian English education. The school readily and willingly resorts to a very strict regime of correction and corporal punishment to discipline its female pupils and the young girls compensate for the rigors of their education by devoting themselves to all kinds of kinky schoolgirl sexual encounters.
In another typical Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle, the French action hero plays a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord (Henry Silva) who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal. Stunts (performed by Belmondo) and chase scenes on land and water enliven the story, but the scenes with Belmondo's love interest are rather marginal themselves.
Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.
In the 1930s a young fellow, Simon Chalumet, is sent to a military school by his overbearing father, an ex-soldier who has little sympathy for his son's more gentle temperament, or for his interest in films.
The first episode – featuring frequent Borowczyk muse Marina Pierro – is the longest and, in a way, most substantial: it’s set in Renaissance Rome, with the lusty (and perpetually nude) leading lady sexually involved with famous painters and church benefactors. The second episode is the most notorious and, consequently, gave the film its controversial poster – featuring a rabbit slowly disappearing under the skirt of a teenage girl (played by Gaelle Legrand). The third and final episode, which has a modern-day setting, is the shortest – but also, possibly, the most outrageous: Pascale Christophe is a young married woman who’s abducted on a busy Parisian street by a small-time hood hidden inside a cardboard box!
A girl, Marie is led into prostitution by her pimp boyfriend, Gerard. She must not only give money to him but to the gangsters that explore him as well. Marie, together with a friend, Maloup, will try to become independent. They start to work the streets on their own but they will meet physical and sexual violence. They return to the brothels, and Marie goes back to her pimp, but Gerard has his caprices and wants more and more – he's in a spiral downwards and he's leading Marie with him. There's seems to be no escape.
Beautiful, detached, laconic, consumptive Lily Brest is a streetwalker with few clients. She loves her idle boyfriend Raoul who gambles away what little she earns. The town's power broker, called the rich Jew, discovers she is a good listener, so she's soon busy. Raoul imagines grotesque sex scenes between Lily and the Jew; he leaves her for a man. Her parents, a bitter Fascist who is a cabaret singer in drag and her wheelchair-bound mother, offer no refuge. Even though all have a philosophical bent, the other whores reject Lily because she tolerates everyone, including men. She tires of her lonely life and looks for a way out. Even that act serves the local corrupt powers.
An airport employee switches a pack of drugs for baking soda and absconds to Barcelona, meanwhile the drug-runners are on his trail.
