Jérôme Tonnerre
Paris 1930. Paul has only ever had one and the same horizon: the high walls of the orphanage, an austere building in the Parisian working class suburbs. Entrusted to a joyful country woman, Célestine, and her husband, Borel, the rather stiff gamekeeper of a vast estate in Sologne, the city child, recalcitrant and stubborn, arrives in a mysterious and disturbing world, that of a soverign and wild region. The huge forest, misty ponds, heaths, and fields all belong to the Count de la Fresnaye, an elderly taciturn man who lives alone in his manor.
Although he's now eighty years old, Claude Lherminier is still as imposing as he ever was. But his bouts of forgetfulness and confusion are becoming increasingly frequent. Even so, he stubbornly refuses to admit that anything is wrong. Carole, his oldest daughter, wages a daily and taxing battle to ensure that he's not left on his own. Claude suddenly decides on a whim to go to Florida. What lies behind this sudden trip?
Deneuve plays sassy grandmother Cathy who takes to the road after being betrayed by her lover and learning her business is on the verge of bankruptcy on the same day. During a weeklong odyssey across France, she spends time with a grandson she hardly knows and reconnects with her past as former Miss Brittany through a reunion for former beauty queens.
After ten years, Jacques comes back to France to handle his father’s succession. He had left France to live in the USA to escape a painful past he shared with Mado, his former wife, who in the meantime built a new life with Stéphane and their 7 year old son, Paul. Upon his return, Jacques and Mado meet again; he asks to meet her son Paul; Mado hesitates, then accepts but hides it from her husband. Soon, Paul and Jacques get close and they start to see each other secretly.
The Côte d’Azur. 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden - and in the face of his father's fierce opposition - he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit... and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.
Thomas, a father in his fifties, returns by chance to the town where he grew up. He collapses and wakes up forty years earlier in the body of his teenage self. Thrown back into his past, Thomas will not only have to re-live his first love, but also try to understand the reasons for his father’s mysterious departure. Can you change the past by living it again?
Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.
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.
Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved and fascinated to hear the secrets no man ever heard.
A collection of artifacts from an archeological dig in Egypt are brought to the famous Louvre museum in Paris, and while experts are using a laser scanning device to determine the age of a sarcophagus, a ghostly spirit escapes and makes its way into the museum's electrical system.
Victor Derval is returning home after a performance when he is hailed by Lisa, a young Hungarian woman. Her motives are mysterious; is she simply a star-struck peasant girl, or an ambitious, manipulative aspiring star?
Beautiful violin virtuoso Camille has two obsessions: the music of Ravel, and a friend of her husband's who crafts violins. But his heart seems to be as cold as her playing is passionate.
French adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's memoirs of his childhood in the countryside, early in the century.
Sheherazade has been married to a ruler who wants many wives, but only one at a time. Consequently, as soon as he has bedded them, he has them put to death. In most retellings, the girl staves off this unfortunate conclusion by putting off the connubial event for a thousand and one nights, telling irresistible stories instead. In this one, she gets hold of a magic lamp.
My Mother's Castle (Le chateau de ma mere) is a sequel and companion piece to My Father's Glory (La Gloire de Mon Pere), both based on the childhood recollections of Marcel Pagnol. Like its predecessor, the movie explores the adventures of the young Marcel (Julien Ciamaca) during his summers at the family summer home in Provence.
Tabataba tells the story of a small Malagasy village during the independence uprising which took place in 1947 in the south of the country. For several months, part of the Malagasy population revolted against the French colonial army in a bloody struggle. The repression in villages that followed was terrible, leading to fires, arrests and torture. Women, children and the elderly were the indirect victims of the conflict and suffered particularly from famine and illness. One leader of the MDRM Malagasy Party, which campaigns for the independence of the country, arrives in a village. Solo (François Botozandry), the main character, is still too young to fight but he sees his brother and most of the men in his clan join up. His grandmother, Bakanga (Soavelo), knows what will happen, but Solo still hopes his elder brother will return a hero. After months of rumours, he sees instead the French army arrive to crush the rebellion.
The name of painter Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) is synonymous for a kind of painting style which celebrates carefree romantic life, indoors and out. He was a painter during the final decades of the French monarchy. In this story, he and his brother Cyprien (Robin Renucci), who is an early pioneer in medical anatomy (he dissected corpses and made drawings of what he found in them), have fallen in love with the same woman, Marianne (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), a laundress. This attraction has not escaped the notice of Salmon d'Anglas (Sami Frey), a conniving nobleman, who has his heart set on getting revenge on Jean-Honore (Joachim de Almeida) for refusing his patronage and becoming the darling of the French court.
Martial (Daniel Auteuil) is discharged from a mental insitution where he spent a few years due to a serious nervous breakdown. During his hospitalization, he ceases to speak with everyone, including his wife Régine (Thérèse Liotard), whom he had encouraged to find a new partner soon after entering the clinic. Upon his return he finds his mother (Danielle Darrieux), a busy business woman who owns a supermarket chain. She's convinced that his son, whom by now hardly talks to anyone after his experience, will be able to find himself again if tasked with some responbibilities. Soon enough, he's sent to Limoges on a business trip to check on one of their stores in the hope to reinvigorate its failing business. Once he arrives, Martial is faced with responsibilities he had never imagined, including dealing with the store's personnel.
Jean-Louis and Anne have had their fling and separated. Now 20 years have passed. He is still dating various women. She is now a big time director who's most recent film was a very expensive bomb. She comes up with the idea of making a romance based upon her fling with Jean-Louis. She contacts him to gain his permission. Jean-Louis is still in racing and goes away for a desert rally while she begins filming. She finds the mood of their romance difficult to recapture in her film.
The movie starts with an interview with director Claude Lelouch. He pleads viewers not to disclose the plot of the movie after leaving the projection room. Even the movie's trailer shows only a long sequence of faces gazing speechlessly in space. "Like all my movies, this one is about a man and a woman", says Lelouch in the interview.
