Synopsis
Comedy: After French yuppie Arthur Vlaminck has graduated at the National School of Administration he joins the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. Vlaminck’s ambitious new colleagues try to bully him around while his superior Claude Maupas acts on the other hand rather phlegmatic. Somewhat surprisingly Vlaminck’s career gains momentum.Read More »
France, 1562. Against a background of the savage Catholic/Protestant wars, Marie de Mézières (Mélanie Thierry), a beautiful young aristocrat, and the rakish Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), fall in love, but Marie’s father has promised her hand in… France, 1562. Against a background of the savage Catholic/Protestant wars, Marie de Mézières (Mélanie Thierry), a beautiful young aristocrat, and the rakish Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), fall in love, but Marie’s father has promised her hand in marriage to the Prince of Montpensier (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). When he is called away to battle, her husband leaves her in the care of Count Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), an aging nobleman with a disdain for warfare. As he experiences his own forbidden desire for Marie, Chabannes must also protect her from the dangerously corrupt court dominated by Catherine de Medici. Director Bertrand Tavernier translates Madame de Lafayette’s 1622 novella into a bracingly intelligent and moving evocation of the terrible conflict between duty and passion. Though the themes are classic, Tavernier, with the cinematographer Bruno de Keyzer’s vivid landscapes and Philippe Sarde’s pulsing score, makes them feel passionately, urgently contemporary.Read More »
The war exploits of French captain Conan and his men during World War I and during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.Read More »
A portmanteau film in which the producer, instead of as usual using already well known directors with a commercial draw, allowed five new young directors to each have a crack at an episode about romance.Read More »
Quote:
Post-’68 France as “a curious country” of befuddled fathers and obscured revolutionaries. The middle-aged Everyhomme (Philippe Noiret) is a widowed watch-tinkerer in Lyon, who gets his politics from TV news and “likes to be legal” too much to cross a red light on an empty street. The necessary shock arrives: His son (Sylvain Rougerie) is on the run, having killed a factory security guard. Gallicizing Georges Simenon’s novel, Bertrand Tavernier handles the moment with control, self-effacement, and muted compassion: Noiret’s dazed bus ride back home after being told the news, the activist paraphernalia in the boy’s room (scrawled on the wall is Céline’s dictum about pastoral battlefields) unnoticed by an imploding father fumbling for a bed.Read More »
Synopsis:
“Monsieur Ladmiral is an ageing painter who lives alone in his country house, cared for by his housekeeper, Mercedes. Every so often, his son Gonzague comes to visit him with his young family. One late summer Sunday in 1912, the customary visit is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Ladmiral’s unpredictable daughter, Irene…”
– Films de FranceRead More »
Quote:
January, 1920. 350,000 French soldiers remain missing in action. Major Dellaplane tirelessly matches the dead and the wounded with families’ descriptions. Honor and ethics drive him; he hates the idea of “the unknown soldier.” Into his sector, looking for her husband, comes a haughty, politically connected Parisian, Madame Ir├¬øne de Courtil. Brusquely, Dellaplane offers her 1/350,000th of his time, but as their paths cross and she sees his courage and resolve, feelings change. After he finds a surprising connection between her missing husband and a local teacher, Ir├¬øne makes Dellaplane an offer. This man of action hesitates: has he missed his only chance?Read More »
From IMDB:
In ‘Round Midnight, real-life jazz legend Dexter Gordon brilliantly portrays the fictional tenor sax player Dale Turner, a musician slowly losing the battle with alcoholism, estranged from his family, and hanging on by a thread in the 1950’s New York jazz world. Dale gets an offer to play in Paris, where, like many other black American musicians at the time, he enjoys a respect for his humanity that is not based upon the color of his skin. A Parisian man who is obsessed with Turner’s music befriends him and attempts to save Turner from himself. Although for Dale the damage is already done, his poignant relationship with the man and his young daughter re-kindles his spirit and his music as the end draws near.Read More »
In Paris, Lulu, a passionate policeman, works with the faith of a rookie, despite the sclerotic bureaucracy and the incompetence or negligence of some of his colleagues. In his new position as a narcotics inspector, he tries to keep his sanity as he witnesses the worst of the human condition.Read More »