Camille, a young, provincial, proletarian man works for Hélène Courtray, who is still beautiful and seductive. She’s a sophisticated, cultivated and well-to-do woman who has engaged him to care for her reclusive son who has spent the past few years voluntarily locked up in his room. An encounter between two persons and two worlds where the relationship of the young man to this closed, strange and unknown universe rapidly turns tradegy.Read More »
PLOT: The fantasies and dreams of two over-the-hill actresses are intertwined with their realities, as the two roommates struggle to survive their day-to-day lives in the expensive and difficult world of Paris. In the end, their struggles are eased when the widow of a man they had both been married to gives them a small legacy.Read More »
Plot: Françoise Canavaggia (Danielle Darrieux) heads back to Toulon in 1963 with murderous plans for the people who now inhabit the villa that had once been hers. After arriving in Toulon, Françoise meets up with her sister and a niece, both adding to her tendency toward self-analysis. But with images of the present and past mixed with memories and fantasies of the past — and excerpts from speeches by Petain and De Gaulle combined with psychological and philosophical ramblings — director Paul Vecchiali has created complexities that many an audience will never figure out. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »
Plot : From the novel by Pierre Lesou. Paris after WWII. Marly (Nicolas Silberg), a pimp, wants to retire from business. He’d like to offer Nella (Hélène Surgère), his protege, a tavern on the banks of the Marne. But both are caught in the crossfire from the fight between rival gangs for the control of prostitution….
One of the best TV works by Vecchiali. Among his favourites.Read More »
The world and a life in four walls, and another portrait of a mother – selfish and generous, mercurial and unchanging. C’est la vie! (1980) takes Pagnol and Renoir’s experiments with open-air theatre to inspired and ecstatic conclusions, especially the latter’s love of depth-framing across windows and partitions, and lays the groundwork for Vecchiali’s later experiments with long-take space and time in Once More (1988). Also a pseudo-sequel to Marie-Claude Treilhou’s exquisite Simone Barbès ou la vertu (1980), reaffirming the Diagonale as not just a production model, but a kind of surrogate family, and a creative universe unto this forged community and itself. With Chantal Delsaux, Ingrid Bourgoin, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, and my beloved Hélène Surgère and Michel Delahaye.Read More »
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Experimental film mixes genres, styles and even XXX vs. soft-core
Paul Vecchiali’s work is an acquired taste, as he is a filmmaker who marches to the beat of his own drum, never fashionable or popular. Produced by a famous pornographer of the day (Jean-Francois Davy of “Exhibition” fame) it’s a rare mainstream (sort of) movie that carefully integrates explicit hardcore sex content into a strong story.Read More »