Jean-Pierre Léaud

The hard life of a young man in the provinces of France in the ’60s when you want to seduce girls or even just have a talk with them.Read More »

Georges “Jojo” Castagnier is an adolescent who lives in a poor room under the roof of a block of apartments in the Pigalle section of Paris. He ran away from home when he realized that his stepmother hates him. Among Jojo’s many neighbors is the object of his affection, gorgeous nightclub dancer Jenny Dorr. But, to Jojo’s disappointment, Jenny becomes the lover of former boxer Dicky, who spends his time loafing about the Pigalle cafés.Read More »

One of the most striking and critically acclaimed French films of the 1990s, Irma Vep offers a witty and insightful comment on film-making in that decade. The film demonstrates not just the precarious nature of an industry which is constantly constrained by time and money, and its susceptibility to personal whims and prejudices, but also provides an eye-opening résumé of the whole film making process. The film was directed by Olivier Assayas, a one-time critic who has since gained a reputation as one of France’s most promising filmmakers.Read More »

“Reminiscent of the finale of Duel in the Sun, but pushed to the level of excruciating lunatic farce, with a touch of Fuller’s madness.”
— Jonathan Rosenbaum

IMDB:
Despite most Cahiers du cinéma critics admired many western authors, when they themselves became filmmakers few dared to overtly revisit that genre. One year after Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El topo and as Sergio Leone premiered A Fistful of Dollars, Moullet charges full steam ahead with a wild western starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, taking this genre and one of its key characters to unexpected territory.Read More »

Synopsis:
August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest king of France, surrounded by his relatives and doctors.Read More »

Alice is a successful barrister who lives with her stay-at-home boyfriend Nicholas. When their mutual friend Juliette splits up with her partner Michel, Nicholas takes solace in the fact that his relationship with Alice is a stable one. He does not realise that Alice has been seeing another man, a handsome sports photographer, Gaspard, for the past few months. When he discovers the truth, Nicholas goes to extreme lengths to gain Gaspard’s confidence, with the intention of sabotaging the affair…Read More »

Jacques Laurent made pornographic films in the 1970s and ’80s, but had put that aside for 20 years. His artistic ideas, born of the ’60s counter-culture, had elevated the entire genre. Older and paunchier, he is now directing a porno again. Jacques’s artistry clashes with his financially-troubled producer’s ideas about shooting hard-core sex. Jacques has been estranged from his son Joseph for years, since the son first learned the nature of the family business. They are now speaking again. Joseph and his friends want to recapture the idealism of 1968 with a protest. Separated from his wife, Jacques strives for personal renewal with plans to build a new house by himself…Read More »

IMDB says:
“Love at Twenty” unites five directors from around the world to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The directors create their peculiar scenarios with Truffaut revisiting Antoine Doinel, this time finding some meaning to his life while getting involved with a girl; Renzo Rossellini’s episode about an abandoned mistress; Ishihara’s tale about an obsessive love; Ophüls’ story about a pregnant woman trying to plot against the baby’s father; and Wajda presenting a confusing relationship between people from different generations.Read More »

Quote:
In this Finnish comedy, which features all-English dialogue and nary a Scandanavian in it, Henri Boulanger (Jean-Pierre Leaud), is a colorless English civil servant, who was given a speedy retirement when his agency was “privatized,” complete with a gold watch. His life is so barren that removing even the empty activities of his job makes it not worth living, so he attempts suicide by sticking his head in a gas oven – just as a gas service strike gets underway. Frustrated, he takes his savings from the bank and heads off to hire a contract killer to take his life from him. Then he really begins to enjoy life – so much so, that now he wants to avoid his imminent demise. —Clarke Fountain, RoviRead More »