Mathieu Amalric

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Spiritual disciplines span the spectrum from quiet personal self-reflection to physically militant offensives against the ego that tyrannizes us all. Writer/Director Bertrand Bonello’s latest film On War deals with the latter.

On War is a film about purging—the purging of self, of attachment to the world, and of attachment to assumptions about one’s self in the world. As the characters in the film suggest, it is only through this purging that a person may fully release into the immediacy of joy and pleasure. And it is joy and pleasure, things real and authentic, that our protagonist Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric) is searching for.Read More »

The story of Jacques Mesrine, France’s public enemy No. 1 during the 1970s. An evocation of the his life, which traces the colorful career of this gangster called “the man with the hundred faces”. After nearly two decades of legendary criminal feats – from multiple bank robberies and to prison breaks – Mesrine was gunned down by the French police in Paris. The second episode of the Mesrine legend.Read More »

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In his fourth film as director and as the only professional actor in a cast of amateurs, Mathieu Amalric stars as Joachim, a washed-up television producer who, after leaving his life in Paris for the United States, returns home for a cross-country tour with a burlesque troupe. Joachim takes the troupe, played by actual burlesque performers with stage names like Kitten on the Keys and Dirty Martini, to show after show in towns along the coast (amusingly, the outline of their travel path resembles a bare breast). Joachim serves only as the ladies’ manager (when he tries to give them performance notes, they reject his advice), but they form a ramshackle surrogate family that – wait for it – comes to stand in for the actual family Joachim left behind. When the venue for the troupe’s planned grand finale in Paris pulls out, he must return to the capital to find another; while there, he reunites with his young children, an ex-lover, and various other people from his past.Read More »

Robinson, appropriately named as we will soon discover, is on vacation in Biarritz with his wife. What follows is the story behind the loss of his arm, a story that becomes increasingly bizarre and eventually apocalyptic, leading us down a narrative path of labyrinthine complexity. The resulting film is an extraordinary feat of imagination and daring, set against the backdrop of a world on the verge of destruction.Read More »

Olivier is a real estate agent so broke he camps out in the apartments he is supposed to be selling. The death of his mother brings along many surprises, including a very unexpected inheritance: a run-down building on the outskirts of Paris! Faith renewed, Olivier is going to be able to pay long overdue child support, rebuild his relationship with his daughter, help his dad out and square up with his ex-wife. His hopes die out when he sees the building: it is completely run down, filthy, a burden rather than the life raft he needed. Moreover, an old woman, Liliane, is a squatter on the top floor, and he can’t flip the place with her around.Read More »

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Some filmmakers have difficulty traveling between the short format and feature films, the former more often than not feeling like exercises, excerpts, or condensations, or the latter, in rarer cases (given the relative death of the short format some 60-odd years ago) seeming simply like brief ideas outstaying their welcome. The aesthetic of writer/director Eugène Green is so clean and simple in this age of image saturation and hyper-abundant kinetics that his “mini-film” Les Signes feels as natural and fluid as his fascinating longer features like 2004’s Le Pont des Arts and 2003’s miniature knight’s tale, Le Monde Vivant. Read More »

Mathieu Amalric’s directing debut is a comedy-drama about a not quite functional family…Read More »

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Olivier Assayas directed this French drama, examining several relationships over a year’s span, capturing varying textures and shades of feeling between people from late August of one year until early September of the next. Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric) and Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) separate, despite the affection that still binds them. A new love develops between Gabriel and young designer Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) as they overcome their fears and uncertainties.Read More »

Synopsis:
Forty-three year old Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby – Jean-Do to his friends – awakens not knowing where he is. He is in a Berck-sur-Mer hospital, where he has been for the past several weeks in a coma after suffering a massive stroke. Although his cognitive facilities are in tact, he quickly learns that he has what is called locked-in syndrome which has resulted in him being almost completely paralyzed, including not being able to speak. One of his few functioning muscles is his left eye. His physical situation and hospitalization uncomfortably bring together the many people in his life, including: Céline Desmoulins, his ex-lover and mother of his children; Inès, his current lover; and his aged father who he calls Papinou.Read More »