Ministre de l'Education
With the President of the Republic very ill, an advisor offers an unusual suggestion: hire a double to replace him during his convalescence. The lucky chosen one is a member of the Comédie-Française but he is also shy, unexciting and often consigned to the supporting role...But a seismic change is about to happen in the Republic.
Cornélie
At 25, Berthe dreams of making a living from her painting, never to marry, and to always stay with her sister Edma. Her parents do not see things from the same angle. Then Berthe meets Edouard Manet, who takes an interest in this young artist apprentice whose face inspires him.
Edmond is a misfit at the office. When his co-workers pull a prank giving him donkey ears, Edmond realizes his true nature: he, in fact, is a real donkey.
Jeanne
August in Paris' suburbs, seven friends are gathered to spend a week in the city where they grew up. The city is empty and the days pass by under a deep blue sky. Each of them has a reason to be there: some still live there, some come back to see their family, some are searching their childhood, some want to escape boredom or eventually searching for love. They are all bearing the fact that these moments they are sharing are maybe the last ones.
La mère de Jeanne
After learning from her mother that her father lives in India, a young woman goes there to meet him for the first time.
Dominique Verdier
When she was seven, Elise Gardet witnessed her mother’s brutal murder. Ever since, she has tried to forget this unsolved crime. Now she’s 18 and beautiful, but her bourgeois family and her stepmother’s anxiety are suffocating her.
Luce Bauer
In Brazzaville, in 1944, Alex Emmerich was sentenced to wander the seas by Hélène Latray, the wife of Félix Beauvois, the man Alex loved. In 1962, exiled on Hatray cruises and feeling the coming death, Alex decides to compose for his love a testament: the photographic report of his agony.
Georgette Petiot
A true story shot in a German Impressionistic style. In France during the Nazi occupation, Dr. Petiot (Michel Serrault) offered to help Jews escape the Nazis. They would come to his house, and he would kindly give them lethal "vaccinations" for their anticipated travel to Argentina. Then he would steal everything the brought with them (in addition to their up-front payment to him) and burn their bodies in his home-made crematorium.
Mrs. Griffith
After the bankruptcy of their father's stonemasonry firm, brothers Nicola and Andrea emigrate to America to restore their fortunes. After many adventures and near-disasters, they end up in Hollywood designing sets for D.W.Griffith and marry beautiful actresses, but tragedy strikes with the arrival of World War I, which finds the brothers fighting on opposite sides...
Tante Marguerite
Roger is a 16-year-old who seeks to lose his virginity in this erotic drama. His initial efforts are unsuccessful, but World War I breaks out and men are seen marching off to battle. Roger goes overboard when he is presented with several amorous opportunities.
Hugo Santiago and writers Juan José Saer and Jorge Semprún move back and forth between Paris and the city of Aquilea in a shadowy fable about exile. The frontier between one city and the other begins to blur after Bandoneonist Rodolfo Mederos is visited by his sister, a member of a guerrilla organization.
Frédérique
A diverse group of guests gather in a small hotel in Paris to contemplate the state of their lives in this pretentious drama. Joseph Goldman (Fernando Rey) is a washed-up Hollywood actor making a living in the dinner-theater circuit. Accompanied by his wife Sarah (Carole Regnier), Goldman meets Frederique (Berangere Bonvoisin), who is hiding from her former lover. French financier Arthur (Fabrice Luchini) hopes to get into the film industry and bends the ear of a British director (Michael Medwin). The talkative film has little action, and none of the characters evoke much interest or resolve their dilemma.
La femme de Joseph
In 1859, Savoy Alps, Joseph is a peddler who leaves his mountain village to travel through Northern Italy to sell cotton, thread, lace and trinkets. His road will be strewn with pitfalls and encounters, sometimes funny, sometimes pathetic.
In this whimsical fable, Resnais deftly interweaves three story lines: the creation of an early-20th-century utopia; romantic high jinks at a school conference; and a fantasy sparked by F/X pioneer Georges Méliès.
Mireille
In July of 1976, the Societé Générale of France was robbed of well over $10 million dollars by a group burrowing through the sewers of Paris. This movie is based on a book by the thieves' mastermind, Albert Spaggiari. The famous theft won the nickname, "the great drain robbery," and this romanticized cinematic retelling of the true story stars Francis Huster as Spaggiari.
La fille du maire
In the summer of 1939, 13-year-old Marie goes with her parents to visit her grandparents in a small town near Avignon. Marie discovers her femininity and falls for a young Jewish doctor, but he prefers Eva, Marie's mother.
The first verse of an elegy by Louise Labbé, a Lyon poetess, the subject of an unfinished project.
Two beings, a man and a woman, coming from elsewhere, find themselves in a church in ruins after all life on Earth has disappeared.