Production Design
In Benoît Jacquot’s production, Manet’s Olympia dominates the stage of the Opéra Bastille. In 1863, the painting caused a scandal: the prostitute awaits her client, her expression proud, her demeanour assured. Is this Violetta? Like Olympia, Verdi’s most celebrated heroine surrenders to the spectator just as she surrenders to love, going so far as to die on stage, a woman’s ultimate sacrifice for her lover. Or might it be the spectator who strips her bare and intrudes upon her privacy, in the image of this milieu of social voyeurism? Whatever the case, these two women regard us with defiance and subjugate those who cannot help but look at them.
Set Decoration
A twist of fate leaves a hapless accountant romantically torn between two sisters.
Production Design
A wanderer named Timothee arrives in a French village in 1865 pretending to be deaf and mute. He uses tricks to hypnotize a beautiful young woman named Josephine and takes advantage of her until he is arrested and tried for his crimes.
Set Decoration
A man prepares himself to be transferred to a detention center and rest home where he will relive one more time the highlights of his youth.
Production Design
Friends of a recently painter Jean-Baptiste Emmerich gather at a Paris railroad station for a four-hour journey to Limoges, where Emmerich wanted to be buried. The dozen travelers include art historian François and his lover Louis, who develops an interest in Bruno, whom he meets on a train. Traveling parallel with the train is a station wagon with Jean-Baptiste's body, and this vehicle is driven by Thierry, husband of Catherine, who's on the train with their daughter. François plays a taped interview with Jean-Baptiste, revealing his sexual appeal to both men and women. Lucie is convinced that she was his main love. Also on board is his nephew, Jean-Marie and Jean-Marie's estranged wife Claire. After the funeral in "Europe's largest cemetery," the story continues in the mansion of Jean-Baptiste's brother Lucien.
Set Decoration
Eliane Devries is the seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation in French Indochina, circa 1930. Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask intended to hide her torrid love affairs from upper class society
Production Design
This drama attempts to be a film within a film. In the outer story, Andre Dussolier stars as a film director working with drama students at the Paris Conservatory, making a film (the inner story) about a woman's obsession with a foreign desert. Wallowing in maudlin sentimentality, this feature fails to live up to the promise of its probable inspiration, Fame (1980), and was not well-received at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. However, as a medium for instructing director Francis Girod's actual students at the Paris Conservatory about the art and perils of filmmaking, it was undoubtedly a good deal more successful.
Production Design
A French family is shown as they go through the daily routines of life. Arguing, feasting, crying, and yearning for love are just some of the human emotions encountered. The mood wavers between excessive noise to silence while those not participating in the conversations eavesdrop.
