Maurice Bernart

Movies

L'Amitié
“I have on occasion experienced filmmaking as an intensely shared activity. Lively friendships result and remain. Filming that affection today is no act of nostalgia. Paths once crossed make things simple. People who have been behind the camera, or in front of it, giving the movie their all, are without illusion.” (Alain Cavalier)
Stand-by
Producer
A woman remains in an airport after her husband announces he wants a divorce, just before they are to board a plane for Argentina. Unwilling to turn to her sister and emotionally traumatized she makes the airport her home, making money by working as a prostitute. She strikes up a friendship with a café worker Marco.....
C'est jamais loin
Producer
In Dieppe, a taciturn young man is fascinated by a woman whom he has only seen in the street. One day, he leaves Dieppe and Lola, the girl he was living with. He becomes a truck-driver. In the Middle East, Christian's travels end in a prison in the heart of the desert. There he meets Eliot who lives an isolated life within the prison environment. Since Eliot talks, Christian who was mute up to that point, listens then speaks too. But Eliot receives letters from a woman: Marie. And Christian starts dreaming that she's the woman he saw on the streets of Dieppe.
I Don't Kiss
Producer
A good-looking but naive lad leaves his mountain village to try and make his way in Paris. He thinks maybe he will try acting but things don't go too well for him. Eventually he is forced to sell himself to men and though he meets an attractive girl she is herself a prostitute with a vicious pimp.
The Elegant Criminal
Lambolley
On 9 January 1836, Pierre Lacenaire goes to the guillotine, a murderer and a thief. He gives Allard, a police inspector, his life story, written while awaiting execution. He also asks Allard to care for Hermine, a lass to whom he has been guardian for more than ten years. In flashbacks, from the prison as Lacenaire writes, from Allard's study as he and Hermine read, and from other readers' memory after the book is published, we see Lacenaire's childhood as he stands up to bullies, including priests, his youthful thieving, his first murder, his brief army career, his seduction of a princess, and his affair with Avril, a young man who dies beside him.
La Putain du roi
Producer
Set in the 17th-century, an Italian nobleman weds an impoverished countess, who is wooed by the King of Piedmont and faces pressure from his entire court to succumb to his wishes.
Bunker Palace Hotel
Producer
In an imaginary dictature of a futuristic world, rebellion has broken out. The men in power scramble to the Bunker Palace Hotel, a bunker built long ago for just this kind of contingency. But a rebel spy sneaks in, and although her nature is very quickly suspected, she is left to observe the raving of the decadent power class, who keeps wondering what happened to their leader, who has failed to show up.
Nocturne Indien
Producer
The enigmatic but vivid imagery of this loosely plotted film is based on a similarly evocative novel by the Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, Noturno Indiano. An old friend of the hero's has been living in Bombay with a prostitute. His friend Peter Schlemihl (Otto Tausig) is a concentration camp survivor, who went to India after being captivated by a photograph he saw there. When the prostitute writes to him in Europe asking that he rescue his friend from a mysterious malaise, he flies into India to try and help. When he gets to Bombay, he discovers that his friend has disappeared. Following the clues left behind by the friend, and based on his acquaintance with him, he journeys to Madras to speak to a Theosophist dignitary there, and then journeys on to Portugues Goa. With each step of his journey, the hero (Jean-Hugues Anglade) becomes more identified with his friend, and re-enacts in his own person the transformations he must have experienced.
Agent Trouble
Producer
Amanda Weber is a museum employee. Her nephew, Victorien, who feels that wild animals should not be kept in zoos, while hitchhiking saw a mysterious bus with 50 dead tourists that later was found by autorities at the bottom of a lake. When Victorien gets in very serious problems due to what he saw Amanda seeks to find out what happened and soon also becomes a target.
Thérèse
Producer
The life of little St. Therese of Lisieux, depicted in minimalist vignettes. Therese and her sisters are all nuns in a Carmelite convent. Her devotion to Jesus and her concept of "the little way" to God are shown clearly, using plain modern language. A sense of angelic simplicity comes across without fancy lights, choirs, or showy miracles.
The Wings of the Dove
Producer
A 20th-century prostitute (Dominique Sanda) arranges for her lover (Michele Placido) to wed a wealthy, dying millionairess (Isabelle Huppert) in Venice.
First Voyage
Yachtsman
When her mother dies, a teenage girl decides to find her long-absent sailor father. Together with her five-year-old brother, she begins a long and dangerous quest, which will finally be rewarded.
A Sweet Journey
Producer
Lucia and Elena are best friends since childhood. They take a car trip from Paris to the country. Their conversations are overtly intimate, but more revealing is their tacit understanding of each others' personality and desires.
Serie Noire
Producer
Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris' suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who's been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution.
This Sweet Sickness
Producer
Industrious accountant David Martinaud claims to be visiting his parents every weekend, but it's merely a cover for the labor-intensive refurbishing of his country cottage. The reason for David's secrecy is that his childhood crush, Lise, lives nearby, and, although she's married, he still believes they'll get together. His devotion to the idea borders on mania, and, when Lise's husband is accidentally killed, he quickly spirals out of control.