Self (archive footage)
Mysteries, hidden defects, scandals or family secrets? Nothing like that in the life of the filmmaker Claude Chabrol. Just a lifestyle of a Buddha gourmand, a sneaky anarchist, an insolent lover of life. There is a question though… How was he able to make 58 movies in 50 years? This is the story about his outstanding life, told by Cécile, his adopted daughter and also his collaborator for many years.
A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress. Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey. Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity. Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.
Madame Pingret
Aunt Annie
Paul is a sweet man-child, raised — and smothered — by his two eccentric aunts in Paris since the death of his parents when he was a toddler. Now thirty-three, he still does not speak. Paul's aunts have only one dream for him: to win piano competitions. Although Paul practices dutifully, he remains unfulfilled until he submits to the interventions of his upstairs neighbour. Suitably named after the novelist, Madame Proust offers Paul a concoction that unlocks repressed memories from his childhood and awakens the most delightful of fantasies.
Monique
Monique, happy and about sixty, is at the head of a small meeting agency, specializing in the third age. Her friend Madeleine is a regular and does not hesitate to make her organize meetings with the gents that she finds to her taste, more out of curiosity than of desire to find the soul-mate. While, the meetings follow each other and are all different. Love does not, necessarily, knock where we expect it too !
Paulette
Paulette lives alone in a housing project in the Paris suburbs. With her meager pension, she can no longer make ends meet.
Maryse
Caroline and Olivier are sixteen, in love and would like nothing more than to be left alone. Unfortunately, be it parents, grandparents or even teachers, everyone seems to want to meddle and interfere in their affairs.
Mamie
It is 1979 and Albertine, 10, and all her family members have gathered in Brittany to celebrate the birthday of her grandmother. Everyone thinks that the Skylab space station from NASA will fall on their heads this summer. The meeting turns into a crazy weekend full of revelations, love and song.
Amandine
When his loot is mysteriously stolen, a small-time thief on the run hides out in a small village, posing as the local schoolteacher.
Amandine
Madeleine
They stick to our skin and soul, our clothes. We believe we buy them, they own us. Warning ! these rags are traitors: far from dressing us they expose our complexes, our moods ... Clinging to their hangers, to our memories too, they exercise an underhand dictatorship. Snuggled up, huddled together, they build a bulwark against oblivion in our closets. Often stained for eternity with ink or redcurrant, impregnated with perfume, tears sometimes, piled up or messed up on our shelves, they remain forever linked to the happy or unhappy chapters of our life. It is through the evocation of their wardrobe that Gigi, Eve, Marie, Nora, Françoise, Amanda, Lisa and the others evoke the past, missed appointments and those that changed their lives, the joys and childhood revolts, giggles, disappointments, dramas, parties and hopes too…
Céleste
Theatre play broadcast live from the Théâtre André Malraux in France.
Claudine (voice)
A thrilling mystery that unfurls in the alleys and on the rooftops of the French capital, Paris, over the course of one adventurous evening.
Annie Lafont
Gabrielle Mathey
Gabrielle, a pleasant woman in her sixties, learns that she is about to be evicted from her second-hand shop...
A married father of three, lives in Créteil doing odd jobs and spends his time at the local PMU bar. One day, to please his daughter, he promises a little too quick to take the whole family on vacation to ski. The only problem: if he breaks his promise, his wife will divorce him.
Marie-Hélène
la mère de M. Martineau
A few days before the baccalaureate, a high school student decides to settle accounts with the most cowardly teacher in the school.
Yvonne
Two divorced fathers Mathias and Antoine, decide to raise their children together in London. Their lives consist of Sophie the pretty florist secretly in love with Antoine, Yvonne who runs the 'bistrot français' and has a very maternal outlook on life and Mac Enzie, the boss of Antoine's agency who is completley in love with Yvonne despite the big age difference.
Mélina
A young professional woman takes radical action to force her husband's help with the household chores.
Madame Grenelle
Nora Wilder is freaking out. Everyone around her is either in a relationship, married, or has children. Nora is in her thirties, alone with job she's outgrown and a mother who constantly reminds her of it all. Not to mention her best friend Audrey's "perfect marriage". But after a series of disastrous dates, Nora unexpectedly meets Julien, a quirky Frenchman who opens her eyes to a lot more than love.
Marie-Anne
Whilst seeking out locations in the South of France for his next film, director Luc Moullet comes across a male corpse. He immediately decides to use this to his advantage. By swapping his passport with that of the dead man, Moullet hopes that the world will believe he is dead, thereby ensuring a renewed interest in his work. Unfortunately, the scheme backfires, since the dead man was someone rather important...
Sylvie adulte
France in the fifties. The teenage orphan Sylvie is put in an institution for "fallen" or endangered girls, subjected to harsh treatment by the bigoted nuns who run the institution like a prison. Sylvie befriends a girl who wants to escape.
Danièle
Danielle (Bernadette Lafont), a grandmother in her sixties, is planning to take her two grandchildren to their father’s house for the Easter vacation. Since retiring as a schoolteacher, Danielle has regularly taken on this responsibility after her daughter’s divorce. This time, however, the children’s father is not there to welcome them, giving Danielle the opportunity to spend a bit more time with her grandchildren and to take them out for the day. Jumping at every opportunity presented to them, Danielle soon transforms this day-outing into an impromptu holiday. Only what starts out as a fun adventure gradually turns into an inexorable deconstructing experience, and it soon becomes impossible for Danielle to contemplate taking the kids back…
Geneviève Costa
Life is easy for 43-year-old Luis, a happy single guy, fulfilled in his job of star nose with a perfume creation company, cosseted by his mother and five sisters. It could have lasted for a whole life, but fed up with mollycoddling and helping him, his mother and sisters decide it's time he got married, and the sooner the better!
Mama
Since her parents passed away, Princess Mona lives by herself in a castle with two hideous, ghastly characters, Goomi and His Lordship. One day her sobs draw the attention of a unicorn, called U, who wants to comfort and protect Mona for as long as she needs. U becomes Mona's companion, her confidant and her inseparable friend. While Mona grows into a beautiful princess, a group of charming, peaceful and fanciful Yeah-Yeah’s settles in the neighboring forest. They have no particular special powers, yet they soon bring about major changes in everyone's lives, especially in Kulka, the dreamy musician.
The nurse
September 1960: on a purely punitive basis, eight scouts must climb the solid mass of Brévent to 2500 meters of altitude. The so beautiful and so majestic mountain which draws up face them very quickly reveals dangerous. All the techniques of orientation learned at the scouts will do nothing there. The teenagers find themselves delivered to themselves. Lost in the abrupt throats, the eight boys are confronted cold, with the hunger and the fear.
Self
A thoroughly researched documentary on Chabrol, exploring the creative process and the great artistic process of the master of cinema.
Michael thought he'd seen his mother for the last time when she passed away in a Paris hospital, but months later she reappears in the neighborhood of Belleville, talkative as ever, and full of insight.
Jeanne
Carmen
Voilà dix ans que les chemins de René et de François se sont séparés. De l'époque glorieuse où, flics, ils écumaient le quartier Montmartre, il ne leur reste qu'une poignée de souvenirs, l'argent de leurs ripouseries s'étant évaporé avec le temps. Tout à une fin. Jusqu'à ce que ça recommence. René, à la limite de la clochardisation, survit avec pour domicile un bateau déglingué...
Self
Documentary about the making of French director Claude Chabrol's first film Le Beau Serge in 1958.
Mona
Sophie Frendo
During the Second World War, in 1943, Anne Frendo, a young dreamer and artist, living alone with her father in Tunisia, discovers, by chance, the lifeless body of a French soldier, parachuted in. At the invitation of her aunt, Sophie Frendo, an Egyptologist, she sets out on a journey that leads her to Sfax, Egypt, taking with her a letter that the soldier had begun to write, and which seems to be intended for her.
Mme. Sauvage
Didier never knew that a wrong film review of a film which he did not bother to watch would land him in numerous troubles.
Esther
At her son's funeral, Solange, a lawyer famous for losing hopeless cases, agrees to defend René, her son's age, accused of murdering his wealthy aunt, Jeanne, who's part of the Franco-Belgian Psychoanalytic Society, known for odd views and methods. She reads Jeanne's journal, documenting René's criminal tendencies. Solange believes him innocent, manipulated into the murder or framed. Odd psychiatrists turn up, including Georges Didier, who runs FBPS, and his rival, Christian, who believes crime originates in a story's taking hold of a person. After the verdict, René and Solange's relationship changes, Georges and his society commit a bizarre act, and the police record Solange's story.
Two housewives discuss philosophical themes (actually an updated dialogue between Plato and Socrates) while doing the house work. The husband of one of them rehearses his part in a theatrical play, reading a 20th century philosophical text about totalitarianism.
Madeleine Carver
An Australian woman searches for her soldier brother in Cambodia during the civil breakdown from which Pol Pot would emerge.
Director
Pierre and Maryel have the same mother but have never met even though they have been writing to each other for fifteen years. One day, Pierre decides to see his sister and goes to Saint-André where she lives. The local youths don't exactly appreciate his presence.
Anna
Pierre and Maryel have the same mother but have never met even though they have been writing to each other for fifteen years. One day, Pierre decides to see his sister and goes to Saint-André where she lives. The local youths don't exactly appreciate his presence.
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a leading light in the symbolist movement of French literature, which rejected the use of realism in the depiction of emotions and ideas. In this film, Robert is an eccentric, oversized young man who puzzles and infuriates his parents by locking himself into a closet for long periods of time; at the same time, he loudly recites poetry by Arthur Rimbaud. Kicked out of the house by his exasperated parents, he decides to make a pilgrimage of the exotic African sites Rimbaud haunted in his final years. He meets and then travels with Isabelle, who is attempting to escape from a rejected suitor's unwanted attentions. In addition to that problem, she has another, more curious problem. It seems she is turning into a hawthorn bush.
Self
You're a provincial kid in Paris and suddenly you're the center of attention: Movie stars, famous directors and sexy women are doting on you because they all think you're the son of their long-dead legendary friend. You never knew your dad, but the facts of this famous guy's life suggest that he might have fathered you. Your mom tells you nothing. All the fuss makes you uncomfortable at first but soon you find it's rather fun to be the son of the famous Gascogne. And in the midst of it all you fall in love. It is, after all, springtime in Paris.
Small, hunchbacked and unlucky, Zadoc dreams of finding love. Chased from his village, he is propelled towards the unknown.
Annie
Several lives intersect when a middle-aged woman is left by her husband, and she decides to trek him down with the help of her equally troubled sister.
Lucie
After trying a job as a stripper in a Barcelona carnival, Eva (Aure Attika) is ready for something new, so she heads over to France and becomes the roommate of a gay American artist (Phillip Bartlett) and works as the housewife for two wealthy older homosexuals (Claude Chabrol and Jean-François Balmer. After she gets settled, she takes a job at a government office for a while but then decides to have a child, which her obliging roommate makes with her the old fashioned way. He then returns to his usual preference, while Eva explores becoming an artist herself. From time to time in this easygoing comedy, Eva's similarly independent and quirky mother (Bernadette Lafont) shows up.
inspectrice Claire Derain
A man comes to a small town in France and witness the apparent murder of a woman pharmacist. He teams up with the victim's vulgar assistant to try to solve the mystery.
Baronin von Wrangel
The immature young ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, was extremely shy around women but (according to this film) was constantly being propositioned, lewdly or otherwise, by ambitious courtesans. When he was finally married to his Empress, the teen-aged Bavarian princess Sisi (Elizabeth), it seems that his relief knew no bounds, for he was now sure that he would never have to think about sex ever again. According to the filmmakers, this is the true history of that marriage. This story is a complete reversal of the romantic legend depicted in the popular 1955 film Sissi, which helped brighten the emerging stardom of Romy Schneider.
Madame Benedetti
In this detective and crime comedy, the heir to a large fortune is an unknown, and nobody knows him or where he can be found. An occasional musician, Fred plans to pass himself off as that man. It's a goofy idea, but maybe it will work. However, before he can set up the con properly, he learns that his loser of a brother has, inexplicably, just gotten his first job in years as one of the detectives who is searching for the heir. At one time, the two brothers played together in an amateur rock band, but as a result of a heated disagreement about how to play the Ray Noble standard "Cherokee", the two haven't spoken in years. It's going to take a lot of persuading to pull this scam off.
A mother takes vengeance on her dead son's ex-girlfriend.
Alexandra
Sofía, a dentist, and Tristán, owner of a shoe store, live in the same building but have never met or even seen each other. Disenchanted with love, both have sworn never to fall in love again, until they finally meet.
Constance
A woman who only has a couple of months left to live decides to go on a final journey, crossing several countries.
Nelly Roux
Nicole (Agnes Soral) is sent up the river for infanticide in this routine woman-in-prison feature. There she meets Marthe (Annie Girardot), a fellow murderess who receives special treatment from the warden Dessombes (Marie-Christine Barrault). The warden frames Nelly (Bernadette Lafont) for drug possession and has her thrown into solitary confinement. Sabien (Corinne Touzet) is a newcomer convicted of armed robbery who latches on to the lesbian Lucie (Milva), a longtime prisoner slated for release.
Mme Dugland
The leader of a nudist colony enlists the help of left-wing militant when he mistakenly believes he should receive the Legion of Honor.
Jeanne
Charles and Emmanuelle organize as every year, the congress of perfumers who distribute their products in their castle. Garibaldi, their mutilated and somewhat disturbed son-in-law, will be the butler.
Jacinthe
Bernadette Lafont and Michel Bouquet reteam with Kaplan as, respectively, a clairvoyant and a criminologist drawn into the orbit of widow Caroline Sihol; when the latter’s late husband Pierre Arditi turns out to yet have surprises up his sleeve for all of them, Kaplan hones in on the women’s by-necessity connection. The director foregoes her own cameo in favor of ones for colleagues Jean Chapot and Claude Makovski, both as nurses.
Fernande Olivier
Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.
La Masseuse
In this deadly game of cat and mouse, Roland Wolf is writing a book on the life of game show host Christian Legagneur--or is he?
The mother
Can a loving relationship of eight years go down the drain because of a single moment of carelessness? Virginie and Laurent have always treasured fidelity, but Laurent's opinions and appetites are starting to shift with the times.
Hélène Mons
Inspector Lavardin is called to a provincial village to investigate a murder – only to find that one of his ex-lovers is the victim’s widow.
Léone
Charlotte Castang is a working-class 13-year-old girl, who lives in a drab, run-down neighbourhood, and is ready to become an adult. Her mother died giving birth to her, and she lives with her crass brother and a father whose attention is elsewhere. Her only friend is Lulu, a sick 10-year-old she regards as a pest. Charlotte is antisocial, bored and dreams of a better life. Her life improves when she meets Clara Bauman, a pianist prodigy.
Self / Camille (archive footage)
A tribute to the late, great French director Francois Truffaut, this documentary was undoubtedly named after his last movie, Vivement Dimanche!, released in 1983. Included in this overview of Truffaut's contribution to filmmaking are clips from 14 of his movies arranged according to the themes he favored. These include childhood, literature, the cinema itself, romance, marriage, and death.
La belle-mère
Yves Beaulieu lives with his wife Anne, his daughter Stephanie and his mother-in-law. Tired of his dangerous, thankless, underpaid and unrecognized job as a deminer, Yves decides to try his luck and carries out a robbery in the nearby supermarket. Hunted by Inspector Rousselet (Patrick Sébastien), he is subjected to a mysterious blackmail and tries to escape justice to profit from the fruits of his crime.
The Queen
A beautiful woman hires an intrepid adventurer to help find her father, who has disappeared in the jungle while searching for a rare and priceless butterfly. Along the way they run into cannibals, a race of Amazon warriors and all the usual attractions one would expect to find in a lost jungle.
Ségolène
A criminal shows up at a farmhouse with the law on his heels and several million dollars in his possession.
Betty
One of the comtesse de Ségur's most popular works,it tells the tale of an orphan ,Charles,mistreated by his wicked old cousin Madame Mac Miche;nevertheless,Charles has many friends including sweet blind young Juliette and her sister Marianne, Mac Miche's maid ,Betty,her boyfriend Donald ,and even the judge. (by dbdumonteil)
Thérèse Respelière
Mireille Kebadjan
Directors Jean-Henri Roger and Juliet Berto begin this thriller with sequences on the contemporary politics of southern France and the infiltration of organised crime into real estate development there: crime bosses were torching forest tracts to make way for their development schemes in the early 1980s. In the fictionalised story, Paula Barretto is caught in this underworld because her father was involved in the drug business, her brother is in the real estate scam, and her lover is an armed thief. Although she tries to get out of her corrupt and dangerous environment, it is not an easy task when even the police officers cannot be trusted, and the underworld has informants everywhere.
Geneviève
It's about a couple owning a small hotel who are trying to sell it.
The Keeper of the Seals
After a feminist is found murdered in her own home, a police detective investigates the crime with the help of several determined women.
Mayette
Térésa
Released after 8 years in prison, Adrien finds his family home. He discovers that his wife Teresa has moved in with Roger, and his children make the 400 blows and his former accomplices are not decided to give him his share of the booty.
Chimène
The Saracens invade Spain again, but they seem content to compose music and watch the dancers.
Gisèle Brossard
Martial Perrin is the president of a right-wing political party which is gearing itself up for a forthcoming election. When he learns that a notorious criminal named Kraus has escaped from prison, Perrin panics and goes into hiding. His deputy, Constant, hires Perrin’s cousin, Gilbert, an actor who is a perfect double of Perrin, to replace him. What Gilbert does no know is that the killer Kraus is bumping off the people who were implicated in the affair for which he was arrested, and that Perrin is next on his list.
Corinne
Victor is a screenwriter whose last work about the Marechal Pétain is refused by his producer. To add insult to injury, he tells Victor he is paunchy. The unfortunate man becomes obsessed by his weight. He goes out of his way to lose pounds, abetted by his wife, Corinne, who puts him on a reducing diet. He must also go to a health center where he takes exercise. Nothing really works. And one day, in a brewery, he cannot withstand his diet anymore and he has a gastronomic meal. Desperate, he tries his luck at a weight watchers reunion.
Appula
Caleb, "son of nobody" (Enrico Montesano) lives in Galilee in Jesus' day and struggles as a thief and con-man, pretending to be a magician. When he witnesses Jesus turning water into wine, he thinks he's found a competitor. So Caleb goes on, convinced that Jesus is a fake just as he is, always trying to figure out his tricks. In the meantime, he gets involved with a prostitute (played by Edwige Fenech), but also with the wife of a Roman patrician (played by the equally alluring Bernadette Lafont), he steals a few goats and cons a few people, he befriends a lovable dog and gets in trouble with some Roman soldiers.
Camille
Unable to put a single word on paper, a youngish man with one novel to his credit finds that his life is crumbling to ruins around him because of his severe case of writer's block. He tries every remedy known to man and makes up a few new ones in this comedy. All his efforts are futile: he loses his girlfriend and his apartment and has a succession of misadventures until finally, homeless and hospitalized, he rediscovers his inspiration.
Self
During the summer of 1966 Jonas Mekas spent two months in Cassis, as a guest of Jerome Hill. Mekas visited him briefly again in 1967, with P. Adams Sitney. The footage of this film comes from those two visits. Later, after Jerome died, Mekas visited his Cassis home in 1974. Footage of that visit constitutes the epilogue of the film. Other people appear in the film, all friends of Jerome.
Bernadette
Following a car accident, four men find themselves in the hospital, where they sow discord. Meanwhile, their wives take full advantage of their newfound freedom.
Co-détenue
Paris, 1933. The daughter of a respectable lower middle class couple, Violette Nozière, leads a disreputable double life. Far from being the innocent 18-year-old her parents mistake her for, she spends her nights with dissolute young men in the less salubrious areas of the city.
German film.
Dany Lajoux
Because he dishonored the daughter of a mafia boss, Ernesto must leave Rome and take shelter with his uncle in Paris. There, he thinks of only one thing: to seduce girls.
Jeanne Dogson
This is the tale of a father-son duo who are unable to leave each other. The trouble begins when the son decides to destroy his father's image.
Louise
In this black comedy, Fred (Jean-Louis Trintingnant) works for an insurance company as a computer engineer. Fred is bored with enduring the trials of his shrewish wife, so, after using actuarial tables to calculate the most common means of death, he cleverly prepares the family bathroom and brings about her demise. For a while he is content with his new freedom, but then he recognizes that a friend is in a similar situation.
Giula
After her brother was killed by a notorious all-female pirate gang, Morag dedicates her life to bringing the murderers to justice. Soon, she has become an important member of the pirate gang and has begun acquiring the loyalty of key members. Eventually, she makes her move and challenges the leader, a demi-god, known as "The Daughter of the Sun."
Jacqueline, klinikdame
After having been rescued from suicide, a young man is the object of a bet by his doctor that the doctor can help him recover his joy in life. Ironically, the doctor's life is not a very happy one either, and his boast has a hollow sound. For one thing, although he seemingly has a "happy divorce," in which he, his ex-wife and her new husband are all great pals, it's not true. He wants his wife back. All sorts of complications arise out of these lies and distortions.
Bernadette
Bernardette is feeling bored in a country house. She decides to send weekend invitations to a lot of people.
Pauline
Two women work as entertainers and prostitutes to raise enough money for their dream home.
La femme du van hippie
Little did this pretty brunette know when she applied for a babysitting job that her employer was an artist and that everything at his place differed from the outside world. What struck her the most was to find out that her boss had shrunk his wife and kept her in the fridge in order, as he said, to keep her safe from a hostile world!
Sandra Pensotti
Gino Pistone is an actor in a local theatre, but his plays aren't successful. But then he gets a genius idea: to make a play on the love story of Benito Mussolini and Claretta Petacci.
Rosemonde
Colinot's world is turned upside down when his fiancee is kidnapped.
Simone
When the police find Simone seated near her husband's corpse it is predictable that she is charged with the murder. Jean-Pierre Laubray is appointed counsel for the defence. He begins an inquiry into the case and he finds out that the murdered man had killed a barman in a robbery the night before. He finds out as well he was a leg-man of Cristiani's for his election campaign. He tries to contact Juliette, Cristiani's daughter, and he discovers that Bruno, Juliette's brother, also died that same night in a car accident...
Marie
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
Bernadette
Crime thriller.
Edwarda
Alain Cluny is Balthazar, a bumbling middle-aged intellectual who spouts off from time to time about leftist causes, usually to his current girlfriend. Then Edwarda (Bernadette Lafont), who is active in the political underground, comes into his life. From that point on, he begins to act on his beliefs. Edwarda's underground political action group stages a little drama to test Balthazar's commitment and reliability, putting him through an interrogation by what appear to him to be French secret police. Having passed this test, he is given a real assignment. This film is a comedy with elements of satire, and it explores the humor to be found in left-wing pretentiousness of all kinds. - Rovi
Sarah
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...
Bernadette
Jane Birkin, Bernadette Lafont, Elisabeth Wiener and Emma Cohen are 4 pretty girls rooming together. After witnessing and accidentally helping several thugs get away with a heist, the women notice through their telescope that the stolen loot is in the apartment right across the street! They plan their own burglary of the already stolen loot in this lighthearted caper comedy with a bit of nudity! Serge Gainsbourg did the bouncy score.
The producers of this French film took approximately 100 people, put them on a soundstage and had them improvise this film based on the premise that they are on a spaceship escaping from the dictators of earth and only have a few days to live. Improvisation is a dangerous art-form; unprepared amateurs invariably come up with gross caricatures when challenged to improvise. The actors' choices in this film include an allegorical pageant of the life of Jesus, a marriage, an orgy, and some genuinely affectionate moments. Nonetheless, as an experimental effort in large-group improvisation, the film is instructive.
- Clarke Fountain, Rovi
Camille Bliss
Stanislas Previne is a young sociologist, preparing a thesis on criminal women. He chooses Camille Bliss as his subject of study and begins to visit her in prison for interviews. Camille became acquainted with trouble at a young age and justifies her actions by "fate-bets." She is currently in prison for allegedly murdering one of her lovers. As she tells Stanislas of her life and love affairs, his interest in her grows to more than just professional. Can he resist her charm?
Sarah
While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.
Simone
While on vacation, a woman's husband is taken by the Russian government. After one attempt fails, she begins looking for a suitable spy to capture and trade in exchange for her husband, but she develops an attraction to the one she thinks is a good candidate.
A film by Yvan Lagrange.
Marie Annassian
In a cul-de-sac in the Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, Leon shares two rooms with his sister Marie. In one, he receives his clients: he is a tailor. In the other, Marie receives her own: she is a clairvoyant. Leon was happy until he learned what Marie was hiding from him. She is actually a prostitute, and Maxime, her supposed fiancé, is her pimp. On the same day, Leon also discovers love in the form of Arlette, a provincial young woman picked up by Marie.
Céline
Céline is a free-spirited woman is married to a dull, middle manager Philippe. Her husband's co-worker pegged her as a household ornament because of the union. She befriends a woman who shows her how to juggle the couple's living expenses to get what she wants. As she asserts her independence and gradually frees herself from her husband's claustrophobic world, she turns to painting and writing about the inequity between genders.
La libraire
Fiona
A fake documentary on the life forms of the Paris Suburbs, viewed through the eyes of homeless, unemployed people the sharks of politics and building societies push to hopeless life.
Anna
Elise (Marie-Josee Nat) is a young provincial woman working in a factory in Paris. Her revolutionary brother secured the position for her, and she falls in love with an Algerian native who works with her. She becomes painfully aware of the prejudice he experiences from the police and his superiors. The recent conflict between France and Algeria only compounds the problems of Algerians in France. Her love and concern for the man causes her to search for him after he disappears one day. Elise considers moving to Algeria to find the man she loves in this bitter social drama.
Salomé
Sex-Power is a sweet bit of candy-colored psychedelic fluff with an astringent dose of agitprop militancy in its chewy center. While most of the film is in English there is occasional French dialog without the benefit of English subtitles, but you hardly need to know French to get the gist of what is happening. This is the tale of a young Frenchman who arrives in Northern California looking to forget a lost love (Jane Birkin) and ends up encountering various forms of feminine power as embodied by Bernadette Lafonte as Salome and Catherine Marshall as “la fille moderne.” The film moves through space and time in an impressionistic, lysergic dreaminess.
A year and a half after "Le Lit e la vierge", Zouzou and Pierre Clémenti are in another bed, this time in front of a window, with Sacré-Coeur in the background. Filmed in two days, in July 1970, with a stolen film from the ORTF, this film, a tribute to these two vedettes of the French underground, is of immense beauty. The title is inspired by the silhouette of Pierre Clémenti, evocative, for Lagrange, of the male physicist during the Renaissance. Grandson of Léo Lagrange and nephew of the chief operator Ghislain Cloquet, Yvan Lagrange is two years younger than Philippe Garrel. "Renaissance", his first film, shows to what extent his generation was influenced by Garrel.
La première voleuse
A genuine performance film as Bernadette Laffont and Bulle Ogier engage, with reckless abandon, in a flurry of senseless destruction in a house at night. Somewhere between a hallucination and a nightmare. Both the explosive soundtrack and narration that accompanies the mayhem was provided by François Tusques.
Marie
Treated as an outcast and exploited by the villagers of a small town, a young woman liberates herself through sex, which she uses as a tool of economic gain and an instrument of revenge against those who have wronged her.
Marianne
Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) leaves his wealthy parents behind to go on a spiritual quest. He meets up with Yvan (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), leader of a vegetarian cult whose members survive by begging for food in uncomfortable robes. The religious fanatics draw the ire of local peasants when they are arrested for stealing eggs. Yvan butchers a goat and has a carnivore carnival orgy on the meat. Marianne (Bernadette Lafont) is one of the followers, and she and Paul go to a remote island to live off seaweed and vegetation, but a development company moves in to wreck the paradise. Paul is brokenhearted when Mariane goes off with one of the greedy developers in this symbolic film that decries the allure of the material world.
Miss Taillade
A man witnesses a suicide and starts imagining that it was a murder committed by himself.
La mère
A 4-year-old child is the element from and around which the action develops, and brings sentiments and emotions to light.
Soeur Hilarité
This satire concerns three French singing idols and their attempt to stay in the public eye. A press conference, backstage hedonism, psychedelia, manipulative managers and disc jockeys are portrayed as the pop culture is thoroughly and effectively lampooned in this independent feature.
A writer goes through a prolonged ritual of preparation but is unable to put a word on paper.
Pauline, la camériste
Lamiel (Anna Karina) is a poor orphan girl who climbs her way to the social elite in this 19th-century costume drama. A doctor (Michel Bouquet) lives vicariously through Anna as he oversees the progress of his female protégé. Lamiel finds love with a young thief who steals into her bedroom after her marriage to a penniless count (Jean-Clause Brialy), and the two experience a romantic rendezvous of forbidden love after Lamiel goes from being a poor peasant woman to living a life of comparative luxury.
La Berthe Patouilloux, la fille du maire
Goubi, the simpleton of his village in the French Department Allier, has but one wish: to see Paris. One day, the truckers Grafouillère deposit a drunk Goubi in the biggest market of Paris (the "Halles"). The poor man is completely lost, but the meat merchant Dessertine takes him under his wings when he hears that Goubi was likewise 'raised by the State'...
Marguerite - la bonne délurée
In Paris around 1900, Georges Randal is brought up by his wealthy uncle, who steals his inheritance. Georges hopes to marry his cousin Charlotte, but his uncle arranges for her to marry a rich neighbour. As an act of revenge, Georges steals the fiance's family jewels, and enjoys the experience so much that he embarks upon a life-time of burglary.
Marie
A priest succumbs to the charms of his lovely cleaning lady and decides to find a husband when she finds herself pregnant with her works.
la soeur de Georgette
Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.
Sophie
The film consists of three novels. The film begins with the fact that the Bernard Blier hero removes a lantern from the entrance to a brothel. The second part is about how the lantern and jewelery were stolen from a young baroness. And in the third part the hero of Louis de Funes hangs a lantern at the entrance to his house.
Rosine
The most secret agent Stanislas Dubois, tired of saving the world alone decides to retire and to start writing his memoirs. The enemies of humanity, progress and peace in the world found out about it and created an international network of espionage "13 columns". Unfortunately they platted a slot in the good old France. They should think better...
Flora
A young woman lives sadly in a small garrison town with a soldier. Little by little, won over by boredom, sadness, total inaction, she develops a relationship with plants and starts talking to plants.
Flora
A few stories about a marriages and it's problems.
Miss Jujube
An FBI agent works to arrest David Griffin, a murderous drug trafficker, and protect Juliette, the beautiful widow of Griffin's late partner.
Charlotte
Isabelle
On a sun-kissed beach, six people linger lazily, each confident of fulfilling his or her desires before the day is out. A wealthy heiress, Emmanuelle, has designs on a handsome adolescent, Ivan, but his interests lie elsewhere. Having gratified Emmanuelle’s womanly needs, Ivan immediately sets out to make his next conquest, the mistress of a well-known writer...
A man inherits an old house in a very bad condition. With the help of a young mechanic, he begins to renovate this house.
Solange
A young teacher arrives in Normandy, where she intends to put an end to illegal alcohol trafficking and consumption.
Anna
Eddie Constantine stars as a reporter mixed up in the spy world in this routine espionage actioner by first-time director Pierre Grasset. After taking some illicit photos for a new story he is working on, Eddie (Constantine) is coerced into doing a job for the French Secret Service. There is a mole in the French missile sites who is passing on classified information, and Eddie is enlisted as bait to draw the culprit -- or culprits -- out. Along the way, he finds himself running for his life, fighting, and romancing until the final denouement.
Ambroisine
In Paris in the early 1960s, Ronald is a son of a good family, with a carefree, pleasure-oriented life. He is one of the leading figures in the small world of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Following a trivial parking incident, he meets Arthur, a young man with a straight face who hurts his pride. It is at this moment that Ambroisine, a beautiful young woman, appears... she will be the instrument of Ronald's revenge.
Bernadette Lafont
Jean Lerat begins his military service at an army camp. Despite his aunt’s attempts to pull a few strings to his advantage, the unfortunate Lerat manages to get on the wrong side of his bullying colonel…
Mado
Jane
Four attractive young women who work together in an appliance store in Paris spend their free time looking for love and fulfilment with little success. High-spirited Jane is picked up by a couple of lechers who are only interested in one thing. Ginette hopes to become a great singer but is forced to perform in a seedy music hall. Rita is engaged to a man who appears more concerned with pleasing his parents than caring about her. Only the reserved Jacqueline seems to have found true romance. But is the mysterious figure on a motorcycle really the man of her dreams?
Prudence
Miléna is living in her grandmother's baroque château when the rich lady dies. The lawyer Miguel, who had a previous relationship with Miléna, insists the other two grandchildren, Fifine and her brother Jean-Paul, visit the château for the reading of the will, even though they have been estranged from the family at an early age. However Robert, who had been living with Fifine in an open relationship, arrives and impersonates Jean-Paul. Robert falls for Fifine's cousin Miléna while Fifine has designs on Miguel. In the meantime, the butler César is focusing his lecherous intentions on Prudence, the maid he had just hired.
Julie
The mistress of the wealthy Henri Marcoux is murdered and the family accuses the milkman of committing the crime. But Marcoux's daughter's fiancé suspects that she may have been murdered by someone else.
Nicole
Martine is a young woman plagued both by poverty and by uncaring, problem parents who in no way can provide the kind of nurturing that Martine needs during her adolescent years. As a result of her family situation, Martine runs away from home and gets involved with a group of teens and young adults from the wrong side of the moral tracks.
Marie
François returns to his village after a long absence. He finds his friend Serge who has married Yvonne, and has developed an alcohol problem after the death of their stillborn child. Serge has become an angry, bitter figure not unlike the roles of James Dean, refusing to face reality and adulthood and François must help him.
Bernadette Jouve
A group of young boys have a collective crush on Bernadette. As a result of this, they have an unreasoning jealousy of Gérard, and do everything they can to disrupt their relationship. When Gérard catches one of the young boys spying on them, he thrashes him severely. In retaliation, the children try to inspire Bernadette to doubt Gérard’s love.
La gouvernante du Père Noël
