Michel Desrois

Movies

It All Starts Today
Sound Engineer
Set in a forlorn mining town near Valencienne in the north of France, the story is about one man's struggle to bring life to his once prosperous village and its inhabitants. Philippe Torreton, who won a César for Best Actor with his title role in Capitaine Conan, plays Daniel, the head teacher of a nursery school in a town demoralized by unemployment. Daniel is determined against all odds to bring life to the community. When a parent who has come to pick up her children collapses at the school grounds due to alcohol abuse, and social services turns a deaf ear to all pleas for help, Daniel decides to take the law into his own hands. Despite resistance from the townspeople, in the long run his efforts are not fruitless.
L.627
Sound Engineer
In Paris, Lulu, a passionate policeman, works with the faith of a rookie, despite the sclerotic bureaucracy and the incompetence or negligence of some of his colleagues. In his new position as a narcotics inspector, he tries to keep his sanity as he witnesses the worst of the human condition.
Terminus
Sound Mixer
In a post-apocalyptic future, an international sport has been established where a driver of a computerized truck must drive across country to an established terminus and not be stopped by other vehicles. The lead truck, called "Monster" has been created by a boy genius and is to be driven by a woman through the course. The only problem is the computer guidance system fails and she ends up in uncharted territories. There she encounters leather-clad hoods who torture her and eventually kill her. Before dying she tells a fellow prisoner about the truck and he uses it to escape.
Le Joli cœur
Sound Director
Frank and Bernard share the same apartment and both work in the same tourist agency. Bernard drives the coach through the streets of Paris and Frank is the guide. The driver longs for a family life but he is not lucky with girls. So he asks his friend, who is a womanizer, to help him find at last his better half. Frank winds up in a hospital and falls for the shrink, Nina. Faithful to his pal, Frank comes to his rescue but he falls in love with Nina too.
Death Watch
Sound
In a future world where the disease has been finally defeated and everything can be sold, even the crude spectacle of death, the rare case of a dying woman becomes the morbid theme of a revolutionary reality show, broadcast through the curious eyes of a peculiar camera.
Serie Noire
Sound
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.
The Question
Sound
1957. For several months, Henri Charlègue, the ex-director of the newspaper "Alger democratic", banned, has been living in hiding. Suspected of belonging to the FLN, he is actively sought by paratroopers.
Game of Seduction
Sound Engineer
A virtuous young woman becomes the target of the schemes of an amoral womanizer who is in the habit of wooing women and killing their lovers and husbands in duels. When she finally succumbs to him, she discovers his true nature, and her newly awakened joy in passion turns to dust.
The Judge and the Assassin
Sound
France, 1893. Joseph Bouvier attempts to shoot his love who refused to marry him and to commit suicide. Upon release from the filthy asylum where he was placed, with bullets still remaining in his head, he wanders the country roads and rapes and murders many teenagers over years. The judge Rousseau captures him, but to serve his ambition seeks to avoid that Bouvier is simply declared insane.
Hu-Man
Boom Operator
An actor is placed in dangerous situations and his fear will be broadcast to the television audience. The audience's emotions will determine whether he is sent into the future or the past.
Charlotte
Sound
Starting as an investigation, the film begins with the discovery of a murdered young woman. Gradually we go back in time to realize that this crime is altogether the logical continuation of a philosophy of life where neither sex nor death are taboo, and where a lust for pushing limits meets it ultimate conclusion.
Forbidden to Know
Sound Assistant
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...
It Only Happens to Others
Sound Assistant
Catherine and Marcello are secluded in their house, living under the candlelight. Unable to accept the injustice behind the loss of their nine-month-old baby, they face a slow but definite self-destruction.
La Fin des Pyrénées
Sound Assistant
This bitter and ironic satire illustrates the universal problems with youth and their revolt against the bourgeois establishment. The man becomes a symbolic victim of what he is protesting and resigns himself to a gloomy future with bleak prospects for humankind. This directorial debut for Jean Pierre Lajournade was well received at the 1970 Mannheim Film Festival.
Lettre à mon ami Pol Cèbe
Director
A short "working class road movie".
Mr. Freedom
Sound
Mr. Freedom, a bellowing good-ol'-boy superhero decked out in copious football padding, jets to France to cut off a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie Madeleine to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as the insidious evildoers Moujik Man and inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a star-spangled showdown.
The Panafrican Festival in Algiers
Sound
Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.