Jacques Denis

Quote:
Post-’68 France as “a curious country” of befuddled fathers and obscured revolutionaries. The middle-aged Everyhomme (Philippe Noiret) is a widowed watch-tinkerer in Lyon, who gets his politics from TV news and “likes to be legal” too much to cross a red light on an empty street. The necessary shock arrives: His son (Sylvain Rougerie) is on the run, having killed a factory security guard. Gallicizing Georges Simenon’s novel, Bertrand Tavernier handles the moment with control, self-effacement, and muted compassion: Noiret’s dazed bus ride back home after being told the news, the activist paraphernalia in the boy’s room (scrawled on the wall is Céline’s dictum about pastoral battlefields) unnoticed by an imploding father fumbling for a bed.Read More »

Synopsis:
Arthur and Marcel, two firemen, keep boredom at bay by improvising on stage, one on a keyboard the other on drums, tunes, poems and songs. Carol arrives, in search of her lover Armand. Accompanied by the musicians, she sings of her strange loves and leaves. Then Armand turns up, in search of Carol, and the disturbing Cigare…Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Two men, arty though somewhat staid, are drawn to the spirited and quixotic Rosemonde, a young working-class woman whom they meet because they’re writing a teleplay about a minor but curious event in which either her uncle was wounded while cleaning his rifle or she shot him. Pierre is a free-lance journalist hired to write the script; he’s short of time so he asks a Bohemian novelist friend, Paul, to help. Pierre wants facts and tracks down Rosemonde for interviews that lead to other explorations; Paul only wants to imagine her and needs little more than her name to do so. But he does meet her, and she entangles him, too. Did she cause the shooting? Is she venomous or innocent?’Read More »