Jean Rochefort

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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 »

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In the early 1950s, in a seaside town, Isabelle, a girl in her late teens,is about to spend an apparently eventless summer between her mother, her friends and a small job for a photographer whose business is lagging. But Isabelle is not the mentally balanced young lady she seems to be. In fact she is doubly traumatized, firstly by the rape she suffered eight years before from a Nazi officer and secondly by the suicide of her father shortly after. What she wants deep inside herself is to find a man, young or less young, who will bring her tenderness and happiness. Will Luc, a young German, or Monsieur Vaudois, her married boss, give her what she lacks?Read More »

Synopsis :
Emilio travaille comme nègre pour Donald, un romancier célèbre en panne d’inspiration. Las de cette situation, il décide de quitter l’artiste et de de publier ses poèmes. Lors d’une réception, les deux hommes se retrouvent et la vérité éclate…

Writer of detective novels that are selling well, Emilio Serrantoni not figure as an author: shy and insecure, has agreed to publish with the signing of another Donald Ross, which are the most fame and money. Avid player, but he regularly loses. After a particularly heavy defeat, Donald urgent need of a new work by Emilio, who is called ‘I hate blondes’ which tells of a robbery at a house whose alarm systems are identical to that del’editore Brown. For a number of misunderstandings real thieves think Emilio is their inside guy.Read More »

Synopsis:
The Bear and the Fox, or What Friends Are for:

‘The bear, played by Philippe Noiret, is the conductor of a music hall orchestra, a kind hearted soul, always ready to help the next person if need arises. The fox, played by Jean Rochefort, is a trumpeter in the bear’s orchestra and his friend since childhood. After an evening’s performance a young woman enters their common dressing room, draws a revolver and starts shooting at the fox. She cries out that he has ruined her sister but is far too nervous to aim straight and causes no real harm. After she has run away, the fox gets into hiding, asking the bear to find the woman he swears he has never seen before. He makes a list of all his lovers, and it is a very long list indeed.
The (strictly monogamous) bear travels through all of France in the quest of the woman whose life the fox has ruined, in the hope that the murderous sister can be captured and the fox can go on with his life. He meets all kind of womenfolk and learns a lot about his friend who is a far more dubious and amoral person than he had thought previously. Read More »

Synopsis
A father-daughter relationship is melded, strained, and deepened by a shared angst: the grandmother in the family left her home by train and never arrived at her destination. The father Pierre (Jean Rochefort) is distraught that the police could basically dismiss the issue as inexplicable, and he decides to retrace on foot the voyage his mother should have made. His daughter Amelie (Camille de Casablanca) goes with him, and the story evolves as the two walk along the train tracks, searching in the nearby terrain and bushes for any evidence that might point to what happened. Along the way, their once antagonistic and distanced relationship (Amelie is a student, her father is a picture-restorer) begins to work itself out…Read More »

Michel Mortez is going to and fro France to compere a radio game he created 25 years ago. He is famous among the average Frenchmen. But he is also a poker. Rivetot, his assistant and technician, always goes with him. He is the only one to know what really lies under Mortez’s appearance of playful don Juan. When the programme is condemned by the managers, Rivetot delays as long as possible the moment he will have to announce it to Mortez… Both malicious and tender, this bitter comedy also shows nostalgia.Read More »

A frothy French farce, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe is a classic madcap comedy about espionage, surveillance and mistaken identity. When Francois (Pierre Richard), an unsuspecting violinist, is misidentified as a superspy by national intelligence, outrageous antics ensue. As everyone (including Mireille Darc, playing a knock-out henchwoman) falls over each other in their misguided attempts to discover the tall blond man’s secrets, his best friend complicates matters even further when he overhears a salacious recording of Francois with his wife. The whole merry-go-round comes crashing to a halt in one final showdown, pitting spy versus supposed spy with hilarious results. Elegantly filmed and accompanied by a memorable score, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe is one of the most seminal comedies of the 1970s.Read More »

Sons and Lovers
At the Brattle through Saturday
By William A. Nitze, March 26, 1962
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Sons and Lovers does not lend itself easily to a movie script, but Jack Cardiff has transformed Lawrence’s novel into a superb film. The reader must follow a slow and agonizing series of conflicting passions presented in a style which is often deceptively complex. Through a skillful rearrangement of plot elements and dialogue Cardiff has condensed the novel into an hour and 45 minutes without sacrificing its subtlety and force.

The film opens halfway through the story: Paul Morel is in his early twenties. Within the first ten minutes one grasps all of the important relationships of the drama: the abandonment of Walter Morel by his wife and sons, who detest him because of his weakness and cruelty; Paul’s desperate attachment to his mother, and his frustrated love for Miriam. The film then concentrates on the final failure of Miriam to break through Mrs. Morel’s hold on her son, Paul’s unsuccessful affair with Clara Dawes and his final liberation through his mother’s death.Read More »

Synopsis:

‘Max Topfer is a successful businessman who lives alone, surrounded by bodyguards. One day, he receives a film which shows him his brutal death at the hands of an unknown assassin.’
– MUBI

‘Anna Karina starts the movie by riding her horse into a tree, She’s rescued by millionaire Bruno Cremer, who is startled to discover in her possession a video recorder showing him being shot by a man he doesn’t know […]. Both Karina, who has total amnesia of the kind only available in sensational fiction, and the tape appear to have come from the future. With the aid of bodyguard Billy Kearns […], Cremer tries to find out why a total stranger is apparently going to kill him on camera.’
– David CairnsRead More »