Mathieu Amalric

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In his fourth film as director and as the only professional actor in a cast of amateurs, Mathieu Amalric stars as Joachim, a washed-up television producer who, after leaving his life in Paris for the United States, returns home for a cross-country tour with a burlesque troupe. Joachim takes the troupe, played by actual burlesque performers with stage names like Kitten on the Keys and Dirty Martini, to show after show in towns along the coast (amusingly, the outline of their travel path resembles a bare breast). Joachim serves only as the ladies’ manager (when he tries to give them performance notes, they reject his advice), but they form a ramshackle surrogate family that – wait for it – comes to stand in for the actual family Joachim left behind. When the venue for the troupe’s planned grand finale in Paris pulls out, he must return to the capital to find another; while there, he reunites with his young children, an ex-lover, and various other people from his past.Read More »

Robinson, appropriately named as we will soon discover, is on vacation in Biarritz with his wife. What follows is the story behind the loss of his arm, a story that becomes increasingly bizarre and eventually apocalyptic, leading us down a narrative path of labyrinthine complexity. The resulting film is an extraordinary feat of imagination and daring, set against the backdrop of a world on the verge of destruction.Read More »

Olivier is a real estate agent so broke he camps out in the apartments he is supposed to be selling. The death of his mother brings along many surprises, including a very unexpected inheritance: a run-down building on the outskirts of Paris! Faith renewed, Olivier is going to be able to pay long overdue child support, rebuild his relationship with his daughter, help his dad out and square up with his ex-wife. His hopes die out when he sees the building: it is completely run down, filthy, a burden rather than the life raft he needed. Moreover, an old woman, Liliane, is a squatter on the top floor, and he can’t flip the place with her around.Read More »

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Some filmmakers have difficulty traveling between the short format and feature films, the former more often than not feeling like exercises, excerpts, or condensations, or the latter, in rarer cases (given the relative death of the short format some 60-odd years ago) seeming simply like brief ideas outstaying their welcome. The aesthetic of writer/director Eugène Green is so clean and simple in this age of image saturation and hyper-abundant kinetics that his “mini-film” Les Signes feels as natural and fluid as his fascinating longer features like 2004’s Le Pont des Arts and 2003’s miniature knight’s tale, Le Monde Vivant. Read More »

Mathieu Amalric’s directing debut is a comedy-drama about a not quite functional family…Read More »

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Olivier Assayas directed this French drama, examining several relationships over a year’s span, capturing varying textures and shades of feeling between people from late August of one year until early September of the next. Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric) and Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) separate, despite the affection that still binds them. A new love develops between Gabriel and young designer Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) as they overcome their fears and uncertainties.Read More »

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Paris today. Simon works as psychologist in human resources department of petrochemical corporation. When Management gets him to investigate one of the factory’s executives, Simon’perception goes disturbingly chaotic and cloudy. The experience affects his body, his mind, his personal life and his sensibility. The calm assurance that made him such a rigorous technician starts to falter.Read More »

Their grown-up son has left home, the draw in her office desk is full of ants, and her husband runs off after the bus leaving her standing on the street. Pomme’s life has become a series of disappointments. Over the years, Pomme and Pierre have drifted apart and their relationship, though not yet dead, is no longer really alive. Even their attempt to drink champagne together fails when the bottle explodes in the freezer. They are out hiking together one day when Pomme suddenly decides to stay behind in the forest, alone …Read More »

At the end of World War II, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, is admitted to Topeka Military Hospital in Kansas – an institution specializing in mental illness. Jimmy suffers from numerous symptoms: dizzy spells, temporary blindness, hearing loss… In the absence of any physiological causes, he is diagnosed as schizophrenic. Nevertheless, the hospital management decides to seek the opinion of Georges Devereux, a French anthropologist, psychoanalyst and specialist in Native American culture.Read More »