Philippe Noiret

Quote:
Set in the year 1950, Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island in Italy for political reasons. His wife accompanies him. On the island, a local, Mario Ruoppolo, is dissatisfied with being a fisherman, like his father. Mario looks for other work and is hired as a temporary postman, with Neruda as his only customer. He uses his bicycle to hand deliver Neruda’s mail. Though poorly educated, the postman eventually befriends Neruda and becomes further influenced by Neruda’s political views and poetry.Read More »

An aristocrat, short of the readies, has turned his desirable mansion into a textile workshop, where he works with his wife, his son and his mother-in-law. He’s grumpy, stingy and unkind. In the village, the wealthy solicitor wants his ugliest daughter to marry his half-witted young son, so she’ll become a countess. But saint Francis Assisi appears and the count changes overnight; he does not want his family to kill the spiders (your sister, the spider) and he begins to ignore the social conventions: his son will marry “La Langouste” (the lobster), the local hooker who keeps a strong clientele among the billeted troops. Now, the aristocrat, imitating our Lord’s apostles, divests himself of all possessions of the material world and intends to hit the road in a horse-drawn caravan.Read More »

In the countryside near Normandy’s beaches lives Marie, unhappy. It’s 1944, she’s married to Jérôme, a somewhat fussy milquetoast, diffident to the war around him and unwilling to move his wife to Paris, where she longs to live, shop, and party. A German outfit is bivouacked at Jérôme and Marie’s crumbling château because its commanding officer is pursuing Marie. She’s also eyed by a French spy working with the Allies as they plan D-Day. He woos her (posing to the Germans as her brother) and, in his passion, forgets his mission. Heroics come from an unexpected direction, and Marie makes her choice.Read More »

Plot:
A famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He returns home to his Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years and is reminded of his first love, Elena, who disappeared from his life before he left for Rome.Read More »

Synopsis:
Inspector René Boirond has been policing a crime-ridden neighbourhood of Paris for over twenty years. In that time, he has learned that the best way to do his job is to turn a blind eye to most of the petty criminality that surrounds him and adopt a live and let live approach to dealing with crooks, pimps and other lowlife. Of course, the backhanders he receives by way of recompense is always a welcome supplement to his meagre salary. René’s mutually advantageous system is suddenly placed in jeopardy when François Lesbuche, a young and enthusiastic cop straight out of police school, is assigned to work with him.Read More »

Synopsis:
Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island for political reasons. On the island, the unemployed son of a poor fisherman is hired as an extra postman due to the huge increase in mail that this causes. Il Postino is to hand-deliver the celebrity’s mail to him. Though poorly educated, the postman learns to love poetry and eventually befriends Neruda. Struggling to grow and express himself more fully, he suddenly falls in love and needs Neruda’s help and guidance more than ever.Read More »

Young, naive and innocent, Pierre (Manuel Blanc) has dreams of becoming an actor. He is a good-looking and personable boy, and he has just moved to the city to see if he can’t accomplish his dreams. He gets a job as an orderly at a hospital and is further supported by an older woman (Helene Vincent), a nurse he has met there, in return for his sexual favors. However, in his acting class, he quickly discovers that he is not overflowing with talent, and his dream of becoming an actor grows dim. Instead, despite the advice of a knowledgeable and worldly older gay man (Philippe Noiret), he becomes a sex worker. It has long been a staple of the movies that certain hustlers and prostitutes maintain a distinction between their work and their lives by not kissing their clients, hence the title of this film, J’embrasse Pas. He grows to love the seedy, degraded lifestyle, and seems to be adapting well to his new profession until he has the poor judgement to fall in love with a high-class prostitute (Emmanuelle Béart) and earns the antagonism of her pimp. allmovieRead More »

Synopsis:
“A near-fatal collision between a car and a motorcycle brings about the happy reunion of Lise Tanquerelle, a busy career woman, and Antoine Lemercier, a professor of Greek at the Sorbonne. Although it has been many years since they last saw each other, in the halcyon summer of their college days, Lise and Antoine still have fond feelings for one another. Unfortunately, Antoine loathes the police with the passion of a red-blooded anarchist and Lise isn’t sure how to break the news to him that she is a police commissioner. Before she can resolve this dilemma, Lise is drawn into an investigation into the brutal killing of a former minister…”
– Films de FranceRead More »

Synopsis:
‘Necchi (a bar owner), Perozzi (a journalist), Melandri (an architect) and Mascetti (a broken nobleman) live in Florence. They have been friends since their youngest years and spend every free moment together organizing complex and terrible jokes to all the people they meet, or just wandering around Tuscany. One of these crazy trips ends up in the hospital run by military-like Professor Sassaroli. Melandri falls in love with his wife, and steals her from the husband, much to the delight of Sassaroli himself. The relationship won’t last but the Professor becomes the fifth member of the team of friends, and jokes get even more complicated and powerful.’
– Alessio F. Bragadini
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