Synopsis:
“Monsieur Ladmiral is an ageing painter who lives alone in his country house, cared for by his housekeeper, Mercedes. Every so often, his son Gonzague comes to visit him with his young family. One late summer Sunday in 1912, the customary visit is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Ladmiral’s unpredictable daughter, Irene…”
– Films de FranceRead More »
In Paris in the 1920s, a concert violinist meets and falls in love with a stylish young flapper who’s the wife of an old friend. Romaine instigates the affair with Marcel, and carries it forward even as her husband, Pierre, falls ill. She may even be purposely giving Pierre a treatment that adds to his misery. After Marcel returns from a concert tour and Romaine stoops to a new low in abandoning Pierre for an assignation, she reconsiders the affair and takes a drastic step. Three years later, Pierre pays Marcel a visit to demand the truth. Will the jealous and aggrieved Marcel manage a convincing performance?Read More »
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January, 1920. 350,000 French soldiers remain missing in action. Major Dellaplane tirelessly matches the dead and the wounded with families’ descriptions. Honor and ethics drive him; he hates the idea of “the unknown soldier.” Into his sector, looking for her husband, comes a haughty, politically connected Parisian, Madame Ir├¬øne de Courtil. Brusquely, Dellaplane offers her 1/350,000th of his time, but as their paths cross and she sees his courage and resolve, feelings change. After he finds a surprising connection between her missing husband and a local teacher, Ir├¬øne makes Dellaplane an offer. This man of action hesitates: has he missed his only chance?Read More »
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Simon secretly loves Camille. Camille, due to a misunderstanding, falls for Marc Duveyrier. Marc, a handsome realtor, who’s also Simon’s boss, is trying to sell an apartment to Odile Lalande, Camille’s sister. Odile really wants this apartment, despite the silent disapproval of her husband, Claude. Claude, somewhat wan in character, finds it hard to stomach the reappearance, after many years, of Nicolas. Nicolas, an old friend of Odile’s becomes the confidant of Simon… The dialogue is in part made up of extracts of French hit songs, sung in situation by the actors.Read More »
Marguerite is a successful dentist with a busy practice and an offbeat hobby, flying small airplanes. One day, Marguerite loses her wallet, and it’s found by Georges, a seemingly happy man with a wife, Suzanne, and two children. As Georges looks through the wallet and examines the photos of Marguerite, he finds he’s fascinated with her and her life, and soon his curiosity about her becomes an obsession.Read More »
The consequences of a housewife smoking or not smoking a single cigarette branch out into a dozen separate destinies and parallel universes, each with its own conclusion, in these two French features by Alain Resnais. Adapted and translated from six of the eight comic plays comprising British playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges, they can be seen alone or together, and in either order. The project, a tour de force for two actors playing multiple roles (Pierre Arditi and Sabine Azema), succeeded at the box office when released in France in 1993, and as a unit the two films swept the Cesars (French Oscars) for best picture, director, actor, and set design.Read More »
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In the midst of rehearsals for a new play, amateur dramatics proponents Colin and Kathryn receive the shattering news that their friend George is fatally ill and only has a few months to live. Life begins to come apart at the seams – not just for Kathryn, who was once George’s partner, but also for her friends Tamara and Monica. The full force of the emotional turmoil they experienced in their youth and their long-buried dreams are rekindled. Much to the chagrin of their respectable, middle-class husbands, the women begin to argue about which of them should be allowed to accompany George on a final journey …
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By Carlo Chatrian, pardolive.ch
For his return to directing 15 years after La Fidélité, Andrzej Zulawski has chosen one of the most difficult authors to adapt and a text that poses significant challenges, given its constant verbal invention and narrative deviations. Cosmos, written 50 years ago by Witold Gombrowicz, four years before his death, is one of those works that creates a kind of precipitous vertigo.
Zulawski is clear from the start: it only takes a few minutes for the viewer to realize this is no classic adaption of a bourgeois novel. Instead, young Witold’s arrival at the house where he will stay is the entrance to an out-of-the-ordinary universe. A world where sparrows are hanged, where strange arrows take shape on the ceiling, where the television that’s always on for every meal broadcasts incessant images of war, where seduction and repulsion go hand in hand. The thin thread of an investigation – discovering who is responsible for these signs – becomes a metaphor for talking about language. See, for example, the brilliant tirade from the “paterfamilias”.Read More »
A madcap comedy about a famous actress who gets more than she bargains for when she goes on a secret vacation in the mountains trying to cure her nymphomania.Read More »