Marc Eyraud Movies

This dignified and stylized film, set in the Middle Ages, follows the exploits of Sir Perceval, a legendary exemplar of knightly chivalry and one of the champions of King Arthur's Round Table. The story is based on the verse tale Perceval ou le Conte del Graal as recounted by the 12th-century French belletrist Chrétien de Troyes. While living with his widowed mother, the young Perceval (Fabrice Luchini) is much impressed by the grandeur of the knights he sees, and he undertakes to become one. In one respect his sense of honor is peculiar, because he rapes several virgins in accordance with an enigmatic command from his mother. Even in this, he practically quivers with a burning desire to do good. Though the story's language has been modernized to make it comprehensible to modern French speakers, Eric Rohmer's screenplay retains the verse forms of the original. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

1976's Coup de Grace (released in Germany as Der Fangschluss) was inspired by a Marguerite Yourcenar novel and directed by Volker Schlondorff. The story is set in Latvia in 1919, at the height of the Soviet Civil War. Margarethe von Trotta plays an aristocrat sympathetic to the Communist cause. Besides her ruinous habit of falling love with men who do not love her, Margarethe's tragic flaw is her refusal to acknowledge the cost of the revolution in terms of human lives. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This is a French language film without dubbing or subtitles. It is a sad romantic fantasy, about the husband in a childless couple, an entomologist (Marc Eyraud), who picks up a water spider brookside and imagines that the spider is the daughter he and his wife never had. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This Costa-Gavras thriller stars Yves Montand as an East European government functionary, inexplicably imprisoned by his Communist superiors. He is not told why he has been arrested, nor has his wife (Simone Signoret) been informed of his fate. Undergoing psychological torture, Montand is grilled about his wartime activities. At the end of his rope, Montand agrees to sign several papers that are thrust before him. He eventually discovers that he's to be a defendant in a "show trial" conducted by his government. He never knows the whys and wherefores of the whole affair -- nor does the audience. The Confession was based on the true story of loyal Communist Arthur London's unjustified purge trial of 1951. Despite the film's confusion, Costa-Gavras' Kafkaesque view of the world, in which the individual is overwhelmed by events that he can't possibly begin to understand, struck a responsive chord in the chaotic early '70s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The second screen version of Octave Mirbeau's novel (originally filmed in 1946 by Jean Renoir), Diary of a Chambermaid charts the ambitions of Celestine (Jeanne Moreau), a woman who comes to work in the 1930s for a Normandy estate occupied by Monsieur Rabour (Jean Ozenne), his daughter (Francoise Lugagne), and the daughter's husband, Monsieur Montiel (Michel Piccoli). Celestine quickly learns that M. Rabour is a more or less harmless boot fetishist, his daughter a frigid woman more concerned with the family furnishings than in returning the affections of her husband, who, in turn, can't keep his hands off the servants. The gamekeeper, Joseph (Georges Geret), is a fascist who keeps his masters informed of all the doings downstairs, and the next-door neighbor (Daniel Ivernel) is a veteran who can't stand Monteil and is sharing a bed with his housekeeper. Celestine picks her way through this minefield carefully, spurning the advances of all of the men until it's convenient for her. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi