Benoit Delepine Movies
- 2007
Absurdist duo Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern follow-up 2004's Aaltra with this sparse black comedy in which the recently-fired female employees at a children's clothing factory pool their funds to put a hit on their callous boss. Out of work and down on her luck, ex-con Louise (Yolande Moreau) proposes to her jobless sisters that they do something useful by ridding the world of the man who put them all in their current situation. But while security specialist Michel (Bouli Lanners) seems like the perfect candidate to carry out the hit, his ineptitude is so great that he attempts to sub-contract the job to a series of inexperienced - and highly inappropriate - assassins. Notorious Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde cameos as a nut-job 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz turns up as an organic hotelier. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yolande Moreau, Bouli Lanners, (more)
In this bizarre surrealist comedy from France, a handful of oddball characters live in world where people heap strange forms of abuse on animals -- dwarves stage bullfights with rhinos, zoos open restaurants where the privileged can dine on the animals on display, and the wealthy lock themselves into their mansion with the angry pit bulls trained to protect them. In the midst of such madness, a stocky animal handler (Gustave Kervern) who can neither hear nor speak falls in with a pair of dissolute zookeepers (Benoit Delepine and Eric Martin) who are hooked on ketamine and shoot one another with tranquilizer darts for fun. The zookeepers involve their new friend in a crazy scheme to kidnap the pet dog of a very wealthy and extremely large woman, Avida (Velvet), but the three men prove to be wildly inept criminals, and once they're found out, Avida forces them to help her in a plan to take her own life. Featuring a cameo appearance from acclaimed filmmaker Claude Lelouch, Avida was written and directed by Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, who also act in the film; it received its American premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gustave Kervern, Benoit Delepine, (more)
Two irascible farmers find their bitter rivalry taking on epic tones in this pitch black comedy starring, written, and directed by Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern. They may spend their days toiling the land, but these two tillers of the soil are far from humble. When their ongoing feud escalates into all out war and both men wind up paralyzed by a tractor, they soon opt to focus their rage not on each other, but on the manufacturer of the machine. Now, as the former enemies make their way to Helsinki in order to exact their revenge, the stage is set for a hilarious confrontation. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern, (more)
- 1998
Christophe Smith made his directorial debut with this media satire, set on December 14, 1999, about a TV news network in cahoots with Washington on Operation Crazy Guru -- a plan to get a U.S. president re-elected for a third term. Griffith (Mickey Rooney), head of the Miami-based international World News Company, decides inept Paris correspondent Michael Kael (Benoit Delapine) is gullible enough to report the staged events, so Kael is sent off to Africa to cover a two-day fest in Katango. International nets air nuke threats by a Japanese nutcase, made on tapes sent from Katango. Kael, of course, has been unwittingly set up as WNC's key reporter, but everything goes haywire once Kael deduces that it's all being faked. The screenplay, by Delapine, is an expansion of comedy sketches that originated on two popular French cable TV shows. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benoit Delepine, Marine Delterme, (more)
