Marie-Josée Croze Movies

An unabashed paean to the pleasures of an illicit, adulterous love affair, this melodrama stars Gallic screen legend Daniel Auteuil (Sostiene Pereira) as Pierre, an elderly Frenchman. At the outset of the tale, Pierre's son, Adrien (Antonin Chalon) leaves wife Chloe (Florence Loiret-Caille) and their two daughters following an ongoing affair with a mistress. In response, Pierre whisks Chloe and the girls away to a cabin for a few days of consolation, then sits down with his daughter-in-law and recounts a series of events from his past. The film flashes back in time to Pierre's middle-aged years, when as a businessman he attempted to close a deal with a cadre of Chinese executives but couldn't quite manage to do so, given his constant distraction by the gorgeous (and much younger) translator at the meeting, Mathilde (Marie-Josee Croze). Though married, Pierre fell instantly into love and lust, and consented to a series of encounters with Mathilde that witnessed the partners meeting up in hotels around the globe, over the years, whenever time and circumstance permitted a convenient liaison. Unsurprisingly, this only prompted rage and sorrow from Pierre's abandoned wife (Christiane Millet), but it instilled little if any regret in Pierre, who still perceives his relationship with Mathilde as the greatest love story he has ever personally known. The passion-imbued recollections ultimately force the indignant Chloe to step back from her familial situation and reconsider Adrien's actions from a different angle. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A man who has lost his only child will stop at nothing to bring the men responsible for the death to justice in this taut thriller from France. Raoul Kraft (Clovis Cornillac) is a hard-bitten loner who works as a lumberjack in a woodland community and after a hard day of felling trees prefers to spend his evenings in solitude. Raoul was never a good prospect for a happy long-term relationship, and his only marriage ended in divorce, but he loves his son, who is now college age. When Raoul's son dies under mysterious circumstances, he's crushed, and his despair turns to anger when activist Diane (Marie-Josee Croze) tells Raoul his son died while undergoing an experimental drug testing program for a leading pharmaceutical firm. Enraged that corporate malfeasance and irresponsibility has taken his son from him, Raoul sets out to find out who runs the company in question and make them pay for their misdeeds. However, in time it becomes evident that Diane's information may not be as reliable as she's led Raoul to believe. Le Nouveau Protocole (aka The New Protocol) also stars Stephane Hillel and Dominique Reymond. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The astonishing true-life story of Jean-Dominic Bauby -- a man who held the world in his palm, lost everything to sudden paralysis at 43 years old, and somehow found the strength to rebound -- first touched the world in Bauby's best-selling autobiography The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (aka La Scaphandre et la Papillon), then in Jean-Jacques Beineix's half-hour 1997 documentary of Bauby at work, released under the same title, and, ten years after that, in this Cannes-selected docudrama, helmed by Julian Schnabel (Basquiat) and adapted from the memoir by Ronald Harwood (Cromwell). The Schnabel/Harwood picture follows Bauby's story to the letter -- his instantaneous descent from a wealthy and congenial playboy and the editor of French Elle, to a bed-bound, hospitalized stroke victim with an inactive brain stem that made it impossible for him to speak or move a muscle of his body. This prison, as it were, became a kind of "diving bell" for Bauby -- one with no means of escape. With the editor's mind unaffected, his only solace lay in the "butterfly" of his seemingly depthless fantasies and memories. Because of Bauby's physical restriction, he only possessed one channel for communication with the outside world: ocular activity. By moving his eyes and blinking, he not only began to interact again with the world around him, but -- astonishingly -- authored the said memoir via a code used to signify specific letters of the alphabet. In Schnabel's picture, Mathieu Amalric tackles the difficult role of Bauby; the film co-stars Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, and Patrick Chesnais. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

When three estranged siblings are reunited for the first time in years to make the most painful decision of their lives, they find that in order to build a future together they must first shed the facades that have enabled them to cope with the past. Upon learning that their mother is dying, two sisters and their brother travel to be at her bedside and realize that she is in a state of deep suffering. As her children, the three siblings agree that they should end their mother's misery, yet before doing so they will first have to take one last trip into their painful past. Having prematurely lost their father in an accident before realizing that their mother was being unfaithful in the marriage, each of the siblings formed their own interpretation of their mutual history. Now, after having lived with their own unique versions of the past for years, brother and sister alike must finally accept the truth about their family history so that they may move forward into the future unburdened. Julie Depardieu, Marie-Josée Croze, and Nicolas Rossier star in this family drama from director Pilar Anguita-Mackay. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Much as Steven Spielberg followed 1993's special-effects blockbuster Jurassic Park with a far more downbeat and personal project later the same year, Schindler's List, in 2005 after tearing up the box office with War of the Worlds the director closed out the year with a powerful and thoughtful drama about the human costs of international terrorism. The 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, were supposed to be a peaceful gathering of outstanding athletes from around the world, but on September 5, the games took a sinister turn when eight masked Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic village, killing two Israeli athletes and abducting nine others. The kidnappers demanded safe passage out of Germany in addition to the release of Arab prisoners in Israeli and German prisons, but when they arrived at the Munich airport they were met by German police and military forces, and in the melee that followed, all nine hostages were killed. In the wake of the killings, the Israeli government gave Mossad, the nation's intelligence agency, a special assignment -- to track down and eliminate the Palestinians responsible for the death of the Israeli athletes. A young and idealistic Mossad agent (Eric Bana) is assigned to the four-man unit created to wipe out the Olympic terrorists, but while he believes in serving his country, as their bloody work goes on he begins to buckle under the weight of his work and wonders if he can morally justify his nation's acts of revenge. Munich also stars Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Ciarán Hinds. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A female detective on the trail of a psychotic killer discovers love in a dangerous time in this thriller, based on the novel by Michael Pye. Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie) is a special agent with the FBI who has a reputation for using offbeat methods, but also boasts a strong record as a criminal profiler. Scott is called in by a former Quantico colleague (Tcheky Karyo) to assist two Canadian police detectives, Paquette (Olivier Martinez) and Duval (Jean-Hugues Anglade), who are on the trail of a serial killer who has been doing business in and around Montreal for close to two decades. The murderer has a history of assimilating many aspects of the lives of his victims after he kills them, but there's been a witness to his most recent crime. Art gallery owner James Costa (Ethan Hawke) saw the killer during an assault, and now finds himself working as an only marginally willing decoy for Scott. As Scott and Costa follow the killer's trail, they find themselves becoming attracted to one another, which is not necessarily a comfort to Scott as she finds her quarry moving closer and closer. Taking Lives also stars Kiefer Sutherland and Gena Rowlands. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Denys Arcand revisits the situations and relationships that informed his international breakthrough The Decline of the American Empire with this dialogue-driven character study. Set 17 years after Decline, The Barbarian Invasions, like its predecessor, examines the varying politics -- economic, personal, and sexual -- at play among an aging group of friends, lovers, and ex-spouses. This time around, leads Remy (Rémy Girard) and Louise (Dorothee Berryman) are divorced, with their son Sebastien (Stéphane Rousseau) living in capitalist splendor in London. But the slightly estranged family is brought together by Remy's losing battle with terminal cancer, and the hedonistic, ex-radical father and straight-laced son have to overcome their differences. Along the way, Remy waxes nostalgic with many of the same pals who made up the dinner party of the first film. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan explores his Armenian heritage, and how the country's tragic history has touched several generations of the nation's expatriates, in this ambitious drama. Edward Saroyan (Charles Aznavour), a veteran filmmaker of Armenian descent, is in Toronto shooting a film about the Siege of Van, in which invading Ottoman armies forced the evacuation of Armenian communities in 1915, leading to the genocide of over a million Armenian people at the hands of Turkish troops. Twenty-one-year-old Raffi (David Alpay) has been sent to Turkey to shoot background footage for the film; Raffi's mother Ani (Arsinee Khanjian), an author and historian, is also involved in the project as a consultant. Lately Raffi and Ani have been at odds; Raffi has been dating Celia (Marie-Josee Croze), Ani's stepdaughter, who is convinced that Ani is somehow responsible for the death of her father. Ani's first husband, who was Raffi's father, is also dead, after taking part in an assassination attempt on a Turkish political leader. As Raffi attempts to re-enter Canada with cans of exposed film, he's detained by David (Christopher Plummer), a suspicious customs official who has his own tenuous link to Saroyan's film -- David is struggling to come to terms with the gay lifestyle of his son Philip (Brent Carver), whose lover Ali (Elias Koteas) is playing the villain in the picture. Ararat also features Eric Bogosian and Bruce Greenwood. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This big-budget science fiction adventure centers on a final battle between good and evil for control of the world. In the year 3000, Earth is ruled by the Psyclos, a vicious alien race of which Terl (John Travolta) is a member, that has laid waste to the planet, killed the majority of the population, and stripped Earth of its valuable resources. Pockets of resistance remain among the surviving humans; Jonnie "Goodboy" Tyler (Barry Pepper) is one such rebel, living in hiding in the mountains near Boulder, CO. Eventually, Johnny begins organizing like-minded humans for a final stand against the Psyclos. The film is based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction author also known as the founder of the Church of Scientology; it covers only the first half of the book, saving the remainder for a possible sequel. Battlefield Earth also stars Forest Whitaker, Kim Coates, and Kelly Preston. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide