Zouzou Movies
- 2005
Eric Rohmer is one of the best-respected filmmakers in the history of the French cinema, as well as among the most elusive. Notoriously reluctant to talk about his own work, Rohmer rarely sits for filmed interviews, but documentary filmmaker Marie Binet has taken another route to gain a perspective on the director's working methods in this feature. Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmeriens features interviews with 16 actors who have appeared in Rohmer's films, and they talk on camera about his unusual working methods, his personality, and his spare but evocative signature style. Among the thespians who share their memories are Jean-Louis Trinitignant, Marie-Christine Barrault, Zouzou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Françoise Fabian, and Andre Dussolier; the film also includes rare footage of Rohmer himself at work on the set of his 1978 effort Perceval. Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmeriens received its North American premiere at the 2005 New Montreal Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Féodor Atkine, Marie-Christine Barrault, (more)
- 1977
"Radical chic" was a phenomenon of the upper classes in the late '60s and early '70s: liberal, socially concerned and very wealthy people would emulate the attitudes, mannerisms and style of the radicalized and revolutionary poor. They would even go so far as to socialize with revolutionaries and provide them with funding for their activities. In this drama, a similar group of bored rich people gets more involved with the radical element than they had planned, and things get out of hand. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Zouzou, Peter Chatel, (more)
- 1976
This otherwise straightforward movie that chronicles the conflict between a man's romantic urges and the feminist ideal and a custody battle over the man's young son has a cataclysmic ending which is not for the fainthearted. In the story, Gerard (Gerard Depardieu) is an engineer who has just been left by his wife (Zouzou) for feminist reasons and has custody of his nine-month old son, whom he cares for deeply. When his next romance with Valerie (Ornella Muti), his son's daycare worker, threatens that custody, he responds by emasculating himself with a knife. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Ornella Muti, (more)
- 1975
In a deliberately erratic and disjointed fashion, this film follows the adventures of Bernard (Jean-Pierre Leaud). A young man from the provinces, he makes his pilgrimage to Paris and seeks adventure while living on a barge. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claudine Vannier, (more)
- 1975
Sometimes the story that a journalist is assigned lands him with a boring tale. That's what Francois (Jean-Michel Folon) believes when he is given the job of writing about a "worker"'s life. When he meets the man, he discovers that the man's wife has just left him and moved back to her mother's. The newsman and a friend of his take the poor man out on the town to comfort him. The reporter also interviews the woman who is making the worker's life difficult and even finds a way to fix things up between the couple. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Rufus, Jean-Michel Folon, (more)
- 1969
This plodding and confusing feature finds two disenchanted young lovers cavorting around in tee shirts and rubber pants. Hints of youthful discontent and symbolism are presented in this pretentious film about a couple who live an embryonic existence cut off from the rest of the world. The most upbeat part of the film is the main character's suicide attempt. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Léaud, Zouzou, (more)
- 1969
Philippe Garrel's 1969 feature La lit de la vierge (The Virgin's Bed) represents a spiritual and thematic cousin to his 2005 film The Regular Lovers; whereas the latter revisits the tumultuous Parisian events of May 1968 over 35 years later, and carefully reconstructs those days with docudrama technique, Garrel and his cast and crew of shot La lit in the summer of '68 (reportedly under the influence of acid and without a script), just a few months after the bouleversement of the riots. In that picture, the filmmakers adapt the Biblical story of Jesus very loosely and non-narratively, using Christ as a metaphoric symbol of the late '60s protest movement - the "ultimate hippie." The picture also reflects the filmmakers' self-mythologies of existing and functioning as a "religious sect." Pierre Clementi plays Jesus; Zouzou portrays both the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Pierre Clémenti, Zouzou, (more)
- 1968
A young hippie feels disenfranchised with the modern world around him. He tries to enter into a relationship with a young girl, but the two are plagued by their own individual problems and things don't work out as they would like. The two feel alienated from society and each other in this symbolic and listless feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Zouzou, Didier Leon, (more)
Eric Rohmer ends his cycle of Six Moral Tales with this delightful film starring Bernard Verley as Frédéric, a happily married man who discovers that he can't stop looking at beautiful women. As he says in a voice-over, "I feel marriage closes me in, cloisters me, and I want to escape." His escape comes to him in the form of Chloé (Zouzou), a woman from his past. Chloé had left for America as a successful model but has now returned to Paris, bored with her life and saddled with a man she doesn't love. Although Frédéric is reluctant to see her at first, they agree to meet in the afternoons -- just to talk. He feels a freedom with her that he doesn't experience with anyone else because they have, he thinks, no commitments to each other. So, they talk of their problems and their relationships and, before long, Frédéric finds that he is becoming increasingly attracted to her. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bernard Verley, Zouzou, (more)
- 1976
- PG
In Sky Riders, the off-camera tale behind the film cast a more interesting story than the film itself: when a Greek electrician died during an explosion, the film's producer, Terry Morse Jr., was arrested by the Greek government, and executive producer Sandy Howard was detained in Greece for several weeks. Finally, an out-of-court settlement was reached with the Greek government to release the film producer. The plot of the actual film has nothing to do with international incidents, although it does deal, on a comic-book level, with terrorism. The wife, Ellen (Susannah York), of an international industrialist (Robert Culp) and her two children are kidnapped from their Athens home by a terrorist group and taken to an abandoned monastery on an imposing, needle-shaped crag. The police immediately snap into action. Inspector Nikolidis (Charles Aznavour) attempts to free them, but the police force fails. Coming into the picture is Ellen's ex-husband, Jim McCabe (James Coburn). Pondering the situation, he notices a couple of crows in flight and gets a brainstorm. McCabe tracks down a flying circus of hang-gliding riders and requisitions them for the rescue. The hang gliders teach McCabe to fly, and McCabe teaches them to fight. Then, on the night of a full moon, the group glides off to the monastery to save Ellen. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- James Coburn, Susannah York, (more)
In 1974, flanked by such filmic monuments to paranoia and corruption as Chinatown and The Parallax View, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland tried to re-create the screwball nonchalance of their earlier M*A*S*H performances in this lightweight spy spoof, directed by Irvin Kershner. Gould and Sutherland play two CIA agents -- Griff and Bruland -- who are marked for death by their own agency after botching the defection of a Russian ballet dancer (Michael Petrovich). As they repeatedly mess up their assignments and wriggle out of tight corners, they not only find themselves pursued by the CIA, but also by the KGB, the Chinese Communists, and a terrorist group that wants to destroy the CIA. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, (more)
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