Michel Cassagne Movies

The charmed life of a successful young engineer is thrown into chaos following a decidedly uncomfortable dinner with his powerful boss and the man's socially scabrous wife in With a Friend Like Harry director Dominik Moll's twisted, semi-supernatural thriller. Upon relocating to an ultra-modern community in the south of France with the promise of a lucrative position at powerful Richard Pollock's (André Dussollier) hi-tech firm, Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) and his wife, Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg), find their life together going better than they ever imagined. Happy in his work and deeply in love with his beautiful wife, Alain relishes his newfound success before a fateful dinner with Richard and his venomously eccentric wife, Alice (Charlotte Rampling), casts a dark thunderhead over Alain's azure skies. Unable to sleep after the troubling and abbreviated dinner and driven to repair the kitchen sink during a sleepless fit of late-night productivity, Alain is shocked to discover that a lemming has become lodged in the drainage pipes. As Alain attempts to discover just how a rodent native to Scandinavia found its way to a tiny drain pipe in France, a sudden revelation regarding the grim fate of Richard's troubled wife finds the once rational engineer struggling to maintain his sanity, and his marriage, against a malevolent and seemingly supernatural force. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The physical imperfections of Bonnie (Anemone), a woman trying to work her way up the ladder at a radio station, do not stop her from going after Ferdinand (Gerard Jugnot), a reticent, bald, and mild fellow who at first resists Bonnie's overtures, but then slowly seems to change his mind. At parties in France in the 1950s, there was "an American quarter hour" (the French title of this film) when women asked men to dance. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie), a pessimistic but visually stunning film, marks Jean-Luc Godard's return to cinema after having spent the 70s working in video. The film presents a few days in the lives of three people: Paul Godard (Jacques Dutronc ), a television producer; Denise Rimbaud (Nathalie Baye), his co-worker and ex-girlfriend; and Isabelle Riviera (Isabelle Huppert), a prostitute whom Paul has used. Denise wants to break up with Paul and move to the country. Isabelle wants to work for herself instead of her pimp. Paul just wants to survive. Their stories intersect when Paul brings Denise to the country cottage he is trying to rent and Isabelle comes to see it without knowing that the landlord has been her client. The film is broken into segments entitled "The Imaginary," "Commerce," "Life," and "Music." Each of the first three sections focuses on one character and the last section brings all three characters together. This complex film is often closer to an essay than a story; it uses slow motion and experimental techniques to explore questions of love, work, and the nature of cinema. Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie) was Godard's first film with his frequent collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville, who edited and co-wrote the film. ~ Louis Schwartz, Rovi

The grim post-World War I era in Europe is grist for director Bertrand Tavernier's mill in Life and Nothing But. Philipe Noiret portrays a French major who is supervising the gruesome task of counting and identifying the corpses still strewn over the battlefield. Noiret is obsessed with the notion that, by doing his job above and beyond the call of duty, he can somehow make up for the carnage in which he participated a few years earlier. The major's mission is intercut with short vignettes involving the families and loved ones of the dead, and with the efforts by another officer to find a suitable candidate for an Unknown Soldier testimonial. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi