Lou Castel Movies

Intentionally or unintentionally molded after the eccentric deadpan comedies of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki, the quirky slice-of-life feature El Cantor unfolds amid the day-to-day of western European Jews. William (Luis Rego), a dentist living in the French port city of Le Havre, receives a telegram from his long-absent cousin, Clovis (Lou Castel), indicating that the latter will soon be docking and needs a place to reside. He's an itinerant Jew without a permanent home, nicknamed "The Cantor" by his parents for his obsession with imbibing as much Yiddish as possible during childhood. As a youngster, Clovis constantly played the prankster by teasing William and others, yet remained affable to generally everyone (including William). Sensing a rekindled closeness, William - to the chagrin of his wife Elizabeth (Francoise Michaud), who is still grieving from the recent loss of her father - obliges Clovis's request. This prompts Elizabeth to do everything in her power to persuade Clovis to leave, shy of physically throwing him out the door. Clovis remains, however, and soon accompanies William on an eventful trip into the city that neither will ever forget. Director Joseph Morder segments his film into distinct chapters with fade-outs in-between. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Director Bertrand Bonello adapts the Greek myth of Tiresias to a modern day setting with this unforgiving tale of a transsexual prostitute held captive by a man obsessed with her ethereal beauty. Bound in her lonely prison and deprived of the hormones that keep her from reverting back to manhood, Tiresia's increasingly obvious masculine traits slowly begin to repulse her captor until he brutally blinds her and leaves her to die. Tiresia's will to live is strong, however, and though the bizarre beauty lives on devoid of her sense of sight and trapped in an indefinable twilight zone somewhere between man and woman, her power of second sight gradually emerges until Tiresia becomes more in tune with the world than ever before. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A boy in his early teens develops a crush on a grown woman old enough to be his mother, only to discover she is also attracted to him, in this controversial drama from France. Marion (Emmanuelle Bercot) is a headstrong and free-spirited woman in her early thirties who heads to the seacoast for a short vacation that coincides with the 13th birthday of her godson Benoit (Kevin Goffette). Benoit and his friends are just old enough to be enthralled with any conversation involving sex, and Marion humors them by joining in their talks on the beach about the mysteries of women. Marion soon gets to know one of Benoit's friends, Clement (Olivier Gueritee), and the interest between them becomes more than just friendly; some good-natured horseplay stirs a desire between them, and after the two share a kiss on the beach, Clement is obsessed with Marion. While she's unsure about starting a relationship with a boy less than half her age, Marion can't deny her feelings for Clement, and before long she and the youngster are lovers. One night, Clement appears at Marion's doorstep, announcing he's run away from home and wants to move in with her; Marion isn't sure what to tell the boy, knowing the foolishness of such a move even though she does love him, and soon Clement is crestfallen, certain that Marion no longer cares for him. Clement was written and directed by Emmanuelle Bercot, who also stars as Marion; the film was shown in the Un Certain Regard series at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Young Cinema Award. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Siegfried made his directorial debut with this French drama. In addition to directing and scripting, the multi-talented twentysomething Siegfried composed the film's jazzy, uptempo music score and also shared the camerawork (with Vincent Buron and Herve Lode) that features handheld scenes tracking through the Paris Metro. The central role of Louise is portrayed by Elodie Bouchez, who won a 1998 Cannes "Best Actress" award for The Dreamlife of Angels. When Louise has an encounter with homeless Remi (Roschdy Zem), they have a magnetic attraction, but she is already attached to illiterate shoplifter and pickpocket punk Yaya (Gerald Thomassin). Although allied with Yaya in petty crimes, Louise lives with her widowed father (Lou Castel), a devoted writer of fiction. After a Metro bum (Bruce Myers) tells her of his desire to see his young son, she plucks the kid, Gaby (Antoine de Merle), right out of school, making him the newest rookie recruited into their subway gang. Shoplifting in a department store, the young toughs escape the store's security guards by hiding in the ballet rehearsal rooms of the nearby opera. But does Louise really belong with the subway toughs, or is she just pretending? When she's arrested, Louise is forced to reexamine her lifestyle. Some aspects of the plot parallel Leos Carax's haunting and memorable Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) -- as does the use of genuine homeless people in certain scenes. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival in the Certain Regard section. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Based on a true story this emotionally wrenching character study focuses upon a desperate young wife who feigns an entire pregnancy in hopes of convincing her dissatisfied husband to remain with her. Magali's problem comes from the fact that she is so bland and unassuming as to be nearly invisible. Her passivity and inability to form her own opinions grates on her husband Alain, a go-getter radio journalist, and he plans to take a year long assignment in Canada to get away from her. While preparing to leave, his boss, who has been inadvertently led to believe that Magli is pregnant, shows up and tells Alain. The husband's first response is to demand an abortion, but on second thought he decides he would like to become a father after all. Magli, fearing that he will leave, then devises her elaborate ruse. The gravity of her deception increases with that of her pillow-padded abdomen, for when her terminally ill father learns of her fecund condition, he vows that he will remain alive long enough to see his grandbaby. Her sister-in-law, who opted for abortion, is also very supportive and determined to help her through the pregnancy. As the months pass, Magli becomes increasingly cagey and cannily does not give Alain a definite due date. In the end, she solves her problem in a most creative way; it is a solution that spawns surprising consequences. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Marcello Mastroianni plays several different roles in this off-beat, witty exploration of a man with multiple personalities from world-class filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. Mastroianni first appears as Parisian traveling salesman Mateo Strano who suddenly shows up at the home of Maria, the wife he abandoned twenty years before. She eventually remarried Andre. Mateo begins telling the skeptical Andre that he never really left Marie. Instead he was bewitched by fairies and has been living in the apartment across the street the entire time. He seems so serious, that he is able to lure Andre to the alleged apartment. There Mateo murders him with a hammer and then calmly returns to Maria who seems nonplused by the sudden turn. With pride she shows Mateo their adopted daughter. Mastroianni next appears as Sorbonne professor of negative anthropology Georges Vickers, a grown man who still lives with his cranky mother until he inexplicably leaves to become a vagrant. Living on the streets, he encounters Tania, a streetwalker with a passion for the philosophies of author Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan. The hooker and the tramp stay together until the day that Vickers returns and he leaves. It is soon afterward that he discovers that Tania is really the president of a major corporation. When he learns that she has been jailed for attempting to murder her creepy ex-husband, Vickers uses his clout to save her. The story then jumps to a newlywed couple happily struggling in a humble garret. Their lives change dramatically when a benefactor suddenly appears and provides them with a marvelous country house. They are also given a mute butler (Mastroianni) who answers their every beck and call. It doesn't take the couple long to figure out that the sinister valet (who actually owns the chateau) is quietly poisoning them. In terror they leave, but later he finds them and demands that they give him their baby daughter. He gives the child to Maria, Mateo's wife. Mastroianni's fourth persona, that of industrial magnate Luc Alamand then appears. He is in trouble when he learns that the wife, daughter, and sister he manufactured to impress potential clients are actually coming. The stress causes the sudden emergence of his other disparate personalities. Interestingly, though each live wildly different lives, they are clearly the same mild-mannered, self-effacing character. The comedy in the story works on wildly different levels with sight gags and puns running simultaneously with literary and cultural satire. Beneath it all runs a serious message about the destructiveness and confusion caused by trying to create a single European culture. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Middle-aged artistes provide the focus of this drama filmed in black and white. The story is set in Paris around the time of the Gulf War. Paul is an actor leading a drab directionless existence. He has an affair with Ulrika, a woman half his age. His wife, with whom he constantly argues, is pregnant with their second child. He does not interact much with his teenage son. Much of the film centers around the emptiness of his life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Carlo (Carlo Colnaghi) is down on his luck. Actually, he's been down on his luck for a long time. He's an actor who hasn't worked in decades, in part because his mental state is so volatile that he gets put into psychiatric institutions on a fairly regular basis. All the same, he longs to get back onstage and off of welfare. He is preparing a long monologue based on his life - a solo performance. If he can pull it together and find someplace to perform it in, maybe he can manage a comeback. His only friend is a museum curator, a wealthy Jewish woman (Alessandra Comerio) who finds this pitiful man's situation, character, and efforts at redemption fascinating, much to the puzzlement and disgust of her friends. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In the salad days of his youth, Aureliano lived and worked in Africa, and the romance and exotic quality of those days remains with him still. These days, he lives a predictable existence, fending off the efforts of his female friend and former lover from those days to infuse some zest into his life. When he is approached by two anxious natives from the Ivory Coast looking for assistance, his stolid existence is shattered. The woman is on the run from the Italian underworld prostitution ring she worked for after stealing their drug stash, and the unsophisticated man is her Senegalese protector, whose family maintains some connections with Aureliano. When the gang kills the Senegalese, the former African's hand is forced into a relationship with the prostitute, and he gradually gains a fresh purpose in life. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this post-apocalpytic adventure story, narrated by Van Johnson), Teo (Fabrice Josso) lives underground in a cave with his father, who is a member of a ruling clan. Except for people within a family, all contacts between citizens are supposed to be electronic. However, Teo manages to contact and arrange to meet a girl named Beatrice (Ines Sastre). Not only that, but they use forgotten conduits to travel to the forbidden aboveground world. There, he and Beatrice meet and have some adventures with rat-like mutants living in the ruins of old cities while a man from the caves (Horst Buchholz) hunt for them. At first these adventures with the mutants are purely hostile, but eventually Teo becomes a leader among them, and takes them to a place where they may be safe from attacks by the underground people. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A diverse group of guests gather in a small hotel in Paris to contemplate the state of their lives in this pretentious drama. Joseph Goldman (Fernando Rey) is a washed-up Hollywood actor making a living in the dinner-theater circuit. Accompanied by his wife Sarah (Carola Regnier), Goldman meets Frederique (Berangere Bonvoisin), who is hiding from her former lover. French financier Arthur (Fabrice Luchini) hopes to get into the film industry and bends the ear of a British director (Michael Medwin). The talkative film has little action, and none of the characters evoke much interest or resolve their dilemma. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The unfortunate Traugot (Lou Castel) suddenly finds himself sandwiched between his former lover Freya (director Helke Sander) and his new love Irmtraut (Rebecca Pauly), both women are good friends -- or were. Traugot waffles between the two women and ultimately, seems to want both, why not. Freya vacillates between exasperation, a still-burning love for the waffler, anger against him, and the desire just to leave it all behind. As the story unfolds, she takes action while under the influence of her runaway emotions, and perhaps that is the catalyst that finally shakes up Traugot and forces him to make up his mind about his potentially monogamous future. As in previous films by director Helke Sander, women's issues are subtly raised and handled appropriately, in an engaging and relevant story told with wit and a visually sensitive camera. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide