Patrick Chesnais Movies
Prolific and versatile French character player Patrick Chesnais received his formal dramatic training under the tutelage of René Simon and Lise Delamare at the famed Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique in Paris in the late '60s, and took his premier bow as an actor in 1976, with a small role in Jacques Rozier's The Castaways of Turtle Island. Over four dozen assignments ensued over the following few decades, typically supporting roles for acclaimed directors including Jacques Renard (Monsieur Albert), Diane Kurys (Cocktail Molotov), Michel Deville (La Lectrice), and Claude Lelouch (La Belle Histoire). Chesnais debuted as a writer/director with the 2001 Charmant Garçon, in which he also starred; in that romantic comedy, he played a middle-aged loser who attempts to make a serious play for a woman after hitting her car. Chesnais subsequently netted a fair amount of international attention for his supporting turn as a slightly unctuous physician in Julian Schnabel's festival darling The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 1990
In this somewhat odd exploration of human romantic difficulties, the people in the film are all put under extra stress by the fact that on the day in question, they have lost an hour to daylight savings time. In addition, it is a full moon. Neither factor improves their response to the mild stresses they experience, which have been building up for several years. The beginning of the film shows a number of couples getting married, and follows them and a few others a few years later, on the day of the time change. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gérard Lanvin, Patrick Chesnais, (more)
- 1989
Nathalie Monnier (Marie Fugain) is 14, her parents are splitting up, and what's worse, their apartment is going to be put up for sale. Just about everything in her life is about to be shattered. So it makes a bit of sense that she is receptive to the possibility of selling her soul for the chance to keep all this from happening. Just as her parents are (of course) getting back together, she wins the lottery and is able to buy their old apartment. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carole Laure, Patrick Chesnais, (more)
- 1989
When Corentin (Roland Giraud) marries a young woman, he is unable to consummate the marriage in this costumed comedy. He is threatened under church law with seizure of his property and annulment of the marriage unless he can consummate before the eyes of a prying public tribunal. The film is based on a true story from 17th-century France. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roland Giraud, Muriel Brener, (more)
- 1988
Max (Wojtek Pszoniak) is a Polish Jew who survived World War II and runs a second-hand store in the suburbs of Paris. He gives war orphan Victor (Thomas Langmann) a job and a place to stay after the conflict ends. Victor and his young cronies dabble in the black market as he is ignored by his former friend, a bourgeois anti-Semitic. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wojciech Pszoniak, Thomas Langmann, (more)
- 1988
- R
At the suggestion of a friend, Constance (Miou-Miou) places an ad in the paper offering her services as a reader in this romantic comedy drama. Her job leads her to a variety of employers and occasional romantic involvement. Maria Casares plays the widow of an East European general who has Constance read Tolstoy and Marx. Pierre Dux is the local magistrate who prefers to hear the memoirs of the Marquis de Sade. She also has an affair with a harried business executive played by Patrick Chesnais. This film was named the "Best Feature" at the 1988 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miou-Miou, Christian Ruche, (more)
- 1988
In this light French comedy, Marie and Jerome (Marlene Jobert) and Patrick Chesnais) are a middle aged couple desperate to have a child. They have tried to deal with the official adoption agencies, but the bureaucracies are so hidebound that they'll likely reach their dotage before a child becomes available. Next they try to persuade a pregnant teen to give up her baby, but that doesn't work either. Marie and Jerome are left to resort to more desperate measures. Various well-known French funnymen have cameos, including Romain Bouteille and Christian Clavier. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlène Jobert, Patrick Chesnais, (more)
- 1988
This French drama explores the desolation felt by a young girl whose divorced concert pianist mother and businessman father are too self-absorbed to give her any attention. Louise (Sophie Rochut) stoically attempts to carry on, despite the disregard of those around her. Her stoicism is shattered by a few moments of incidental friendliness from a journalist. She runs away to find him, despite not even knowing his name or address. She returns home, unsuccessful, and throws herself in the river. This suicide attempt momentarily brings mother and daughter together, but we are left with little hope that things will really be better in the long run. Writer/director Michele Rosier tells this sad story with a minimum of melodramatics, which makes it even more effective. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philippe Clevenot, Dominique Valadie, (more)
- 1984
Femmes De Personne is a French "feminist" film that comes off as slightly misogynistic (not to mention misanthropic) at times. Is it possible to be happy in business and still be happy in bed? The four leading ladies, all successful career women, don't seem particularly blissful. On the contrary, their boudoir activity seems to be as much a trial as going to work each morning. Femmes De Personne was directed by novelist Christopher Frank, most of whose books are variations on the theme "It's miserable at the top". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marthe Keller, Caroline Cellier, (more)
- 1983
- R
Directors Jean-Henri Roger and Juliet Berto begin this thriller with sequences on the contemporary politics of southern France and the infiltration of organized crime into real estate development there -- the crime bosses were torching forest tracts to make way for their development schemes in the early 1980s. In the fictionalized story, Paula Barretto (Juliet Berto) is caught in this underworld because her father was involved in the drug business, her brother is in the real estate scam, and her lover is an armed thief. Although she tries to get out of her corrupt and dangerous environment, it is not an easy task when even the police officers cannot be trusted, and the underworld has informants everywhere. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Bohringer, Jean-Claude Brialy, (more)
- 1981
This drama about a barmaid caught up in events beyond her control is the first film directed by Juliet Berto, and was also based on her own concept for the story. The barmaid, played by Berto, has been trying to take care of Bobby, a teenage drug pusher who is in over his head. Before she can put him back on track and get him out of the drug underworld, the young man is killed while being chased by a narcotics agent. Depressed by his death but not derailed, she finds herself trying to help out a gay user who depended on Bobby for his supply of drugs. She decides to procure some drugs for the desperate addict, and is trapped in the bathroom of a bar - with the drugs - when narcotics agents burst upon the scene. Her boyfriend rushes to help her but is killed by an agent who shoots first and thinks later. The barmaid does not face a very optimistic future as the narc arrests her - but releases a parish minister who had been helping her find a source for the drugs. Snow shared the prize for Contemporary Cinema at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juliet Berto, Jean-François Stévenin, (more)
- 1981
- R
In this tender and sentimental comedy, Ben (Victor Lanoux), a Parisian Jew, copes with the dramas in his everyday life against the background of his family's survival of the Holocaust. Things between him and his wife are not any too easy, and on top of it, he has to heed his father's concerns, even though he lives in Israel now. His grandfather, who lives in the south of France, is a very old man, but is still a romantic obsessed with women. These tensions come to the fore when the family gathers to celebrate the patriarch's 90th birthday. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Victor Lanoux, Jane Birkin, (more)
- 1980
A hot topic might be overly simplified for some viewers in this first-time political drama by Stephane Kurc. Marc (Patrick Chesnais) is a leftist and leans more towards militancy than compromise in his work at a Paris television station. Unlike Marc, his friend Françoise (Olivier Granier) is ambitious and has an obliging personality that nets him the shared directorship of a weekly current events show. Ready to help Marc out if he can, Françoise gives him an assignment to report on an Algerian immigrant camp. The results are as freewheeling as Marc's opinions, and a small tempest in a teapot threatens to shape up into a more serious storm. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Chesnais, Olivier Granier, (more)
- 1980
Poignant and with several delicately wrought moments, this otherwise by-the-book tearjerker is about a little brother and big sister looking for their long-lost father. Nadine Trintignant (wife of Jean-Louis Trintignant) co-scripted and directs her two children, nineteen-year-old Marie as the eponymous sister and five-year-old Vincent as the brother, also by the same name. After their mother dies, Marie and Vincent are forced into the care of an iron-willed, iron-fisted Aunt Jeanne (Lucienne Hamon) whose militaristic view of life soon drives them to run away. The two set out for Antibes knowing that their father captains a private yacht in that port. Along the way they meet up with a kind writer who takes care of them for the night, a slightly off-the-wall man who gives them a ride, and a few other characters. It certainly looks like the long-awaited meeting with their father will really happen. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marie Trintignant, Vincent Trintignant, (more)
- 1980
In this drama, a provincial girl goes to Paris in search of her fortune. Although she finds the City of Light to be quite different from what she'd imagined it to be, the girl manages to retain her dignity. It is only after she is thoroughly disillusioned by her experiences there that she returns to her country life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruno Ganz, Patrick Chesnais, (more)
- 1980
- R
This youthful drama centers on a group of teens struggling to become adults without losing their youthful aspirations. It begins as Caron leaves the pressure of her home life for Venice in hopes of finding spontaneity and fun. She is followed by her boyfriend Lebas and his friend Cluzet. Lebas hopes that he will convince her to go home. Trouble begins after his car and her stuff are stolen in Italy. When they learn that workers and students have been rioting in Paris, they quickly return, eager to join the fray. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elise Caron, Philippe Lebas, (more)
- 1979
Director Robert Enrico has attempted to adapt a novel, by Hortense Dufour, of larger-than-life figures to a larger-than-life screen. The drama in the novel has not translated well. It is a rather routine story of men at a highway construction site in 1965 who guide huge machinery around by day and in the end, have difficulties with their nomadic lifestyle. The work and its conditions are demanding, yet the men and their families do not extend beyond a set series of stereotypes that would be familiar territory to most audiences. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Zoe Chauveau, Mario Adorf, (more)
- 1976
In this poetic slice-of-life film that reveals the problems and needs of a group of lowlife characters, unwed mother Vivaine (Dominique Labourier) falls in love with working-class youth Francois (Patrick Chesnais) who has a shady past. Albert (Philippe Noiret), a no-good insurance con-artist, poses for many years as Francois' friend, but tragedy ensues when Albert comes between the lovers, and Francois and Albert resort to physical violence to settle their differences ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philippe Noiret, Dominique Labourier, (more)
