Clovis Cornillac Movies

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

Star crossed lovers are the focus of this French romantic comedy. Marie-Louise, an American, has come to Paris to meet her new lover, Jean-Paul who has a weekend pass from his military service post. Unfortunately they misunderstood each other's instructions and are each at different train stations. They begin desperate searches throughout the night to find each other. The are hindered by Jean-Paul's ex-lover Marie, whom he rejected. Marie will do anything to get rid of Marie-Louise and win Jean-Paul back. Marie-Louise has her own problems when Jean falls for her. Jean accidently gets her involved with the police after he is arrested on the suspicion of pickpocketing. Despite their travails, the couple still tries to find each other. In the end, they are assisted by a magical nun who finally reunites them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Karnaval is set against a backdrop of intolerance and hostility in the gloomy Northern French city of Dunkirk. The story is set during carnival time, when the citizens let themselves loose for six weeks of partying, carousing and having a good time. The film centers on Larbi (Ben Abdallah), an Arab youth, and his confrontation with one of the turning points of his life. After a violent argument with his father, Larbi decides to leave the family's business and go to Marseilles for a fresh start. On his last night in the town he grew up in, he sleeps in the hallway of an apartment building, where he is disturbed by Béa (Sylvie Testud) and Christian (Clovis Cornillac), a couple having fun at the carnival. Larbi is attracted to Béa and decides to stay a few more days to try his luck. In the free atmosphere of the carnival, Larbi discovers a world that he did not know existed, a world which is about to clash with his conservative outlook, and the three lives are changed forever. First time director Thomas Vincent approached the project with a realistic perspective rooted in a social context while remaining very lyrical, an approach he admired in the films of Ken Loach. Karnaval received the Alfred Bauer Prize for a debut film at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival in 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

Four prisoners sharing the same cramped cell make a discovery that could help them escape from even the most high security prison if it doesn't split their world wide open first. Carrere is an ambitious company director serving time for fraud, Marcus is a thirty-five year old transsexual on course to becoming a real woman, Daisy is a mentally deficient servant, and Lassalle is a sixty year old intellectual who murdered his wife of many years. Together, these lawless misfits do their best to serve their time without losing their minds. One day, after discovering a loose stone slab in their cell, the four incarcerated convicts unearth the diary of a former prisoner named Danvers who occupied the exact same cell at the turn of the century. According to the diary, there exist magic formulas so powerful than any prisoner could use them to escape. Later, when the men attempt to decipher the formulas, the entire prison becomes a terrifying cauldron of bizarre phenomena. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Carnage, an example of what the French call un film chorale, tells several intertwining stories. In the central tale, a young second-generation bullfighter, Victor (Julien Lescarret), is gored, and is rushed to the hospital in critical condition. A little girl, Winnie (Raphaëlle Molinier), sits next to a massive Great Dane and watches the fateful bullfight on television, and becomes obsessed with the bull. A university researcher, Jacques (Jacques Gamblin of Safe Conduct), cheats on his massively pregnant wife, Betty (Lio), who hides a critical fact about her pregnancy from him. Jacques' brother, Luc (Bernard Sens), an amateur taxidermist, lives with their mother, Rosie (Esther Gorintin), who loves him, but withholds a family secret. Winnie's teacher, Jeanne (Lucia Sanchez), struggles to understand her neurotic mother, Alicia (Ángela Molina), when she visits. When her car is dented by a shopping cart, Carlotta (Chiara Mastroianni), a struggling actress, meets Alexis (Clovis Cornillac), a suicidal philosopher/skater who offers to lead her to the culprits. Carnage, the debut feature from writer/director Delphine Gleize, won the Sutherland Trophy at the 2002 London Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the 2002 Stockholm Film Festival. It was also shown at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and at Lincoln Center in New York as part of their 2003 Rendez-Vouz with French Cinema. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

French filmmaker Sam Karmann directs the crime drama A La Petite Semaine (Nickel and Dime), co-written with actual ex-con Desir Carre. When fiftysomething Jacques (Gerard Lanvin) gets released after serving five years in prison, he goes right to his local hangout and reunites with his old hoodlum friends in a working-class section of Montmarte. His friend Francis (Jacques Gamblin) has been taking acting classes, living with his mother (Liliane Rovere), and dating the waitress Camille (Julie Durand). His other friend, small-time crook Didier (Clovis Cornillac),has been gambling a lot, event though he and his wife Josiane (Sarah Haxaire) are expecting a baby. To the dismay of head criminal Marcel (Etienne Chicot), Jacques doesn't want to continue with a life of crime. A La Petite Semaine also stars Philippe Nahon as the bartender. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

A woman struggles to hold on to the man she loves in this drama set in the 1930s from Belgian filmmaker Frédéric Fonteyne. Elisa (Emmanuelle Devos) is a housewife who is passionately devoted to her husband, Gilles (Clovis Cornillac), who works in a steel mill. Despite taking care of twin daughters and unfailingly seeing to the cooking and cleaning in their home, Elisa is as adoring of Gilles as she was on the day they met, and she eagerly tends to his ravenous sexual appetite. However, while most men would be thrilled to have a wife like Elisa, after years of marriage she begins to suspect that he might be having an affair with her sister Victorine (Laura Smet) while Elisa is pregnant with their third child. Elisa is too much in love with Gilles to leave him, but while she can accept her husband's faults, neither she nor her husband are certain if this is a casual fling or a love affair that will put an end to their relationship. La Femme de Gilles (aka Gilles' Wife) was adapted from a novel by Madeleine Bourdouxhe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Audrey Tautou, who rose to international stardom with the title role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's worldwide smash Amélie, reunites with the director for this drama, set during the darkest days of World War I and its immediate aftermath. Mathilde (Tautou) is a pretty but frail young women who was left with a bad leg after a childhood bout with polio. Mathilde lives in a small French village with her Aunt Bénédicte (Chantal Neuwirth) and Uncle Sylvain (Dominique Pinon), and is engaged to marry Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), the son of a lighthouse keeper who is fighting with the army near the German front. Manech is one of five soldiers who have been accused of injuring themselves in order to be sent home; in order to discourage similar behavior among their comrades, Manech and the other soldiers are sentenced to death, and the condemned men are marched into the no man's land between the French and German lines, where they are certain to be killed. Mathilde receives word of Manech's death, but in her heart she believes that if the man she loved had been killed, she would know it and feel it. Convinced he's still alive somewhere, Mathilde hires a private detective (Ticky Holgado) shortly after the end of the war, and together they set out to find the missing Manech. Jodie Foster appears in a supporting role as a Polish expatriate living in France. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

During his adolescent years, Sami, a French teen, saved 15-year-old buddy Patrick from a potentially fatal skiing accident - causing Patrick to feel long indebted to his friend. Years later, Patrick (Clovis Cornillac) has evolved into a congenial husband, father and businessman with a handsome Parisian flat and a gorgeous wife named Justine (Alice Taglioni), but the poor Sami (Pascal Elbe) failed to make an equally smooth transition into adulthood. He developed a severe case of hypochondria - so severe that he's now a basket case and spends inordinate amounts of time in the hospital undergoing every medical test in the books, and presumably torturing his insurance company in the process. So begins Gerard Bitton and Michael Munz's outrageous comedy-of-errors The Cactus. When Sami endures a brain scan and overhears a conversation between a doctor and a nurse, indicating that the patient "is suffering from a severe case of white spots" and "won't last the winter" - his paranoia leads him to conclude that they are discussing the results of his procedure; unbeknownst to him, the discussion pertains to the office cactus. Terrified of impending death, Sami leans more heavily than ever on Patrick and Justine (for whom he carries a serious torch) - first moving into their house, and then carting the Patrick along with him on a trip to India to consult with a famous healer. Alas, the two men's problems are only beginning, and when Patrick's decides to skip work in order to help his friend, it marks the beginning of a journey full of outrageous errors and mishaps that collectively turn each man's life upside down and inside out. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide