Antoine Dulery Movies
- 2009
Inspired by director Vittorio De Sica's 1952 neorealist classic Umberto D., Francis Huster's sentimental drama stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as an aged retiree who is forced out onto the street with his dog after his relationship with a wealthy widow falls apart. A cinematic comeback for Belmondo, who previously retired from acting after suffering a major stroke, un homme et son chien tells the story of Charles, an older man who was invited by his lover to stay in the maid's room in her sprawling home. When the woman decides to marry again, however, Charles and his faithful four-legged companion are promptly shown the door. With no place to call home and no means of earning a living, Charles wanders the streets of Paris with his dog as their pair drift towards an uncertain fate. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Hafsia Herzi, (more)
- 2009
This zany, French-language fish-out-of-water comedy concerns a married couple, Hugo (Dany Boon) and Ariane (Sophie Marceau), who attempt to escape from the doldrums of nuptial banality by exchanging professional lives. He takes up his wife's career as a door-to-door jewelry salesman, and she assumes control of a building rental company - leading to a predictably endless series of outrageous complications. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sophie Marceau, Dany Boon, (more)
- 2007
A movie fan finds a way to make himself a presence in the lives of his favorite actresses in this comedy from French writer-director Laetitia Colombani. Robert Lepage (Kad Merad) is a janitor who is part of the cleaning crew at the offices of the biggest talent agency in Paris. Ordinarily, this job wouldn't offer many perks, but Robert is clever enough to know what to look for while he's vacuuming or emptying waste baskets, and he's able to swipe invitations to major events and pencil himself onto guest lists for show-biz soirees. Robert's longtime girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros) doesn't think much of his double life, but he's having enough fun that he starts adding his own thoughts to paperwork at the office, and begins using his skills to boost the careers of his favorite stars -- classy veteran actress Solange Duvivier (Catherine Deneuve), sultry siren Isabelle Serena (Emmanuelle Beart) and promising starlet Violette Duval (Melanie Bernier). Thanks to Robert's meddling, Solange, Isabelle and Violette are cast together in a big-budget costume epic, but when he becomes a regular visitor to the set, the actresses begin wondering among themselves who he is and how he became such a big shot. Mes Stars Et Moi (aka My Stars) received its North American premiere at the 2008 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, (more)
- 2006
A bourgeois office drone whose raison d'état is the music of French rocker Johnny Hallyday awakens one day in an alternate universe where the famed musician never recorded a single song. When he's not at the office dutifully plugging-away, Fabrice (Fabrice Luchini) lives a deadly dull life in the suburbs of Paris with his bored wife (Guilaine Londez) and rebellious teenage daughter (Elodie Bollee). The only thing that ignites passion in Fabrice's lifeless existence is the music of Johnny Hallyday, and every chance the smitten Fabrice gets he ventures up into the attic to worship at the shrine he has built to the larger-than-life pop icon. One night while drunkenly shuffling home, Fabrice goads on a quick-tempered neighbor and earns a stiff punch in the nose for his efforts. Upon awakening to discover that his elaborate rock star shrine is now a simple collection of beer cans, Fabrice calls to report a burglary to police. Strangely enough, no one - not even the police or his wife - has ever heard the name Johnny Hallyday. Subsequently, Fabrice makes it his mission in life to locate Hallyday and get him behind a microphone by any means necessary. Though the world's biggest Johnny Halliday fan does indeed eventually stumble across a bowling alley proprietor (Hallyday) who was once an aspiring teenage rock star, he soon finds his efforts to revive the failed singer's career thwarted in the most unexpected of ways. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fabrice Luchini, Johnny Hallyday, (more)
Arnaud Viard's 2003 French-language feature Clara et Moi chronicles the eccentric romance between the 33-year-old struggling actor Antoine (Julien Boisselier of Le Convoyeur) and Clara (Julie Gayet Les Menteurs), a girl he happens to meet on the subway. Clara happens along at exactly the right time for Antoine, who - worn out from celibacy - has just avowed to his analyst that he'll find a wife within a set period. All is heaven at first, almost farcically so (and Viard, well aware of this, even defies the audience's formic expectations by playfully interjecting a musical number into the middle of the movie, in which the lovers "sing" their feelings to one another, ala Demy). But suddenly, a dark and unexpected twist emerges in the relationship, that strips bare Antoine's emotional immaturity and thus threatens to bring everything crashing down. Michel Aumont co-stars. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 2002
Lies, betrayal, lust, and ennui are just a few of the themes at work in this knowing and urbane dissection of modern love and relationships, which follows the romantic pursuits of four disparate couples. Gabrielle is a shy but attractive librarian who falls for Remy, a seductive rake. Vanessa is a beautician who decides to shack up with Gerard, a significantly older professor of literature who compounds his loftiness by smoking a pipe. Then there's Brigitte, a rather bodacious woman who charms the pants off the younger Claude at a gallery opening. Finally, there is Cyril, an average Joe who falls in love with the stunningly beautiful Anick, and can't quite believe his luck. Director Eric Assous uses the ins and outs of all four couples to examine the never-ending battle of the sexes with humor, drama, and a keen eye for the nuances of gender politics. Very Opposite Sexes had its North American premiere at the 2002 Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlotte de Turckheim, Patrick Chesnais, (more)
- 2000
Gerard Jugnot directs and stars in this comedy about a doting father and his daughter who managed to get cast in a film. Yvon Rance (Jugnot), who runs a hair salon in Brittany, only wants his beloved teenaged daughter Laetita (Berenice Bejo) to be happy, something he believes she'll be able to achieve by completing high school and then following in her father's professional footsteps. When Laetita tells him that she has been cast in the latest movie by renowned director Stephane (Antoine Dulery), he is initially unimpressed. He grudgingly relents when he learns that the money she will make for a couple months of work is twice what he makes in a year. This film was screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gérard Jugnot, Bérénice Bejo, (more)
- 1998
Martin Lamotte made his directorial debut with this French comedy. Building contractor Patrick (Sam Karmann) is unaware that Helene (Catherine Frot), his wife for 15 years, intends to celebrate their wedding anniversary with a surprise party. She's invited friends and relatives to spend the weekend at their blue house. Elsewhere down the road, at an identical blue house, Patrick and his other love, Elizabeth (co-scripter Carol Brenner), the mother of his two-year-old daughter, are planning an engagement party for the son of their neighbor. Neither woman knows about the other, and this sticky situation requires Patrick to rush back and forth from one blue house to another throughout the evening. The story is told in flashback by Patrick -- from his hospital bed. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Frot, Sam Karmann, (more)
- 1996
An aviation magnate takes desperate measures to regain custody of his kids after he is granted minimal visitation rights by a harsh female judge. It's true that Manu Barnes is free-spirited and for much of his twelve year marriage to Mathilde that he has been too centered on his career, but he does love his kids and believes he should see them more often than one weekend a month. The judge called him irresponsible and he decides to disprove her words by kidnapping Chloe, the judge's strong-willed adolescent daughter. He takes the girl to a remote, snow-bound mountain cabin. Unfortunately, she thinks Manu is sexually attracted to her. A disaster nearly occurs there, but Chloe manages to get back to Paris. Though he knows a private detective is trailing him, the determined Manu decides to abduct his kids and take them out of the country. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Marc Barr, Anémone, (more)
- 1995
- R
Not a strict adaptation of the oft-filmed Victor Hugo classic, director Claude Lelouch's ambitious epic instead focuses on the story of two men, a father and a son, whose life stories bear striking similarities to Hugo's character Jean Valjean. The father is Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a chauffeur (in 1900) wrongly accused of his employer's murder. Like Valjean, he is subjected to a harsh and unfair prison sentence. While Henri vainly attempts to escape his unjust fate, his family suffers, with his wife forced to raise their young son alone. The film jumps ahead several decades to show the adult life of this son (also Belmondo), a former boxer turned furniture mover who agrees to help smuggle a Jewish lawyer (Michel Boujenah) out of France during the Nazi occupation. Along the way, the lawyer reads to the younger Fortin from Les Misérables, and Fortin begins to imagine himself in the role of Jean Valjean, on the run from the obsessive Inspector Javert. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michel Boujenah, (more)
- 1991
Charles Baudelaire was one of the giants of 19th-century French poetry, and he earned his position among that nation's luminaries through the poems in one slim volume, entitled Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil). A perfectionist to the extreme, he struggled with every word of those few poems for many years before he consented to see them published. When he did, six of them were condemned by the state censors as obscene. It was surely a powerful blow to him to have such a significant part of his life's work so rudely suppressed. This courtroom drama follows him at the 1857 trial at which he defended his works. The filmmaker has chosen to symbolically re-enact certain poems about the love of a woman as they are being read for the court. It is easy to imagine that, as was certainly the case for the trial of Oscar Wilde in England, this courtroom trial was a form of punishment for his publicly dissolute lifestyle. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Antoine Dulery, Patrice-Flora Praxo, (more)
- 1988
The new owners of a country estate only received it recently, in an inheritance from their grandmother, but they have known it since childhood. Arthur (Michel Boujenah) is an architect and deal-maker. He wants to replace it with a housing development. His cousin Sarah (Zabou) wants it left just as it is, for she has fond memories of it. In fact, they are arguing almost like an old married couple. In this comedy, there is a chance that they will become just that. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Boujenah, Zabou, (more)
- 1988
Mathieu (Robin Renucci) is called on by the French government to investigate murders in the Asian community of Paris in this routine thriller. With Chinese and Vietnamese engaged in a bloody slaughterfest, the key to the mystery lies with the orphan girl (Marguerite Tran) who Mathieu helped to escape during the fall of Saigon in 1975. Now a beautiful young woman, Mathieu is reunited ten years later with the refugee, and together they attempt to solve the case. He uncovers a CIA plot that has carried over from the last days of the Vietnam War and that is related to the Paris murders. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robin Renucci, Marguerite Tran, (more)
- 1986
Students of film history will appreciate the many tributes to famous films of yore which appear in this first-time feature directed and written by former drama teacher Francis Huster. In the story, a mild-mannered bank clerk has heroic dreams of being a real he-man. Given his diffident, shy nature, it comes as a bit of a surprise that not only does he actually have a girlfriend, but he has managed to get her pregnant. However, she doesn't fit his image of himself, and he can't bring himself to marry her. When the bank he works in is robbed by a daring group which includes a magnetically attractive woman, the clerk throws his lot in with them and becomes an outlaw. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Francis Huster, Béatrice Dalle, (more)
