Jan Kuzelka Movies
Television director Andy Cadiff turns toward feature films to direct the romantic comedy Chasing Liberty, which appears to be loosely based on the 1953 Audrey Hepburn classic Roman Holiday. Mandy Moore stars as Anna Foster, the 18-year-old daughter of President of the United States James Foster (Mark Harmon). Anna has led quite a privileged life, but she has grown to resist the constant presence of Secret Service agents getting in the way of her independence. While on a family trip to Europe, Anna manages to get away from security for a brief time. She inevitably falls into the romantic arms of British boy Ben Calder (Matthew Goode), with whom she enjoys a fresh and clean European vacation. Not wanting to ruin her fun, she doesn't tell him about her upper-class social status. But, alas, Ben surprises her with a secret identity of his own. Jeremy Piven and Annabella Sciorra play two Secret Service agents. Caroline Goodall plays the wise, conventional First Lady. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, (more)
Writer/director Olivier Dahan (Crimson Rivers II) helmed La Vie en Rose, the screen biopic of tragic French songstress Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard portrays Piaf, the superstar once raised as a young girl by her grandmother in a Normandy bordello, then discovered on a French street corner -- as a complete unknown -- by cabaret proprietor Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu). The film segues breezily between various episodes from Piaf's life -- such as her lover, French boxer Marcel Cerdan's (Jean-Pierre Martins) championship bout in mid-'40s New York; her period in Hollywood during the '50s; Piaf's abandonment as a young girl by her contortionist father (and earlier by her mother, a street singer); her brushes with the law as an adult; and her 1951 car accident and subsequent morphine addiction that caused her to age well beyond her years and left her barely mobile; and, through it all, her ability (like Billie Holiday) to funnel personal tragedy and emotional struggles into her vocalizations -- dazzling audiences in the process. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, (more)
