Michel Creton Movies

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

Menage begins as a comedy of sorts, but be warned: it develops into a very dark, very confusing probe into the seamier aspects of Parisian life. Gerard Depardieu plays a crude but charismatic thief, whose own gayness does not prevent his commiserating with those of the opposite sex. Miou-Miou and Michel Blanc are young, impoverished lovers who fall under Depardieu's influence. He gains their confidence by introducing them to kinky sex, then sucks them into a vortex of crime. Director Bertrand Blier, who in most of his films has explored the awesome power (rather than pleasure) of sex, nearly outdoes himself in Menage (aka Tenue de Soiree). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A non-conventional crime thriller that offers a tour of Paris at night, Paris Minuit begins with a bank robbery in which three of the thieves are killed and two escape with minor wounds. The pair that get away are lovers (Frederic Andrei and Isabelle Texier) who opt for hiding out separately while the police are still looking for them. In order to keep in touch with each other, they have special drop-offs for postcards that encode their next meeting place (using classical poetry). Since the police are not authorities on poets of any period, they are hard put to find the duo. Family concerns start to intrude on the two wanted suspects, and all the while, even the opaque police are closing in. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Considered more as a vehicle to display Jean-Paul Belmondo than as an independent, wartime action story, Les Morfalous rides the crest of the French actor's popularity and delivers a tale that highlights his persona. Belmondo is a member of the French Foreign Legion sent with others to Tunisia in 1943 to recover a fortune in gold from a certain French bank before the Germans get to it. Then the Legionnaires are ambushed by German troops and the few left alive manage to get hold of the treasure but they cannot agree on what to do with their booty. Between their disagreements and the surrounding German army, the action heats up. Belmondo fans will be disappointed that he does not perform any of his famous stunts in this film -- always a drawing card -- and some viewers may find the humor too crude. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Six vacationers from France find themselves on the sunny shores of Africa in a vacation village where organized fun is the order of the day. Spoofing such faddish getaways as "Club Med," the story focuses on the trials of a married couple who can't quite live up to their ideals of an "open" marriage, an overweight man who insists on trying to ski, a bore who cannot be gotten rid of, and a variety of small-time womanizers. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

When Carrier (Jean Yanne), a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic, receives an inheritance, it lends fuel to his violent fantasies. He has a relationship by mail with Ambrose (Alain Delon), the one man who can stop him from killing a theater full of people. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Two inept brothers, who cannot keep a job, call on their brother-in-law looking for work. He runs a detective agency, and they begin doing errands for him. They encounter a group of financiers who want a large shipment of a chemicals delivered from Portugal into France despite a transportation strike. The lads get hold of a boat and manage to evade the strikers, load the stuff on trucks, continue to evade the strikers, and make lots of money. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this French suspense drama, Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy) is a decent man in an ugly situation. His wife (Stephane Audran), who was crippled in their second year of marriage, has become a bitter and unpleasant virago. Though he keeps company with a lovely mistress (Catherine Spaak), the wife is still a considerable burden. When she dies in an automobile accident, he is relieved. That relief is short-lived, however, because his sister-in-law (Stephane Audran, again) comes to live with him immediately. For reasons of her own, she re-creates his wife's shrewish persona and even uses her wheelchair. At the same time, someone tries to blackmail him by suggesting that he killed his wife. Naturally, when the blackmailer (Robert Hossein) is found dead, he is the chief suspect. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Max (Michel Piccoli) is a former judge obsessed with seeing criminals brought to justice. The frustrations of the courtroom, where evidence matters more than guilt, lead him to join the police force. Independently wealthy, he uses all his official and personal resources to make criminals pay for their crimes. He hits on a scheme involving a prostitute (Romy Schneider) and her small-time criminal boyfriend (Bernard Fresson) in which he incites the boyfriend to carry out larger and larger crimes until he can arrange to catch him red-handed. While he has been using the prostitute to set up her boyfriend, he has also fallen in love with her, so that when a policeman who disapproves of his methods threatens to prosecute her as an accomplice to the same crimes, he kills him. This is a French-language film, with no dubbing or subtitles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

While arch surrealist Luis Bunuel never made a secret of his skepticism about the existence of God, he was also raised as a strict Spanish Catholic and remained fascinated with the church's teaching throughout his life, and his obsessions with both faith and the contradictions of dogma provided the basis for this episodic satiric comedy. Jean (Laurent Terzieff) and Pierre (Paul Frankeur) are two threadbare vagabonds who are making their way from Paris to Spain on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Saint James are believed to be kept. While Jean and Pierre's journey begins in the 20th Century, as they travel they seemingly develop the ability to move through time and space as they pass through a variety of historical scenes taken from a broad range of theological texts -- and all involving heresy in one form or another. As they walk the long road to Santiago de Compostela (when they can't catch a ride), Jean and Pierre encounter Jesus (Bernard Verley), who decides not to shave his beard to keep his mother happy; a young boy with stigmata and unusual powers; the Marquis de Sade (Michel Piccoli), who patently struggles to teach atheism to a young girl he's captured; an eccentric priest who has an irreversible belief in transubstantiation until he changes his mind; two men who put their debate over Catholic dogma to the test in a duel with swords; and Satan (Pierre Clementi), who shows up just in time for a car wreck. La Voie Lactee (aka The Milky Way) was scripted by Bunuel and his frequent screenwriting collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere; each of the film's historic episodes was adapted faithfully from an actual biblical text or historical account. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide