Jean-Henri Roger Movies
Abderrahmane Sissako wrote and directed this offbeat, satiric comedy which imagines how the powers that be in the West might be forced to answer for the damage they've done in the Third World. Mele (Aissa Maiga) is an attractive Malian lounge singer married to Chaka (Tiecoura Traore), though their relationship is on the verge of collapse. In their eyes, the African continent isn't in much better shape than their marriage, and one day a makeshift courtroom appears in the courtyard near their shabby home. In the courtyard, a handful of powerful international organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are put on trial for their crippling effect on the African economy; as the evidence is presented which explains how these "friends" of Africa have saddled the nations with debts they can never repay, witnesses explain how these actions impact the daily lives of ordinary citizens, who pass through the trial as they go on with their days. Executive producer Danny Glover makes a cameo appearance in a "Cowboys and Indians" sequence which supposedly takes place in Timbuktu. Bamako (aka The Court) received its North American premiere at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Aïssa Maïga, Hélène Diarra, (more)
- 2002
Inspired by Lawrence Durrell's collection of interrelated novels, The Alexandria Quartet, Lucas Belvaux's trilogy--the violent noir On the Run, the romantic comedy An Amazing Couple, and the melodrama After the Life, examine many of the same characters from three distinct perspectives. In On the Run, taciturn leftist revolutionary Bruno (Belvaux) escapes from prison with the help of one of his former comrades. When his partner is killed by the police, Bruno tracks down another former member of his gang, Jeanne (Catherine Frot), who is now living a quiet, respectable life as a schoolteacher, with a husband and a young son. Bruno is determined to get revenge on the powerful man who betrayed his revolution. Jeanne doesn't want to live in the past. She offers Bruno enough help to get rid of him. Trying to trap his prey, Bruno follows a drug dealer who works for the man. He meets Agnes (Dominique Blanc), a junkie who happens to be the wife of the cop, Pascal (Gilbert Melki) who's hunting Bruno. Bruno ends up helping Agnes avoid the police and cop a fix. In return, she takes him to the vacation home of her co-worker, Cecile (Ornella Muti), where he hides out. But when his plans for revenge go horribly awry, Bruno turns to Jeanne again, and she has to weigh her family's safety against her allegiance to her old friend. While On the Run focuses on Bruno and Jeanne, An Amazing Couple is centered on the paranoid Cecile, who hires Pascal to watch her husband, while After the Life deals with the damaged marriage of Agnes and Pascal. The trilogy was shown at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Frot, Lucas Belvaux, (more)
- 2002
Jean-Henri Roger's Lulu stars Elli Medeiros as the title character. Lulu is a transsexual who lives with John (Gerard Meylan). One of the town drunks she serves at her bar accuses her of killing a local criminal. A detective (Bruno Putzulu) starts a quirky investigation into the charge. A journalist (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) with affectionate feelings for Lulu figures in the plot. Lulu was shot on Digital Video. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Eli Medeiros, (more)
- 2000
A comic meditation on romance and multiple identities that illustrates its latter theme by using five actresses and six actors to portray its female and male protagonists, That's Just Like You centers on Cleo, an audio-visual assistant in the European Parliament who is being pursued by her ex-boyfriend Antoine. Antoine and Cleo's relationship is held up against the goings-on of the Parliament, and both the location and the sexual warfare are used to make various points about sexual, local, and national identities. That's Just Like You was the fourth in a series of films featuring student actors from Theatre National de Strasbourg. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- 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)
