Marie-Armelle de Guy Movies

Straight laced stockbroker and married father Jean-Louis Joubert encounters a free-spirited group of Spanish maids who inspire him to live life to the fullest, and forms a special bond with pretty servant Maria in this French comedy set in 1960s-era Paris. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A man tries to hold on to his bachelor lifestyle by getting engaged in this romantic comedy. Luis (Alain Chabat) is a man in his mid-fourties who has been happily unmarried all his life. Luis nearly wed his sweetheart when he was 21, but the meddling of his mother (Bernadette Lafont) and five sisters drove the young lady away, and since then he's devoted his romantic attentions to short-term relationships while earning a good living working in the perfume industry. However, his family remains determined to fix him up with eligible women, and Luis has grown tired of it. With the help of a colleague, Luis concocts a plan -- his friend's daughter Emma (Charlotte Gainsbourg) agrees to pose as his fiancée and then abandon him at the altar, which should silence his mother and sisters on the subject of matrimony once and for all. While Luis and Emma's relationship is all business, she does a flawless job of convincing his family that she loves him and is determined to be his wife -- so much so that Luis wonders if she might be serious about him after all. Directed by Eric Lartigau, Prête-Moi Ta Main (aka I Do) was a major box-office success in France, attracting nearly three million viewers in its first month of release. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A father who is determined to enjoy his vacation even if it kills him hits the high seas -- and the high seas hit back -- in this comedy from France. Jacques Monot (Denis Podalydes) is spending a few weeks of the summer at the seaside with his wife, Albertine (Guilaine Londez), and their four children. However, the resort community where they've landed is not proving to be very entertaining, and Jacques is looking for a way to make their stay more exciting. An encounter with a persuasive (if less than scrupulous) salesman leads to Jacques purchasing a rattletrap sailboat, and despite the fact that he's never handled a sailboat in his life, Jacques decides to take his new craft out for a spin on the ocean with chaotic results. Liberte-Oleron was directed by Bruno Podalydes, the brother of leading man Denis Podalydes; the siblings also collaborated on the film's screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this bittersweet look back at the trials of growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Emilie (Magali Woch), Ines (Ingrid Molinier), Stella (Julie-Marie Parmentier), and Marion (Camille Rousselet) become friends as they share the humiliations that are a part of adolescent life -- going to school, dealing with your parents, dealing with the emotional abuse of your peer group. La vie ne me fait pas peur spent several years in production; during a layoff in shooting, director Noemie Lvovsky shot a television film with the same characters entitled Petites, and later incorporated footage from the TV project into this film. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

French TV star Nagui, described by Variety as "popular for his lowbrow-Letterman approach," portrays Zak, who learns about "the curse of Onan" experienced by males in his family. If Zak does not impregnate a woman before his 33rd birthday, the joys of sex evaporate forever. However, Zak's interest in married women creates a roadblock. Even his current girlfriend, art auctioneer Florence (Cristiana Reali) is a married mother of triplets. So Zak's rabbi cousin Joseph (Thomas Langmann) fixes him up with an attractive supermodel (Joanna Rhodes). It's a race against time before permanent impotence strikes. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

This drama attempts to be a film within a film. In the outer story, Andre Dussolier stars as a film director working with drama students at the Paris Conservatory, making a film (the inner story) about a woman's obsession with a foreign desert. Wallowing in maudlin sentimentality, this feature fails to live up to the promise of its probable inspiration, Fame (1980), and was not well-received at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. However, as a medium for instructing director Francis Girod's actual students at the Paris Conservatory about the art and perils of filmmaking, it was undoubtedly a good deal more successful. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi