Élodie Bouchez Movies
A gifted actress of dark-eyed, gamine beauty, Élodie Bouchez is one of the new young French cinema's most celebrated and prolific performers. She has made her name playing a series of intelligent, often wayward young women, characters she imbues with equal parts soul and complexity.Born in Tunis, Tunisia on April 5, 1973, Bouchez became a child model at the age of 13. She made her film debut in Serge Gainsbourg's Stan the Flasher (1990) and went on to combine her acting pursuits with her school work; she also trained as a dancer, something she funded with baby-sitting money. Bouchez's acting career was floundering when, in 1994, she won the starring role of Maïté in André Téchiné's Les Roseaux Sauvages. A critically praised coming-of-age film, it allowed Bouchez to demonstrate her considerable talents as an actress, to the extent that she won the Most Promising Actress César for her work.
The acclaim surrounding her performance in Les Roseaux Sauvages brought Bouchez numerous offers to work with a variety of directors, but early on she demonstrated a preference for working with young filmmakers. In 1994, the same year she starred in Les Roseaux, Bouchez appeared in the ensemble drama Le Péril Jeune, directed by rising young director Cédric Klapisch. She also collaborated with new director Gael Morel, with whom she had starred in Les Roseaux, playing a university student in his drama À Toute Vitesse (1996).
In 1998, Bouchez earned great acclaim for her work with another up and coming director, Erik Zonca, in his directorial debut La via rêvée des anges. Starring alongside the equally remarkable Natacha Régnier, she played Isa, a wise, free-spirited young itinerant who enters into a tumultuous friendship with the unstable Marie (Régnier). Bouchez and Régnier shared that year's Cannes Best Actress Award for their performances; the honor was followed by a European Film Award (also shared with Régnier) and the 1999 Best Actress César for Bouchez.
The same year that she won the Best Actress César, Bouchez continued to collaborate with some of her country's most promising young talents, co-starring with Morel in Zonzon, a comedy-drama set in prison, and playing a bisexual thief in his made-for-TV Premières neiges. She also starred as a shop assistant in love with a Yugoslavian immigrant in Lovers, the directorial debut of actor Jean-Marc Barr. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- 1994
This French comedy-drama chronicles the reunion of five high school friends who come to witness the birth of a child whose father, a former friend, recently died. The boys graduated in 1975 and now, five years later they have come to a Parisian hospital to await the birth. As they wait, the try to understand the circumstances that caused their friend Tomasi, a formerly happy-go-lucky guy, to become a drug addict and die of an overdose. They also begin to reminisce about their senior year. They talk about everything from their experiences with girls and drugs, to their relationships with teachers and parents. Those times are depicted in detailed flashbacks. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julien Lambroschini, Nicolas Koretzy, (more)
- 1994
- NR
This is a nostalgic French coming-of-age drama from director Andre Techine set in a Provence deeply divided over the war for independence being waged against French colonialism in Algeria. In 1962, Francois (Gael Morel) and Maite (Elodie Bouchez) are best friends and students at a boarding school in southwestern France, where Maite's mother Madame Alvarez (Michele Moretti) is an instructor. Francois is realizing he's gay because of his attraction to his working class roommate Serge (Stephane Rideau). Although Serge seduces Francois one night, he is not gay and is actually attracted to Maite. So is Henri (Frederic Gorny), a radically-politicized Algerian-born Frenchman who supports France in the war, an unpopular position, particularly with Madame Alvarez, a communist. The classroom sparring between Henri and Alvarez galvanizes the school, but then word comes that Serge's older brother has been killed in the war. Madame Alvarez, who loved him but refused to help him desert the military, becomes so unhinged that she must be sent away for treatment. Wild Reeds (1994) won four Cesars (France's equivalent of the Oscar), including the award for that year's Best Picture, beating such other notable films as Red (1994) and Queen Margot (1994). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Élodie Bouchez, Gael Morel, (more)
- 1993
If such a thing as gentle humor can be wrung from murderous misogyny, this all-star comedy is the embodiment of it. The basic point of the film seems to be this: unattached men long to live with women, and once they do, they long to live without them. In this story, Paul (Thierry Lhermitte) is upset about his wife's having left him. He can't stop thinking about her, and eventually decides that he'd be much happier if he knew she was dead. Then, he thinks, he could put an end to his obsessing. His uncle, a judge (Phillippe Noiret), knows of a man who killed his wife more or less on purpose, and got away with it. Paul and his uncle get together with the lucky killer, Vincent (Richard Bohringer), and, on their way to visit Paul's wife, discuss how Vincent managed to kill his wife and get away with it. Along the way, the aggravations women bring to men are pretty thoroughly (and humorously) hashed over. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Bohringer, Thierry Lhermitte, (more)
- 1992
- R
Virginie is the daughter of the local bar owner and has ambitions to become a writer. She is an upbeat and inquisitive girl. In her mountain town just after World War II, the two local children at the top of the economic ladder are the grown, orphaned siblings Anne and Jacques, both of whom are in love with the vivacious Virginie. However, Anne gets to her first, and the two of them share a deep romantic bond which Virginie writes about in her diary. Jacques can tell that his beloved is in love with someone else, and he is deeply jealous. One day he steals her diary and finds many entries in it about a mysterious person named "Paul." To Virginie's dismay, her enraged male suitor reads intimate passages from her diary to the villagers passing through the town square after church. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Élodie Bouchez, Benoît Magimel, (more)
