Christian Bouillette Movies

Also known as A Certain Desire, this French murder melodrama stars Sam Waterston and Marisa Berenson. Waterston plays Gerry Morrison, an Interpol agent assigned to solve the murder of a Bordeaux wine heiress. Jeanne Barnac Berenson is one of the suspects, who in the course of the investigation is revealed to be a lesbian, in love with the widowed Marlene Bell-Ferguson (Lauren Hutton). Pretty soon, Morrison has exposed virtually all the secrets of those closest to the murder victim. Indeed, with so much else going on, the solution of the mystery is almost an afterthought. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Former Cahiers du Cinema editor Serge Le Peron writes and directs this screwball crime comedy chock full of ironic film references. The film opens with student radical-turned-magistrate Francois Marcorelle (Jean-Pierre Leaud) stumbling into an art house movie theater mid-film. The rather comely woman next to him first begins to caress Marcorelle's leg, then she drops over dead. Later in the film, Marcorelle and his wife Claudie (Dominique Reymond) and their children are supposed to go on a family vacation. Unfortunately, Marcolle is snowed under by a case and is forced to stay behind. A lonely dining excursion in a Turkish restaurant leads to Marcolle driving a beautiful Polish waitress Agneska (Irene Jacob) back to her apartment. After an enjoyable round of adultery, he is attacked by Agneska's father, and the altercation leads to Marcolle inadvertently braining the old man. Agneska claims that she knows people who can dispose of bodies quietly and asks him to leave. Though no body ever turns up and Marcolle tells no one of his encounter -- save his best friend George (Phillippe Khorsand) -- an ambitious lawyer sets out to make a name for himself by accusing the magistrate. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Young Brian (Julien Gangnet) and Nourredine (Khalid Ayadi) live in a miserably poor Paris suburb and both dream of making it to San Francisco to live the good life -- but they go about realizing their goal in the wrong way. Brian's father once toured San Francisco in the 1960s when he played with a rock band. Now he is in jail, and Brian's mother works in a nightclub to support herself and her son. Brian and Nourredine start robbing a local supermarket and reselling their loot to raise money for their great escape and dream trip, but that activity ends when Brian is caught. After he is hauled in for questioning, the police threaten to make things worse for his father unless Brian identifies his shoplifting buddy. At least for the moment, life gets much worse for the young boy until unforeseen circumstances start to turn him around. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A man is left grieving for his dead family after they were shot down in a train station, innocent bystanders to a robbery gone wrong. They were never vindicated since the police seem unable (if not reluctant) to solve the case. Driven in part because he survived and they did not, and frustrated with the inept police, the man starts his own investigation with the aid of a right-wing organization that advocates citizens' militias. He discovers that a woman who also survived the train-station massacre has a brother with blood on his hands -- he is clearly the mastermind behind the "robbery" killings -- staged to effect the politically-motivated assassination of one particular man. He and the woman join ranks to bring the brother to justice, but soon they themselves are being hunted down because they know too much. The right-wing group comes on the scene again, catalyzing a final showdown that seems inevitable from the beginning. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A star is born in a time of both celebration and instability in this historical drama with music from director Christophe Barratier. In the spring of 1936, Paris is in a state of uncertainty; while the rise of the Third Reich in Germany worries many, a leftist union-oriented candidate, Léon Blum, has been voted into power, and organized labor is feeling its new power by standing up to management. While such matters might normally seem unimportant to Germain Pigoil (Gérard Jugnot), who runs a small vaudeville house in the Faubourg district, the chaos of the city seems to be impacting his life and his work -- his wife, Viviane (Elisabeth Vitali), has run off with her lover, she demands custody of their son, Jojo (Maxence Perrin), and unscrupulous local entrepreneur Galapiat (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) threatens to put Germain's theater out of business. With the help of a local political organizer, Milou (Clovis Cornillac), and veteran entertainer Jacky Jacquet (Kad Merad), Germain strikes a deal with Galapiat to reopen the theater, but business is slow until a lovely young woman with a remarkable voice, Douce (Nora Arnezeder), comes looking for a spot in Germain's show. Faubourg 36 (aka Paris 36) received its North American premiere at the 2008 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The third adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' classic novel Les Liasons Dangereuses, Milos Forman's Valmont was released one year after Stephen Frears' more famous version of the de Laclos original, Dangerous Liaisons. The plot remains the same: two debauched, depraved 18th century French aristocrats, the Vicomte de Valmont (Colin Firth) and the Marquise de Merteuil (Annette Bening), conspire to destroy several innocent lives, just for the fun of it. But whereas Stephen Frears concentrated on the machinations of the marquise, Forman, per his film's title, devotes most of his screen space to Valmont (played in the Frears version by John Malkovich). In fact, Forman's film concludes with Valmont's conscience-stricken renunciation of his past sins, and his duel to the death, rather than de Meurteil's well-deserved comeuppance. Forman has chosen to set the story back some 50 years, de-emphasizing the opulence that was vital to Frears' vision; he has also utilized a younger cast. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi