Charles Denner Movies

Fannie Cottencon stars as Lilli, beauty salon owner and uncrowned queen of the shopping mall where the film, in its entirety, takes place. Delphine Seyrig costars as a mall boutique owner, suddenly confronted with her wartime lover. Before we're quite aware of it, the film has become a New Age Romeo and Juliet, complete with out-of-nowhere songs. Through plotlines as twisted as a tributy of the Colorado river, Cottencon's salon and Seyrig's boutique symbolically merge. Golden Eighties is known in the US as Window Shopping; its title was changed to avoid confusion with an earlier Chantal Akerman effort Les Annees 80s, also known as The Golden Eighties. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With comedy sequences that wobble between parody and sentiment, director Marc-Andre Grynbaum has attempted to present the story of a young Jewish man who starts a rock group ("Rock and Torah") and achieves success. That is because he is actually an incarnation of a Biblical patriarch who was once enthused by music more than by the sculpting of holy icons, and for some reason, deserves musical success in modern Paris. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

When Patricia Caron (Nicole García) watches a television debate, she is shocked to hear her long-dead husband described as a war criminal and a torturer. Her husband Marcel (Jacques Perrin) had died more than two decades earlier when French troops fought in Algeria -- and although she had been married only a short time before he went off to his death, she was certain that he could never have tortured anyone. Irate and determined to clear her husband's name, she takes the television speaker to court -- where once the case progresses, there are flashbacks to the war and the activities of Captain Marcel Caron. As the court case drags on, director Pierre Schoendoerffer has hewn to acceptable topics and avoided the controversy surrounding the French army's behavior in Algeria. (French forces took over Algiers in 1830 and ruled Algeria as a colony for 132 years. In 1954, Algerian independence fighters started an armed revolt; in 1957, French troops were sent to quell the revolt, but by 1961, French insurgents were fighting alongside Algerians against the loyal French army and were defeated. Finally, on July 3, 1962, France granted independence to Algeria. The French sensitivity to their conduct in this war was still running high when this film was released.) ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A potentially destructive relationship between mother and son is the topic of this drama by Franck Apprederis. Laure (Annie Girardot) has held her own as a successful child psychiatrist for many years. When her adult son Julien (Laurent Malet) shows up after a twelve-year absence, it leads to a rocky, uneasy reunion between the two. Laure must go to Spain for work-related reasons and she and Julien decide to travel together. Once they are on the road and sharing their lives for the first time, her relationship to her son takes on troubling undertones. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

When he suddenly dies and is buried, the late Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner), an aeronautical engineer from Montpelier, receives funeral visitation from hundreds of women. Little wonder: in life, Morane simply couldn't keep his mind off of women -- one glance at a well-turned ankle and he was lost. Astonishingly, women felt the same way about him. Though more than one paramour held it against Bertrand when his eyes wandered, he never considered his promiscuousness a shortcoming -- which led him into amorous relationships with such colorful characters as a married sociopath (with a taste for lovemaking in risky places), a shapely blonde babysitter, an introspective book editor, and dozens of others. Ironically, Morane's success with women hardly represented a gift, for a deep, abiding loneliness lingered within him, resulting from his utter inability to love one woman. Bertrand (who eventually decided to write and publish his autobiography, "The Man Who Loved Women," as a form of self-analysis), could never quite pinpoint the source of his lack of romantic faithfulness, until a fateful and utterly unexpected chance encounter with someone from his past. Read by many as a thinly disguised film à clef for writer/director François Truffaut, The Man Who Loved Women mixes sharp, witty comedy with scenes of gentle poignancy; Truffaut uses the tale to make some deep and tremendously profound comments about love, sex, fidelity, and the underlying differences between men and women. The picture was thinly remade in 1983 by Blake Edwards, with Burt Reynolds as the irresistible hero and Julie Andrews as his therapist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Michel Piccoli plays Simon, a French businessman reluctantly venturing into middle age. As he deals with his own midlife crisis, Simon becomes virtually oblivious to the social changes around him. The businessman tries to counter advancing age with an increased sex life, but finds that women aren't the same compliant creatures he remembers from his youth. Though the material is rife with opportunities for "radical" camerawork, director Claude Sautet chooses an austere, near-classic cinematic style, allowing us to concentrate more on the people in front of the camera rather than the person behind it. Featured in the cast of Mado is actress Romy Schneider, a Sautet favorite. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This crime thriller is about a psychotic who makes obscene phone calls to beautiful women and then murders them. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide

The title refers to the means of entry into the sewers of Paris. Here we find a group of misfits who've given up on humanity and have decided to dwell below the pavement. The group has its own hierarchy, of course, and soon the conditions that drove them underground begin to manifest themselves without the influences of the Outside World. The satirical thrust of The Holes is muted somewhat by the dubbed English dialogue, though we can discern the subtext from the subtle facial expressions of such expert farceurs as Michel Serrault. This film was originally distributed in France as Les Gaspards. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The very modest lawyer (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in this case of murder finds much more than he is looking for and then must decide what to do with the unwelcome information. He is defending a woman who is accused of killing her lover. It turns out that the lover was actually killed during a holdup, and was a member of a gang which did bullying favors for local politicians; and the trail doesn't end there. This French film is directed by Trintignant's wife, Nadine. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In the French L'Aventure C'est L'Aventure, a gang of thieves, suffering a drop in business, enter into a new phase of larceny. Passing themselves off as terrorists, the gang begins committing political crimes, extorting huge sums to prevent further "dissidence". As a result, they're more successful than ever! Along the way, planes get hijacked, ambassadors are kidnapped and held for ransom, and the Pope is similarly abducted. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This film is a French period comic romance, set in the time just surrounding the French Revolution (1789). "Year Two," of the French title refers to the second year following the revolution. Those who guided the French Revolution renamed the days of the week, the months of the year, and much more. They also began their calendar from the time of the revolution. In this film, Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the husband of a vivacious, two-timing, and socially ambitious young woman (Marlene Jobert). After he kills one of her aristocratic lovers, the husband flees to the New World (the Americas). He returns to France after the revolution, finds that he has been divorced, and then works hard to woo his ex-wife away from all the important men and outlaw aristocrats she is spending time with. Happiness reigns anew as, remarried, they both attain aristocratic status in Napolean's regime. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Simon (Jean-Claude Trintignant) gets out of prison and summons his old friend Charles (Charles Gerard) and Martine (Christine Lelouch), his one time lover now married to a wealthy man. The three kidnap a little boy and then blackmail the bank where the boy's father works to pay the ransom of one million dollars. The publicity-conscious bank pays the ransom but the rest doesn't go exactly as planned. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide