Pascal Légitimus Movies

Director Coline Serreau's warmhearted comedy Saint Jacques. . .La Mecque concerns a trio of estranged siblings who must complete a road trip together in order to collect an inheritance after their mother dies. The ever-at-the-end-of his-tether businessman Pierre (Artus de Penguern), mousy teacher Clara (Muriel Robin), and drunken reprobate Caludr (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), must travel together in order to each warn the millions their mother left them or else it all goes to charity. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

In this banal and outdated view of male-female relationships, director Xavier Gélin follows up his undistinguished Coup de Jeune with another trite story about a volleyball professional who has a hard time choosing between three different men in her life. The actors (Amélie Pick, Christophe Malavoy, Zabou, and Pascal Légitimus) do the best they can to stem the tide of caricature. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This French comedy delivers many laughs as it labors to poke fun at pregnancy from the man's viewpoint. Shrink Samuel flips out after he learns that his girlfriend Mathilde, an interpreter is pregnant. He is much older than she. Meanwhile Samuel's artist friend Marc has just split from his wife because he doesn't want children and she does. His sister Dominique is pregnant with her fourth. Dominique and her husband Georges adore pregnancy and the great sex it generates. Samuel begins to have nightmares reflecting his reluctance. Marc dates comely lasses who do not resemble his ample sister. Dominique is supportive of Mathilde. Included in the film are many examples of the trials of pregnancy including bumbling gynecologists, food cravings, and sex. In the end, Samuel reconciles his feelings and welcomes the birth of his child. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Euzhan Palcy (best known for Sugar Cane Alley and A Dry White Season) directed and co-wrote this fable about music, myth and the power of dreams. Jean-Claude Duverger plays Siméon, a music teacher who guides students in a small village in the West Indies. His star pupil is Isidore (Jacob Desavarieux), a gifted guitarist who works by day as a mechanic. Siméon and Isidore share the same ambition: they want to form a band to play their own brand of West Indian Créole music, bringing their native island's sound to the outside world just as Bob Marley brought the muscular but sensuous rhythms of reggae to music fans beyond Jamaica. Siméon's dreams are cut short when he's killed in an accident, but Isidore's daughter Orélie (Lucinda Messager), who always liked Siméon, snips off a lock of his long hair to keep as a memento. According to Créole legend, as long as someone in this world has any part of a person, that person cannot be truly dead, and this turns out to be true -- while Siméon's body is gone, his soul lives on and speaks through Orélie. Siméon (in Orélie's guise) inspires Isidore to not let his dreams of music die. The guitarist assembles a handful of gifted musicians to form a group called Jacaranda, who achieve the success Siméon and Isidore always wanted. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Racism and the games people play with it aren't unique to the U.S. by any means. In this French comedy, Rachid, a nice-looking Arab boy, plays with the pervasive fear of non-whites in Paris by having two friends approach pretty girls while looking as sinister as they can, so that he can "rescue" them and strike up an acquaintance. When he and Denis, a black West Indies man, find themselves in pursuit of the same girl, oddly enough, they become best friends. They team up in order to try and persuade the girl's parents that they are respectable enough to rent an apartment from them. However, as any person of color knows, this is far more easily said than done wherever race (and class) are issues. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In a first-time production by television comedians and café-theater actors, this is a slightly shallow comedy about a novice private detective and his cohorts, out to capture a feared "telephone killer" who strangles his victims (all female) with a phone cord. "The Commissioner" (Jean-Claude Brialy) runs the police investigation -- a kind of investigative competition with the amateur sleuths. A series of episodic sequences, comedic situations, and gags carry the action through to the final roll of credits, helped only a little by cameos from Michel Galabru, Jean Yanne, and others. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide