Philippe Nahon Movies

Director Steven Spielberg's epic World War I drama details the remarkable bond between a man named Albert (Jeremy Irvine) and his loyal horse, Joey. Adapted from the novel by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse follows the growing friendship between man and beast as Albert trains Joey, and then follows Joey on an incredible journey across the English countryside after the pair are forcibly separated. Along the way, Joey touches the lives of everyone he comes into contact with, including British and German soldiers, as well as a kindly French farmer and his impressionable granddaughter. Later, in no man's land, Joey's extraordinary saga winds to a poignant and deeply affecting climax. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A strong woman finds herself up against a master of the undead in this lively blend of horror and comedy. Charlotte (Emillie Dequenne) is a hard-nosed woman with a strong independent streak and little patience for people who rub her the wrong way. Charlotte is in the midst of a road trip when she picks up a hitch hiker named Max (Benjamin Biolay) who seems just as flinty as she is. After a while, Charlotte and Max take a break from driving and pull into a diner and gas station run by La Spack (Yolande Moreau), a gal who makes Charlotte seem like June Cleaver. After a while, Charlotte can't find Max and ends up leaving without him, but her conscience and curiosity get the better of her and she comes back that evening. Charlotte soon discovers La Spack isn't running an ordinary greasy spoon -- she abducts her customers and uses their flesh and blood to feed a private army of cannibalistic ghouls. La Meute (aka The Pack) was the first feature film from director Franck Richard. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A cop on the edge of an emotional collapse is on the trail of a violent madman in this edgy crime thriller from French writer and director Olivier Marchal. Charles Subra (Philippe Nahon) is a habitual criminal who, after serving twenty-five years in prison on a sentence for rape and murder, is up for parole. While Charles insists he's seen the error of his ways and wants to repay society for his crimes, Justine (Olivia Bonamy) isn't buying it -- Charles murdered her mother and father while she watched, and she writes him a long letter explaining in detail why she wants him to stay behind bars. Charles is granted parole anyway, but it soon becomes clear that the clever criminal fooled the prison authorities -- he still has a taste for murder and wants to kill again, starting with Justine. Louis Schneider (Daniel Auteuil) is a police detective who meets with Justine and helps protect her from the madman on the loose, but he's not the best man for the job these days -- shattered by the sudden death of his wife and child and haunted by a serious of brutal murders he's been investigating, Louis's psyche is in tatters and he's only marginally more stable than the criminal he's trying to catch. Director and screenwriter Olivier Marchal was inspired to make MR 73 by his own experiences as a police officer in the early '80s; the title is police slang for the Manurhin 73, a standard handgun for French beat cops in the '70s and '80s. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A middle-aged man is forced to come to terms with traumatic events from his childhood in this drama. Not long after the end of World War II, young Alexandre Gérard (Jordan Chemama) was an orphan was an orphan who was handed over to M. de Montferrand, a gentleman who was already taking care of six orphaned boys at his estate near the German border. Alexandre was of Algerian heritage, and soon found himself an outcast among his fellow orphans; they welcomed him with violence, and he used his knowledge to get even with them. However, when a full-grown Alexandre (Laurent Lucas) returns to Alsace thirty years later, he can barely remember anything that happened, and can't recall how the other six boys vanished. It's not until Alexandre is shown a photograph of himself tied and beaten at de Montferrand's home that the terrible truth begins to comes back to him. La Saison des Orphelins (aka The Orphans' Season) received its North American premiere at the 2008 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Adapted from the same José Giovanni story that spawned Jean-Pierre Melville's classic 1966 film of the same name, director/screenwriter Alain Corneau's nail-biting thriller stars Daniel Auteuil as iconic French gangster Gustav "Gu" Minda and Monica Bellucci as the smoldering Manouche -- whose love for the notorious criminal knows no bounds. As the 1950s draw to a close, vicious convict Gu stages a daring escape from the prison where he had been serving a life sentence. Though Gu longs to flee from the country with his longtime lover Manouche, he must first complete one last job that will secure him the finances to do so; but with every policeman in the country currently searching for Gu, it isn't going to be easy. Gu has the fortitude and know-how of the most experienced criminal, and despite the fact that his staged hold-up goes down like clockwork, the police looking to capture him prove craftier than he ever anticipated. Inspector Blot (Michel Blanc) knows that Gu isn't likely to make any mistakes while procuring his funds for flight, so instead of trying to catch him in the act, he hatches an ingenious scheme to create dissent within the criminal ranks of his target. Blot's plan is to make Gu's gang think that their leader is now a police informer, and everyone buys the ruse except for Manouche. The steely-nerved Manouche knows Gu well enough to realize that he would never agree to work with the cops. Later, as things start to fall apart, Manouche prepares to pay the ultimate price to defend her beloved Gu and clear his name once and for all. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A traveling entertainer falls prey to a disturbed recluse in director Fabrice Du Welz's twisted, slow-burn riff on Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Having finished his latest performance at a remote retirement home, wandering singer Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) packs his gear into his van and sets out towards his next gig. Unfortunately for Marc, the fog-shrouded roads of rural France are more treacherous than he ever anticipated. When his van breaks down in the middle of the night and a skittish local promises to lead him to a nearby inn owned by the eccentric recluse Paul Bartel (Jackie Berroyer), it appears that luck may be on Marc's side and he will be back on the road with the light of the morning sun. This isn't your average bed and breakfast, though, and Bartel certainly isn't the kindly innkeeper he initially appears to be. When Marc's van is set aflame and his increasingly menacing host makes a most disturbing claim, the soft-spoken singer will be forced to fight for his life against not only Bartel, but an entire village of deeply disturbed woodsmen. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

French experimental-short filmmaker Pierre Vinour makes his feature-length debut with the low-budget mood piece Supernova (Experiment #1). Politician Simon Peyrelevade (Philippe Nahon) contemplates suicide as he is hit by some unearthly matter. Instead of heading home to Paris, he goes out to his family farm in the countryside. He's visited by a curious doctor (Catherine Wilkening) and his estranged son Julien (Clément Sibony). Supernova was filmed with both Super 8 mm film stock and digital video. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

A throwback detective attempts to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of a young Parisian student named Rachel in this noirish mystery from director Guillaume Nicloux. His life a smoky and meaningless haze of women and seedy investigations, private eye François Maneri (Thierry Lhermitte) agrees to take the case of a missing student in an investigation that grows increasingly complex. First speaking to Rachel's family and friends, François soon discovers a dark and complicated past that few of those who were close to Rachel knew about. As François moves ever closer to discovering the truth behind Rachel's disappearance, facts become blurred and the truth a complex maze of sordid details that threatens to envelop the detective in the same darkness that swallowed Rachel. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Gaspar Noé's Irreversible utilizes the same storytelling technique used by Christopher Nolan in Memento and Harold Pinter in Betrayal. Consisting of about a dozen scenes, all shot in single takes, Irreversible charts a disturbing night in the life of Marcus (Vincent Cassel), but presents the events in reverse chronological order. The audience eventually learns how the beautiful Alex (Cassel's real-life partner Monica Bellucci) is involved. The film opens with a violent altercation at a gay sex club and works backward to explain how and why the violence occurred. The actors improvised the vast majority of the dialogue starting from a four-page story outline. Irreversible was screened in competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

French legend has it that a creature known as the Beast of Gevaudan -- a huge, wolf-like monster -- was responsible for the violent deaths of over 100 persons in the mid-18th century, and this horror fantasy blends the lore of this fabled beast with a story of two men who set out to capture it. After a number of mutilated corpses begin appearing across the French countryside, naturalist Chevalier Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) is dispatched by the King to find and capture the animal responsible for the killings. Mani (Mark Dacascos), an Indian from Canada and an experienced hand in the wilds, is hired to assist de Fronsac in his work. Gregoire's assignment earns him the acquaintance of Marianne de Morangias (Emilie Dequenne), the lovely daughter of the idly wealthy Count de Morangias (Jean Yanne), but Gregoire receives a much chillier welcome from her brother Jean-Francois (Vincent Cassel), who, despite having lost an arm to a lion in Africa, is quite the huntsman himself. As Gregoire and Mani arrive in the village of Gevaudan, they're drawn to a local house of prostitution, where the animalistic allure and supernatural powers of Sylvia (Monica Bellucci) prove to have a profound effect on the naive Gregoire. Jim Henson's Creature Shop provided the special-effects expertise for the creation of the Beast of Gevaudan. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The first time directorial effort of Ronan Girre, who previously composed scores for two Eric Rohmer films, Virilite et Autres Sentiments Modernes is a social comedy about power and the struggle between the sexes. Shy, underachieving Alexis (Bruno Putzulu) is a 30-year-old night watchman who watches horror movies and does the occasional acting or voice-over job. One day, Alexis' friend Mathilde (Emmanuelle Meyssignac) sets him up with Laura (Estelle Skornik), a successful and highly ambitious businesswoman who happens to literally breathe fire when she gets overly angry. Laura encourages Alexis to embrace his inner megalomaniac, and, realizing his inner potential, he does, and creates quite a sensation. Caught up in his new success, Alexis foolishly believes that he has only himself to thank for it, until Laura teaches him a well-deserved lesson. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

In Les Convoyeurs Attendent/The Carriers Are Waiting, Roger Closset (Benoit Poelvoorde) is a man who obviously loves his family, though that doesn't always make them feel better. Dad is an obsessive type with a short fuse and a long list of curious ideas, and his wife and children must often bear the brunt of his eccentricities. Roger works as a reporter, a job he doesn't like which doesn't pay especially well, either. One day, Roger learns an area business association is sponsoring a contest for a family that can break a world record, with the grand prize being a new car. Suddenly, Roger gets a brainstorm -- if his son can open and shut a door 40,000 times in 24 hours, the car will be theirs. 15-year-old Michel (Jean-Francois Devigne), however, is not at all happy to have been drafted into this new responsibility, especially when dad builds a practice door in the backyard and finds a trainer to teach Michel how to open and close it with greatest efficiency. Les Convoyeurs Attendent/The Carriers Are Waiting was screened as part of the Director's Fortnight at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this French drama, Gaspar Noe, who won awards (Prix Georges Sadoul, Cannes Crix Week) for his 40-minute Carne (1991), continues where that film ended, beginning with a Carne recap: The Butcher (Philippe Nahon) narrates, telling how, as a war orphan working at 14, he opened his horsemeat butcher shop and fathered a mute, retarded daughter. After the mother and daughter left for life in a Paris suburb, he served a prison term after an assault on someone he mistakenly believed had raped his daughter. The follow-up sequel, set in a Lille suburb, begins in 1980: Obese bar owner (Franjkyie Pain) is pregnant by The Butcher, who is unable to find work. The couple moves in with her mother, but he becomes irritated with the two women and goes to Paris where the humiliation of job-hunting and the sum total of futility and hopelessness triggers thoughts of what he might accomplish with his gun and his last three bullets. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi