Anne Fontaine Movies

A woman has her life turned upside down in unexpected ways by a well-meaning slob in this comedy from director and co-screenwriter Anne Fontaine. Agathe (Isabelle Huppert) and Francois (Andre Dussollier) are a pair of upper-class intellectuals who have been together for years; she manages an art museum, and he works in publishing. The couple is raising a son, Adrien (Donatien Suner), but the spark has gone out of their relationship and their bond is based on tolerance rather than love. Patrick (Benoit Poelvoorde) is a Belgian handyman whose son Tony (Corentin Devroey) is close friends with Adrien; when Francois learns that Patrick may lose custody of his son because he's out of work, he offers him some work doing remodeling at their home. While Patrick is certainly a pest, he loves his son, and his carefree and unpretentious manner rubs off on his employers. After Francois walks out on Agathe, she takes in Patrick and Tony, and the two single parents stumble into a deeper relationship. Mon Pire Cauchemar (aka My Worst Nightmare) received its North American debut at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

An untrusting wife attempts to prove that her husband is cheating by hiring an escort to seduce him, inadvertently endangering her entire family in the process. Catherine (Julianne Moore) is a respected doctor, and her husband, David (Liam Neeson), is a dedicated music professor. They've been married for years and have a teenage son together, but lately the passion has faded from their romance. The morning after David misses his flight home -- and the elaborate surprise birthday party Catherine had planned to celebrate his return -- Catherine finds a text message on his phone that leads her to believe her husband is sleeping with a female student. Her suspicions grow over the following weeks, and when Catherine has a run-in with an escort named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), she hires the ravishing blonde to test her husband's fidelity. After each encounter with David, Chloe reports back to Catherine with all the sordid details. But the further the experiment goes, the less clear Chloe's motivations for taking part in it become, and the more the untrusting wife begins to fear that the situation has spiraled out of control. Directed by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat), this erotic thriller is a remake of Anne Fontaine's French film Nathalie..., and was adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Augustin Dos Santos, the cheerfully eccentric struggling actor played by Jean-Chretien Sibertin-Blanc in Augustin and Augustin, Roi du King-Fu, returns to the screen in this comedy from France. Augustin brings his one man show to a retirement home, where he learns one of the residents is Odette St. Gilles (Danielle Darrieux), who was a noted singer and actress in her youth. Despite her advanced age, Odette is as alert as ever, and she expresses great admiration for Augustin's performance. A few days after the show, Augustin wrangles a commission from French representatives of a Swedish glass-making concern to provide entertainment during a visit from the home office's top brass. Augustin has been asked to whip up a show that's "typically French," and when he decides his own material doesn't quite fit the description, he asks Odette for help. Odette suggests they stage an adaptation of the correspondence between Madame du Deffand and Julie de Lespinasse, and Augustin agrees, hiring out-of-work television actress Bettina Fleischer (Arielle Dombasle) as Odette's co-star and half-bright thug Franck (Christophe Vandevelde) as their love interest. However, it doesn't take long for Augustin to discover working with Odette is more of a challenge than he expected. Oh La La! (aka Nouvelle Chance) received its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A middle-aged woman fears that her husband is cheating on her -- and chooses a very unlikely method for verifying her paranoia -- in this psychological drama from the writer of Une Liaison Pornographique. Catherine (Fanny Ardant) is a successful Parisian gynecologist whose long-term marriage to Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) has been passionless as of late. When she checks his cell phone messages one afternoon, she discovers a suggestive "thank you" from a young colleague of his, which creates an even wider chasm between the two. Desperate, Catherine goes to an upscale strip club nearby to solicit the services of Nathalie (Emmanuelle Béart), a matter-of-fact prostitute. It seems Catherine wants Nathalie to seduce Bernard and report back to her each week, an assignment that's initially off-putting to the young woman, but one she begins to relish as the weeks pass. Soon, Nathalie is using intimate details to fuel Catherine's rage toward her husband. Nathalie... had its gala North American premiere at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of short vignettes. The film is designed as sort of a gay version of 1994's 3,000 Scenarios to Combat a Virus, an anthology that was comprised of 30 short films -- made by some of France's best directors -- out of story ideas submitted by school children on ways to deal with the AIDS virus. In this film however, the selection committee had no age limit and received about a thousand potential stories. The ten selected vignettes (three of which do not deal with AIDS at all ) encompass a broad look at the subject and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man. The vignettes were originally shown individually on French television. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this interestingly amiable French comedy, a stuttering would-be actor with a nervous tic auditions for a variety of film jobs ranging from parts in industrial films, to commercials. The overly earnest fellow has no idea that those he comes in contact with find him hilarious but are too kind-hearted to tell him the truth. When the fellow is not auditioning, he is taking mind-numbingly dull claims for clients at an insurance agency. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Four inventive teachers at a normal French high school act up and act out some of their imaginative ploys to either help kids learn, or to undermine the opposition to their unorthodox teaching. Frederic (Patrick Bruel), Michel (Fabrice Luchini), Gerard Laurent Gamelon), and Francis (Christophe Bourseiller) try valiantly to get their students to hit the books, but their tactics are not always appreciated -- and may seem a little trite to viewers who have been around that block before. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi