Ariane Ascaride Movies

Her daughter abducted by kidnappers who have demanded an exuberant ransom, a woman who used to dabble in stolen furs reunites with her former partners in crime in order to raise the cash needed to get her little girl back. Back in the days when Muriel, François, and René were selling stolen furs to their working class neighbors in Marseille, The Rolling Stones' "Lady Jane" was blaring on the radio and the future seemed like it might never come. But as lucrative as their partnership was, the trio decided to lie low by going their separate ways after killing a jeweler during a robbery gone awry. Now, it's been decades since the group has been in contact, and Muriel needs to raise some quick cash - and fast. With no one left to turn to but François and René, the desperate mother sets out to track down her old friends and raise the ransom the only way she knows how. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

While most people fall in love and then move in together, a nerdy musician manages to get it backwards in this French comedy. David (Emmanuel Mouret) is a French Horn player who has come to Paris in search of a job playing professionally with an orchestra. David is socially inept and painfully shy around women, so he's quite surprised when, while looking for a flat, he meets Anne (Frederique Bel), a beautiful but scatterbrained gal who informs him she knows someone who is looking for a roommate. It's a while before Anne gets around to telling David that she's the one in need of a roommate, and when she asks him if he'd like to start splitting the rent at her place, he agrees. While Anne would appear to be infatuated with David, he's too nervous to do anything about it at first, and by the time he's worked up the courage to make a move, Anne informs him she has a new boyfriend. Determined to beat Anne at her own game, David tells her he's won the heart of nineteen-year-old Julia (Fanny Valette), though the truth is he's been hired to give the awkward girl French horn lessons by her social climbing mother (Ariane Ascaride). However, David's efforts to one-up Anne hit a snag when he learns the truth about her new beau. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Jean-Henri Roger's Lulu stars Elli Medeiros as the title character. Lulu is a transsexual who lives with John (Gerard Meylan). One of the town drunks she serves at her bar accuses her of killing a local criminal. A detective (Bruno Putzulu) starts a quirky investigation into the charge. A journalist (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) with affectionate feelings for Lulu figures in the plot. Lulu was shot on Digital Video. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Racism, violence, and drug abuse run rampant in this ensemble drama set in the southern French city of Marseilles. Michele (Ariane Ascaride) spends her days working in a fish factory, where she earns a living to support her unemployed husband and her teenage daughter Fiona (Christine Brucher). In addition to being the mother of a three-month-old, Fiona is also a heroin addict and a prostitute. Thanks to her habit, Fiona is increasingly unable to work, and Michele helps her daughter by exchanging sexual favors for money with Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), an ex-dock worker with more than a few problems of his own. Michele gets drugs for Fiona from Gerard (Gerard Meylan), the sullen proprietor of a small bar who engages in such shady pastimes as political assassination. Meanwhile, Abderramane (Alexandre Ogou), a young African man recently out of prison, finds himself attracted to Vivienne (Julie-Marie Parmentier), a social worker married to a womanizing high-society snob whom she detests. Her spite towards her husband leads Vivienne to claim that she respects poor people who vote for the Far Right more than moneyed individuals who talk a lot about helping the poor but do almost nothing. Vivienne's frustration, coupled with that of the other characters, illustrates the overriding tension that threatens to build to society's collapse. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

A man considers the fine line between friendship and family as he crosses France by foot in this comedy. Felix (Sami Bouajila) is a cheerful thirty-something from Normandy who is part-Arab by birth and 100 percent French by inclination; Felix is also gay and HIV-positive, though the ups and downs of the characters on his favorite soap opera trouble him more than his health, which he regards with a good-natured stoicism. Felix has never really known his father, who left his mother before Felix was born, and after he receives some old letters his dad wrote to his mother, Felix decides its time they talked before it's too late. Figuring his father's likely whereabouts in Marseilles from the letters, Felix packs up his knapsack and hits the road, planning on hiking cross country and meeting up with his boyfriend, Daniel (Pierre-Loup Rajot), in a couple of weeks. Along the way, Felix's open-hearted charm allows him to make several new friends, and before long he's bonded with a number of people he's embraced as a surrogate family: Mathilde (Patachou), an elderly woman with regrets about her life; Isabelle (Ariane Ascaride), a single mother who can't find a stable relationship; Daniel (Pierre-Loup Rajot), a teenager coming to terms with his sexuality; and a "cousin" (Philippe Garziano) interested in kites with whom Felix has a brief fling (while they practice safe sex, their al fresco encounter leads to a dreaded and painful malady -- poison ivy). As Felix moves onwards toward Marseilles, he and his new friends ponder the notion of family -- is it defined by blood, or by your heart and soul? Drôle de Félix was released in English-speaking territories under two different titles, Funny Felix and The Adventures of Felix. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The third feature of former documentarist Dominique Cabrera, who is known for his 1997 feature L'autre coté de la mer, this film exposes the oppressive and stifling aspect of society. Single mother Nadia is surviving on welfare while transport strikes are paralyzing France in December 1995. While watching the news, she recognizes the father of her child among the strikers and decides to go and search for him. But she has nowhere to go. The film, shot almost entirely at night, carries documentary qualities, part of which is due to the appearances of actual railroad workers in several group scenes. Ariane Ascaride is remarkable as the often irritating single mother on welfare who can also elicit sympathy from the audience. 52nd Cannes Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

A couple puts faith in love to get them through times of extreme poverty in this comedy-drama that was a major box office success in its native France. Jeannette (Ariane Ascaride) is a single mother living in a working-class community in Marseilles; she tries to support herself and her two kids on her salary as a check-out girl at a supermarket and lives in an apartment complex where everyone is thrown into close proximity with everyone else (thankfully, they all get along). Marius (Gerard Meylan) is working as a security guard at a cement factory that has gone out of business; he's also squatting in the building, since the plant is soon to be demolished and he'll be needing his money later on. One day, Jeannette happens by the factory, and spotting several cans of paint, tries to take two of them home with her. Marius spots her and tries to chase her away, while she rails at him with curses against the capitalist system. The next day, an apologetic Marius appears at her doorstep, cans of paint in hand; the two soon become friendly, and a romance begins to bloom, though it quickly becomes obvious that Jeannette's romance novel fantasies about passionate embraces in the sunset are a bit off the mark from what the more pragmatic Marius has in mind. Ariane Ascaride won a Cesar Award (the French Oscar) for her performance in Marius Et Jeannette: Un Conte De L'Estaque; she's married to the film's director, Robert Guediguian. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A down-and-out group of basically decent people band together to somehow survive in modern Paris in this fascinating French ensemble piece that employs humor and drama to present slices from their daily lives. Among the group is servant Marie-Sol, who prays to the Blessed Virgin for a baby; Marie's gentle husband Patrick, who, along with his friends, is unemployed; Marie-Sol's bartender brother and his girl friend Josefa, who works as a stripper at the Blue parrot where he works; Marie Sol's confused, crippled father, who doesn't know that the Spanish Civil War has ended. A few others complete the motley band. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Meant to be a record of the lives and times of several generations of a group of Italian families who immigrated to Marseilles at the turn of the 20th century, this uneven, 110-minute drama was not quite long enough or the budget high enough to fill in the gaps between changes in the story and its characters. The result is that the viewer is left disoriented whenever the story leaps over vital information. For example, two buddies separate before 1936, when one becomes an arms dealer in the Spanish Civil War. The other marries and has children, and when the lives of the children are picked up, their mother is inexplicably wheelchair-bound. Was she wounded in the war or did she have an accident? The viewers are never told. With more time and money, director Robert Guediguian might have plugged holes such as this one. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide