Frederic Brillion Movies

Laetitia Casta stars in director Gilles Legrand's drama concerning an Edwardian-era girl whose fate becomes permanently intertwined with that of the last wolf pack on Mont Blanc. Angele (Casta) is a child who lives in a French Alpine town with her taxidermist father Leon (Patrick Chesnais). Shortly after Leon receives a pile of wolf corpses that he plans to stuff, Angele notices an orphaned black cub descending from the mountains in search of his family. Angele realizes that trappers will kill the cub if they find him, so she quietly releases him back into the wild. Years later, following World War I, a local family named The Garcins have struck it rich from business at their foundry; Leon named the Garcin patriarch, Albert, Angele's godfather. A benevolent and generous soul, Albert has given a local gypsy and her developmentally disabled son Guiseppe (Stefano Accorsi) a lifetime lease on a nearby mountain shack. Giuseppe guards several surviving wolves with his life, taking a special shine to the black pack leader he names Carbone. Meanwhile, Angele - who is now a young woman - longs to become a veterinarian specializing in undomesticated animals. Though the local men scoff at the idea of a female veterinarian, Angele ignores these naysayers. In order to gain some professional veterinary experience, she recruits circus owner Zhormov (Miglen Mirtchev) to fly her into the mountains that tower above her hometown, where she hopes to find wild animals. During the course of their journey, however, the plane crashes and Angele must wait as Zhormov searches for help. But sometimes help arrives in the most unexpected of forms, such as the black wolf that recognizes Angele's scent from the days when he was just a frightened pup. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A series of tragedies befalls a small French town near the front during World War I in Yves Angelo's Grey Souls. As the film opens, the body of a young girl, Morning Beauty (Joséphine Japy) is found on the banks of the river, an apparent murder victim. We then flash back several months. Lysia (Marina Hands of The Barbarian Invasions), a pretty young woman, arrives in town to take the place of a shell-shocked schoolteacher. Because the teacher has defiled his room, Lysia moves into a small cottage on the estate of the taciturn local prosecutor, Destinat (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who has recently retired. While Lysia obsesses over her lover, who is away at the front, Destinat obsesses over Lysia, surreptitiously opening her love letters before giving them to her. Then a letter arrives that Destinat has trouble bringing himself to turn over to the lovelorn woman. The atmosphere of death and despair grows in the town. A policeman (Denis Podalydès) with a pregnant wife is routinely harassed by resentful soldiers on their way to the front. After the little girl's body is discovered, a witness comes forward who saw Destinat with her shortly before her death. But Mierck (Jacques Villeret of The Dinner Game), the vulgar, mean-spirited judge in charge of the case, and his cruel military attaché, Matziev (Franck Manzoni), seem less interested in actually solving the crime than in pinning it on some hapless lowlife. Grey Souls was scripted by Angelo and Philippe Claudel, based on Claudel's novel. The pair had previously collaborated on Sur le Bout des Doigts. Grey Souls was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of their Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in 2006. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Long-established director Emir Kusturica makes his acting debut in Patrice Leconte's 19th century tale of a loyal, strong-willed woman who follows her soldier husband to a desolate French territory off the coast of Newfoundland. Madame La (Juliette Binoche) lives in marital bliss on the island of Saint-Pierre with her loving, oddball husband (Daniel Auteuil), simply called "the Captain" by his charges. Their world is upset one night, however, when two visiting sailors on a bender murder a local citizen. Neel (Kusturica) is sentenced to death, but the other one dies in a carriage accident before reaching prison. As the island waits for a guillotine (or "widow") to be shipped from the French government, Madame La does her best to convince the townspeople that Neel is genuinely good of heart and doesn't deserve a bloody fate. La Veuve de Saint-Pierre marks the second time that Auteuil has worked with director Leconte: their first effort, La Fille Sur la Pont, earned him a Best Actor award at the Cesars, France's equivalent to the Academy Awards. La Veuve screened at the 2000 Cannes and Toronto film festivals. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

His estranged wife is worth millions, but poor Paris resident Richard is homeless and jobless. He applied for unemployment benefits and now faces charges of fraud. To save himself from nine months in jail he must find his wife and force her to tell the courts the truth, that though she has married a politically-ambitious American governor and is filing U.S. tax returns, she is technically still married to Richard. But as she lives in America, how can he get to her? Opportunity knocks when Richard learns that she and her husband will be attending an international conference at an exclusive Paris hotel. To get in he will need a disguise. Meanwhile, at the hotel, the concierge and the director are panic stricken by the prospect of a surprise visit by an unknown auditor who is coming to check out allegations of a hotel-run prostitution ring. They immediately banish all their call girls from the premises, but one refuses to leave without a fight. She too is eventually ejected, and while in the middle of the street she has a charming encounter with Richard, who is disguised as a bum. When the seeming vagrant ambles into the hotel, the managers immediately mistake him for the auditor and instead of booting him out, the hoteliers roll out the red carpet and treat Richard like a king. While he continues his endeavors to see his wife, several other subplots add to the confusion, including one in which a naive couple from the country tries to reach the American governor in hopes of hashing out an international business deal. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

It is not necessary to know that this story is based on a true incident in order to enjoy it; in real life, a man landed in a major European airport without the necessary papers, and while authorities worked (slowly, ever-so slowly) to resolve his citizenship status, he lived and worked there, unable to leave either by air or by foot. This situation lasted for years. In the current movie, Arturo (Jean Rochefort) has flown into France from Montreal. He holds dual French and Canadian citizenship, but all his papers were stolen from him while he was at the Canadian airport without his knowledge. He is married to a Spanish woman and lives in Rome. This confusion of visas and nationalities is too great for the authorities to sort out quickly, and he settles into a behind-the-scenes existence at the airport while he awaits developments. There, he discovers a whole international community of the stranded, a nation-within-a-nation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide