Solveig Dommartin Movies

This French drama uses two plots that occasionally come together. The stories are set within the multiethnic neighborhoods of Paris. In the first, Daiga (Yekaterina Golubeva), a spunky Lithuanian actress, drives into to town to collect on the promise of a director she slept with. He lied to her and now she, who speaks no French, must accept help from friends and relatives who set her up in a small hotel. She gets a job as a chambermaid. The second examines the lives of a large expatriate Caribbean family. Theo ( Alex Descas), a musician, takes small carpentry jobs for wealthy Parisians to support his young daughter. He really wants to go home to Martinique, but his daughter's mother doesn't want to. Theo's brother Camille (Richard Courcet) has real problems. He is the wild one. Dressed in his fishnet stockings and garish makeup, Camille sings at the local gay club. He sleeps with his lover (also his doctor) in the same hotel as Daiga. Camille seems nice enough until it is discovered that he is not only a drug addict and HIV-positive, he also strangles old women to death while a partner robs their homes. Camille seems oddly distant from his actions, which he calmly describes. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Wim Wenders's sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World ran into serious issues given its whopping length. The original cut ran 20 hours. Realizing that this would make theatrical screenings impossible, Wenders heavily edited the picture and wound up with a 5-hour cut with which he is reportedly satisfied (known as the 'Director's Cut'). Warners wouldn't go for this either, however, and whittled it down to 2 1/2. That version - which premiered theatrically in the U.S. on Christmas Day 1991- makes little sense ,with a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Unsurprisingly, it confounded critics and lay viewers and infuriated its director, who all but disowned it. (Echoes of Once Upon a Time in America!) As with the Leone film, though, the Director's Cut of World did evetually see the light of day. It's now widely available in a multi-disc collector's set throughout Europe, and the public response to that version has been far more favorable. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

Jeanne (Slveig Dommartin) is a woman who is driven by her very active conscience. She attempts to assuage her idealistic bent by trying out life as a nun, but this doesn't work out. After she leaves the convent, she takes a job at a factory, where the callousness of management spurs her to become a labor activist. Her efforts are marked by great persistence and fervor, but she lacks any kind of diplomacy or persuasiveness, and as the years progress, she manages to alienate everyone in her life. By the end of the film, there is only one way that she can see to resolve the horrible situation she finds herself in. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels who watch over the city of Berlin. They don't have harps or wings (well, they usually don't have wings) and they prefer overcoats to gossamer gowns. But they can travel unseen through the city, listening to people's thoughts, watching their actions and studying their lives. While they can make their presence felt in small ways, only children and other angels can see them. They spend their days serenely observing, unable to interact with people, and they feel neither pain nor joy. One day, Damiel finds his way into a circus and sees Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a high-wire artist, practicing her act; he is immediately smitten. After the owners of the circus tell the company that the show is out of money and must disband, Marion sinks into a funk, shuffling back to her trailer to ponder what to do next. As he watches her, Damiel makes a decision: he wants to be human, and he wants to be with Marion, to lift her spirits and, if need be, to share her pain. Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire is a remarkable modern fairy tale about the nature of being alive. The angels witness the gamut of human emotions, and they experience the luxury of simple pleasures (even a cup of coffee and a cigarette) as ones who've never known them. From the angels' viewpoint, Berlin is seen in gorgeous black-and-white -- strikingly beautiful but unreal; when they join the humans, the image shifts to rough but natural-looking color, and the waltz-like grace of the angels' drift through the city changes to a harsher rhythm. Peter Falk appears as himself, revealing a secret that we may not have known about the man who played Columbo, and there's also a brief but powerful appearance by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Wings of Desire hinges on the intangible and elusive, and it builds something beautiful from those qualities. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi