Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu Movies

The life of the fabled Gallic leader Vercingetorix is brought to the screen in this epic international production. Young Vercingetorix came of age in 60 B.C., as soldiers of the Roman Empire ran roughshod over Gaul and his father was captured and executed by Romans. A wise and philosophical druid, Guttuart (Max Von Sydow), tells the angry Vercingetorix that he should seek justice by winning freedom for Gaul from the Romans. As an adult, Vercingetorix (Christophe Lambert) becomes a brave and insightful warrior, and at first joins forces with the charismatic Julius Caesar (Klaus Maria Brandauer). But in time Vercingetorix is betrayed by the great leader, and soon he raises an army of his own to defeat Caesar and bring Guttuart's prophesy to life. Ines Sastre also appears as Epona, the love of Vercingetorix's life. Vercingetorix was filmed on location in Bulgaria in both French- and English-language versions. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

What there is of a plot in this drama serves mainly as a vehicle for the exploration of character. In the story, Michel (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) is a recent widower. As the story opens, he and his friend Andre (Philippe Nahon) are sharing a drink on Christmas Eve. He takes a yellow scarf from a woman he knows (Laura Morante) and teasingly refuses to return it. Throughout the remainder of the film, the scarf reappears, as does the woman, until they wind up in bed together at the end of the film. Before that happens, Michel wanders around Paris, viewing the festivities with a jaundiced eye which serves to heighten the unattractiveness of those he observes. Later he has dinner with a group at Andre's house, and his poor opinion of human nature is amply supported by the events that occur then. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

If this engaging costume adventure is perhaps just one notch shy of being a full-fledged swashbuckler, it is only because it so lovingly recreates the era in which its story takes place. In the film, it is 1685 and a baby is being left on the steps of a monastery, but not before the mysterious cloaked horseman who brings it bites off the infant's nose and leaves a coin in its swaddling clothes. The baby, a boy, is fortunate to be placed with a loving woman and her able husband, a former pirate who still retains a lively spirit. The cheerful and charming boy learns to fence, to read, and to joust, all the while sporting a wooden nose. Eventually a local nobleman deigns to notice his existence, and sends him to attend a seminary which is grim beyond all imagining. Rather than suffer endlessly in the study of material he already knows with no prospect of being ordained (he is, after all, mutilated), Justinian (Pierre-Oliviar Mornas) runs away, and thereafter has one dashing, hair-raising adventure after another, eventually discovering his parentage. The story is based on the novel Dieu et nous seuls pouvons by Michel Folco. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Benvenuto Cellini was a gifted metalworker who created gorgeous objects for the rich, a rogue, a warrior and a sensitive man. In short, he was an archetypical product of his period in Renaissance Italy, a lusty antihero par excellence. This movie is based on selections from his famous autobiography, and chronicles the life of this egotistical fabricator of beautiful objects as he battles, murders, has love affairs, rapes, connives, copes with imprisonment and near madness and generally thrives amid the worst that his tumultuous times can throw at him. Not for the weak of stomach, this film graphically depicts the violence of the period, as well as the unpleasantnesses of the plague. His truly was A Violent Life. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Fabled Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima was the guiding hand behind the fast-paced French comedy Max, Mon Amour. The "Max" with whom the elegant Charlotte Rampling falls in love is a circus chimpanzee (played by a short-statured man in a monkey suit). Charlotte's British-ambassador husband Anthony Higgins has long suspected that his wife was cheating on him, but he certainly isn't prepared for her simian paramour. Amazingly, the film never descends into goofiness: Oshima uses his unorthodox plotline to poke holes in the self-protective pretensions of the Bourgeoisie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a neo-Nazi group of terrorists is set to blow a pop concert off the face of the earth because it is an anti-racist benefit, they are faced with the intrepid Jean-Pierre Mougin (Richard Berry), a macho sports reporter with zero tolerance for Nazi hate crimes. Going along with Mougin to stop the bombing is Lyza (Fanny Bastien), whose brother was killed by this group of fascists, and so she is ardently seeking revenge. After Mougin gets his hands on a videotape that reveals the plot to blow up the concert and its audience, he and Lyza join forces. As the fuse gets shorter and shorter, Mougin is also joined by sympathetic street gangs. Thus reinforced, he faces his opposition (including crooked cops) in increasingly more desperate attempts to stop Murmeau (Jean Francoise Balmer), the leader of the Nazi gang, from carrying out his terrorist objective. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Set up along the general plot lines of films like The Dirty Dozen, this routine spy-action drama of espionage and counter-espionage involves ten men trained by NATO attache Straub (Edward Meeks) for a dangerous special mission. The men include leader Larcier (Claude Brasseur), a Romani, a man who is a crack shot, a safe-cracker, a professional mountain climber, and others. The team's assignment is to scale a rocky cliff somewhere in the Mediterranean area, rescue a general from captivity before he is forced to reveal NATO secrets, and bring the general back safely. After the men successfully complete the mission with only two casualties, NATO reveals a cold-blooded brutality that changes the picture and continues the violence. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this conventional detective-thriller, Dominique (Thierry Lhermitte) is the sidekick of the gangster Malaggione (Bernard Pierre Donnadieu), and when he falls in love with Sylvie (Pascale Rocard) -- a good-hearted, relatively naïve woman -- he promises he will do only "one last job" and then quit. In the meantime, detective Bertrand (Daniel Auteuil) is hot on the gangster's trail and coerces information out of Sylvie that is supposed to lead to Malaggione's arrest -- but Malaggione escapes and hunts down Dominique, who confesses to "talking" in order to save Sylvie from blame. The ending is fairly predictable, as Dominique, Sylvie, the detective, and the gangster must come to some final accounting when their paths begin to cross. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Death of Mario Ricci is a Swiss/French/West German coproduction, filmed on location in Switzerland. Gian-Maria Volonte stars as a TV newscaster who journeys to a remote alpine village to interview a famed malnutrition expert. Upon his arrival, Volonte learns that there's an ongoing investigation in the village concerning the mysterious death of an Italian immigrant. Inexorably, the journalist becomes involved in the investigation, and with equal inexorability the chain of evidence leads to the malnutritionist. The Death of Mario Ricci is consistently lovely to look at, though dramatically it's as hollow-centered as a piece of Swiss chocolate. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Return of Martin Guerre is set in France during the Hundred Years' War. Imagining herself a widow, Nathalie Baye is astonished when her husband Gerard Depardieu returns after nine years. He looks like her husband and sounds like her husband, and certainly has a working knowledge of the couple's prior relationship. Still, neither Baye nor her neighbors can shake the notion that Depardieu is an imposter--especially since he's a much nicer and more responsible person than the man who marched off to war so long ago. Matters come to a head when the local magistrate sentences Depardieu to hang for his own murder. Return of Martin Guerre was the principal source for an American film, Sommersby (1993). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Francois (Jean-Paul Belmondo) was framed as a drug-trafficker by none other than the head trafficker himself and spent seven years in prison for his supposed crimes. Now an ex-con, the vengeful Francois carefully arranges things so that the kingpin's own henchmen murder him, as they believe that they are also about to fall victim to the mobster's ruthless schemes. Flashbacks show that Francois had a rewarding, though tumultuous life before his imprisonment. Now he has a new girlfriend, and a new life, in this movie based on a book by Marceau. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Strongly evocative of an old film noir but punctuated with '90s style violence, this dark Canadian detective drama centers on a renegade ex-police detective who tries to find the identity of the enigmatic man who has been threatening his life. High strung, edgy Detective Marceau loses his job with the Montreal police department when while walking through a darkened train yard filled with abandoned cars, he observes a department colleague tooting up with a pair of coke dealers in a battered caboose. Something inside Marceau snaps and without flinching he shoots all three in cold blood. Afterward, he quits the force. Six months pass and he wanders by the academy one day. There he spies Camile, a cop-in-training who cannot bear to use a gun. He decides to help her accept the violence inherent in policework; in exchange he wants her to act as his body guard while he tries to find the would be killer. His main suspect is a psychopathic child molester, Boule de Pool. Meanwhile Marceau and Camile begin to get closer until their passion violently erupts in the caboose one night. Despite their newfound love, Camile is deeply disturbed because Marcel's nerves have driven him to the brink of madness. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide