Etienne Draber Movies

This sumptuous French drama offers episodes from the notorious life of 18th century socialite and playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. The story begins in the 1770s with a rehearsal of his "The Barber of Seville." Young friend of Voltaire, Philipp Gudin introduces himself to the great playwright and offers to become his personal secretary. He then becomes the adventurous Beaumarchais' keeper as the author gets involved in a variety of situations including a duel with an angry husband, his battle with the corrupt French government and a serious long-term affair with Marie-Theres de Willer. It all comes to a climax when King Louis XV assigns the playwright a secret mission to London. There he must find and retrieve a damning document from transvestite aristocrat Chevalier D'Eon. Unfortunately, Beaumarchais gets tangled up with supporting American rebels and ends up tossed in jail. Louis XVI sees that he is finally released and then the writer becomes an arms smuggler for American revolutionaries. All of his activities bankrupt him and so Beaumarchais must return to writing plays. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Literary critics long regarded Gustave Flaubert's iconic French novel Madame Bovary as unfilmable (despite several attempts by Vincente Minnelli and others to bring it to the screen), but Nouvelle Vague architect Claude Chabrol set out to definitively prove them wrong with this Oscar-nominated feature adaptation from 1991, starring Isabelle Huppert (The Lacemaker). Huppert stars as Emma Bovary, a woman whose happiness depends exclusively on elements outside of herself. She spends her days indulging in flights of fancy and endless romantic longings, emotionally estranged from her good-natured but ignorant husband Charles (Jean-François Balmer) a physician whom she married as an escape from her landowner father's farm. Her fate seems poised to change when she meets and falls hard for Rodolphe Boulanger (Christophe Malavoy) - a lover who takes her to bed and then vows to elope with her. Pinning all of her hopes on this, she invests in a traveling costume that she's unable to afford (rendering herself completely in debt with a local millner), and plans to skip town with Rodolphe when the monies come due. Alas, Rodolphe, as it turns out, never planned to follow through with the elopement plans, and promptly abandons Emma, leaving her to face the dire consequences of her foolish decisions. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

This romantic drama about two strangers who meet and fall in love in Paris contains seriocomic touches that add considerably to the feature. Marie (Catherine Wilkening) is a young Jewish girl from Algeria who comes to Paris in hopes of being a model. She is sidetracked when she meets Ali (Karim Allaouri), a French-born Arab and ex-convict. Ali makes plans to meet up with an accomplice to get his share of the money from a robbery with hopes of traveling to Houston, Texas to become a "cosmonaut." ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The interwoven love stories in Et La Tendresse?... Bordel! No 2 contrast three different ways of being together in modern French life. Carole is the mistress of Francois, a man who not only has a wife and children, but who makes a habit of having sexual liaisons with women besides his mistress and wife. The immaturity and vagueness of Regis and Julie undermines their initially very loving relationship once they get married. Finally, the straightforward friendship between Luc and Eva evolves into a love based on respect and understanding. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Set in German-occupied France, Rascals concentrates on the trials and tribulations of schoolboys Bernard Brieux and Thomas Chabrol. Rebellious by nature, the boys try to work within the status quo of their Catholic school while simultaneously bucking it. Giving this story its texture is the fact that, by defying their elders, Bernard and Thomas are symbolically striking a patrotic blow against the occupying Nazis. Inasmuch as the film dwells at some length on sexual awakening, it is understandable that Rascals was slapped with an R rating when released in the US, two years after its completion. Director Bernard Revon was once an associate of another specialist in the field of youthful defiance, director Francois Truffaut. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi