Sandrine Dumas Movies

The third feature film of Giacomo Campiotti, previously the assistant director to Mario Monicelli, Il Tempo Dell'Amore (A Time to Love) is an omnibus film of three different love stories that take place in three different eras and locations. The common element is the theme: love causes a lot of pain. In the first episode, we are in South Africa at the turn of the century during the Boer war. Martha (Juliet Aubrey), a forty-year-old English woman, is on her way to visit her brother Thomas (Tam Williams), who is in the army, when the train is attacked by Boers. Peter (Ciaran Hinds), an English soldier, saves her life. This unexpected encounter leads to an impossible love, as Peter happens to be one of Thomas' footsoldiers. In the second story, Paris is under German occupation during the Second World War. Claire (Natacha Regnier), a young French musician, meets Gabriel (Ignazio Oliva), a Russian musician, during a concert performance. Their passionate love affair has limits because of the linguistic barriers, and what begins well ends in tragedy. In the last episode, we are in present-day Italy. Teenager Guiseppe is in a coma following an accident. His classmates take turns by his bedside, but when summer arrives, they all go away. Naty (Natalia Piatti), who is much younger than Guiseppe and somewhat of a tomboy, stays behind and visits him regularly, developing an attachment to the boy even though she knows that, when he recovers, he would not look at her. Il Tempo Dell'Amore tries to create a magical atmosphere in dealing with affairs of the heart, using dreams and nightmares to interpret moods. The first episode is the least successful in terms of building the relationship to its climax. The last episode is the best one, particularly because of excellent acting by Natalia Pitti, who is a natural. Campiotti co-wrote the script with his partner in his previous film, Like Two Crocodiles, the Russian playwright Alexander Adabachian, who has also worked as a screenwriter for Nikita Mikhalkov. Il Tempo Dell'Amore was in competition at the 1999 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

A successful Italian man living in Paris returns to Italy to exact financial revenge upon his cruel half-brothers in this Italian-French drama. Gabriele now runs a successful antique appraisal company in Paris. He lives in a fine, automated apartment which his lover Claire compares to an impenetrable box. Gabriele is haunted by his troubled youth, which is presented through flashbacks. He and his baby brother Martino were bastards. Their father was the wealthy Giancarlo Giannini who already had a family. After Gabriele's feisty and independent mother died, he and his brother were taken into their father's home. Though living in luxury's lap, the now adolescent Gabriele was mistreated by his two hateful half-brothers. He eventually ran away from that house. This is the motive behind his revenge. But to get it he must return home and therefore, must face his past. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Maurice (André Dussollier) was once a devoted socialist and followed his principles very nicely while he was an art professor. However, the lure of making money has drawn him into business with his girlfriend and a Japanese student. They have set up a sushi delivery business in the heart of Paris. Unfortunately, they don't do too well at it, so they are all happy to accept the investment of a big corporate type, who soon sets them up in a big way with numerous trained chefs, a fleet of motorcycles, delivery boys in uniforms and other glitzy and costly elements. When the business becomes wildly successful, the money-men offer to buy it out completely, and Maurice is far from sure what he wants to do. By then, the lives of all the business' founders have changed completely. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Italian director Ermanno Olmi serves up another tale of dignity amongst the "rabble" in Legend of the Holy Drinker. Rutger Hauer plays an alcoholic derelict who comes into a large sum of money. Though his benefactor is a human stranger, Hauer attributes his windfall to Santo Bevitor, or the "saint of drunkards." When Hauer tries to pay back the favor, he is constantly thwarted by society's "better" people. Distinguished by its long, portentous silent passages and by the consistently offbeat performances of stars Rutger Hauer and Anthony Quayle, The Legend of the Holy Drinker (originally La Leggenda del Santo Bevitor) is in the eyes of some observers superior to its source, a novel by Joseph Roth titled Die Legende des Helligen Trinkers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An international collection of well-known directors contributed to this compilation film, each fashioning a short film inspired by an aria from a famous opera. The approaches vary broadly, from the playful abstraction of Jean-Luc Godard's segment, which illustrates Armide with exercising body-builders, to the more literal approach of Franc Roddam, who transports Tristan und Isolde's story to modern-day Las Vegas. A particular stand-out is Julian Temple's take on Rigoletto, which recasts Verdi as the accompaniment to a contemporary Southern California sex farce. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

In this political drama, five left-leaning friends gradually lose heart in the Socialist government elected in 1981 in France. One of the five men is a television broadcaster; the others are a teacher about to become an academic inspector, a tax man, the director of a cultural center, and a sociologist who is about to step into a ministerial position. Their interlocking lives are told in alternating vignettes over a four-year period, and the professions director Jacques Fansten has chosen for his main characters seem to be a comment on the media, education, budget or finance, the arts, and government bureaucracy under Socialist rule. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In a probing, autobiographical look at two impoverished teen buddies, director Mehdi Charef sketches a lucid cross-section of life on the wrong side of the tracks. Pat (Remi Martin) and Madjid (Kader Boukhanef) live in the squalor and isolation of a housing project -- neither wants a "respectable job," and so they pimp, steal, pick up women, and nurse their dreams. Pat's dream is to live off a rich woman in a warm climate, but Madjid has a desire much closer to home -- he has a crush on Pat's attractive sister, at least until she shatters his illusions. This film won the 1985 Jean Vigo prize, and was also given special attention (Un Certain Regard) at the Cannes Film Festival in that year. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Although written and directed by the well-known Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman), this movie about life and love among a group of high schoolers on vacation in the countryside has nothing to distinguish it beyond the typical couplings and uncouplings found in other movies in the same genre. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide