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Alexis Tomassian Movies

2002  
 
Inspired by Lawrence Durrell's collection of interrelated novels, The Alexandria Quartet, Lucas Belvaux's trilogy--the violent noir On the Run, the romantic comedy An Amazing Couple, and the melodrama After the Life, examine many of the same characters from three distinct perspectives. In On the Run, taciturn leftist revolutionary Bruno (Belvaux) escapes from prison with the help of one of his former comrades. When his partner is killed by the police, Bruno tracks down another former member of his gang, Jeanne (Catherine Frot), who is now living a quiet, respectable life as a schoolteacher, with a husband and a young son. Bruno is determined to get revenge on the powerful man who betrayed his revolution. Jeanne doesn't want to live in the past. She offers Bruno enough help to get rid of him. Trying to trap his prey, Bruno follows a drug dealer who works for the man. He meets Agnes (Dominique Blanc), a junkie who happens to be the wife of the cop, Pascal (Gilbert Melki) who's hunting Bruno. Bruno ends up helping Agnes avoid the police and cop a fix. In return, she takes him to the vacation home of her co-worker, Cecile (Ornella Muti), where he hides out. But when his plans for revenge go horribly awry, Bruno turns to Jeanne again, and she has to weigh her family's safety against her allegiance to her old friend. While On the Run focuses on Bruno and Jeanne, An Amazing Couple is centered on the paranoid Cecile, who hires Pascal to watch her husband, while After the Life deals with the damaged marriage of Agnes and Pascal. The trilogy was shown at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

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Starring:
Catherine FrotLucas Belvaux, (more)
 
2002  
 
After Life is the third film in Lucas Belvaux's ambitious Trilogy, following On the Run, a thriller, and An Amazing Couple, a romantic comedy. After Life features the same characters as the other two films and happens over the same time period, but it's a melodrama, and the focus is on Pascal (Gilbert Melki), a cop, and his wife, Agnes (Dominique Blanc), a teacher, who is also a morphine addict. Agnes depends on Pascal to supply her with morphine, and he in turn has an arrangement to procure the drug from a nefarious local businessman, Jaquillat (Patrick Descamps). When a violent radical leftist, Bruno (Belvaux), escapes from prison and kills an associate of Jaquillat's, Jaquillat threatens to withhold Pascal's morphine supply until Bruno is dead. As his wife's mental and physical health deteriorates, Pascal feels compelled to subvert his moral qualms about turning the criminal over. His investigation leads him to detain Jeanne (Catherine Frot), a co-worker of Agnes' with past ties to Bruno. Cécile (Ornella Muti), another of Agnes' co-workers, begins to suspect that her husband, Alain (François Morel), is having an affair, and asks Pascal to look into it. Pascal finds his interest in the case is more than professional when he begins to develop feelings for Cécile. Meanwhile, Agnes, feeling neglected and desperate, goes out into the street to try to find her fix. She ends up running into Bruno, and the two forge an unlikely alliance. Belvaux's Trilogy was shown at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

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Starring:
Ornella MutiFrançois Morel, (more)
 
1996  
 
Based on a short novel by Ania Carmel, this dark drama follows the survival developed by a brother and sister forced to grow up under the tyrannical rule of a father who brutally attempts to instill a sense of self-reliance and preparedness into them by acts of cruelty. They cannot turn to their mother as she is dying of a terrible illness. To cope, Daniel and Marie form a close bond and communicate telepathically. When their mother finally dies, the children flee as their father tosses furniture out the windows. First they stay with a group of kindly cheese makers. When they prove to have sinister ulterior motives, the kids move on. One night at a disco, a man tries to seduce Marie and this sets the stage for tragedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

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