Christine Gouze-Rénal Movies

A prominent French surgeon of Jewish heritage (Phillippe Noiret) suffers a massive heart attack in the film's prologue and as his life hangs in the balance, scenes from his life growing up in Algiers flash by. The resulting drama recalls his life and in so doing pays homage to the contributions of his Mamma Titine (Sophia Loren) in giving him the strength and skill to overcome poverty and the stigma of his religion in his homeland. The ailing Joseph Levy's reminiscence begins when he was a 13-year-old student during WW II. Though one of the brightest in his school, he is expelled following the enactment of new anti-Semitic laws. With somewhat of a struggle, he is able to be put back into school. At home, Levy seems to be Mamma Titine's favorite, even though he has four other siblings. She is a strong, supportive woman who without complaint raises her children alone while her husband works in the Paris civil service under a false name. Though an essentially honest woman, Titine will stop at nothing to ensure that she meets her children's emotional and physical needs. As the months pass into years, Joseph gradually comes of age and learns subtle ways of rebelling. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set in Vienna, Austria before World War I, an industrialist grows weary of his cold-hearted wife. He seeks vengeance in a dual with the young officer who desires her affections. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In the style of an operetta, like director Jacques Demy's more famous film the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this melodramatic story is set in Nantes in 1955 and centers around the tragedies of three or four intertwined lives. First, there is the young steel worker (Richard Berry) who is out on strike and has rented a room from an upper-class widow (Danielle Darrieux), a woman in sympathy with the strikers. The blue-collar worker has a girlfriend he finds less and less interesting just as she is more and more pregnant, and their relationship seems fated to end, one way or another. Then there is Edith (Dominique Sanda), the daughter of the widow, married to a wealthy, impotent, skinflint of a merchant caught up in his own neuroses, and, whether for that reason or several others, Edith is a part-time hooker. One evening she shows up in the worker's rented room, wearing a fur coat and nothing else -- and the two share a night of passion. Now mother, daughter, the worker, and the daughter's husband have formed a very unstable chain of relationships, due to snap because at least one link is exceedingly weak. Enhanced by excellent choreography, this film still did poorly at the box office when it was first released. In order to save it and encourage audiences to see it for its own merits, 76 French critics took out an ad in Le Monde to promote the film, and some critics said that if this movie failed, so would all of French cinema. Perhaps it is not surprising then that Chambre En Ville won the French Critics' Prix Méliès in 1982. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Louis Malle directed this drama about the toll fame takes upon a women pursuing a May-December romance. Jill (Brigitte Bardot) is a lovely 18-year-old girl who lives with her mother on a comfortable estate in Lake Geneva. Jill has dreams of some day becoming a ballet dancer, but her immediate concerns often focus upon Fabio (Marcello Mastroianna), a attractive older man who publishes a magazine and has married one of Jill's closest friends, Carla (Ursula Kubler). In time, Jill decides Fabio will never love her, and she runs away to Paris to study dance. While her career in ballet never pans out, she becomes an immediate success as a fashion model, and goes on to become a top film star. Five years after leaving home, Jill has become weary of fame, and comes home to her mother's home to rest. Jill discovers that Fabio and Carla have divorced, and he now takes a very keen interest in her. While stardom has now made Jill desirable to Fabio, it also attracts the attention of the world's press when word gets out that the screen goddess is dating a man almost fifteen years her senior. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Brigitte Bardot is the sensual gamine once more in Light Across the Street. She pouts and purrs her way through a romantic triangle involving herself, her injured truck driver husband, and a handsome interloper. The fun comes crashing to a halt when murder is committed. Released in France as La Lumiere d'en Face, this film was first issued to the US as The Flame and the Flesh. But this caused confusion with a 1954 Lana Turner vehicle of that name, hence the more antiseptic cognomen The Light Across the Street. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide