Zinedine Soualem Movies

Fate brings together two people who have more in common than the surface would suggest in this drama from filmmaker Cedric Klapisch. France (Karin Viard) is a working-class single mother who finds herself in a tight spot when the factory she's been employed at for two decades is shut down in the wake of a corporate merger. With few prospects in her hometown, she leaves her daughters in the care of her sister and heads to Paris, hoping to find work as a domestic. France lands a job as a housekeeper for Steve (Gilles Lellouche), a smooth-talking businessman who has just relocated to Paris after several years in London, where he negotiated the deal that cost France her job. Steve has a young son, but barely has the time to look after him, and when he's forced to spend a few weeks away on business, he offers France a healthy bonus to take care of the boy. France doesn't mind the work and enjoys seeing how the other half lives, but there's a side to her that Steve doesn't know about, and vice versa. Ma Part du Gâteau (aka My Piece Of The Pie) was an official selection at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A man born and raised on France's Southern coast is exiled to the Northern territories in this comedy from actor, director and screenwriter Dany Boon. Philippe Abrams (Kad Merad) helps run the post office in a picturesque small town in the South of France, Salon de Provence. Philippe's wife Julie (Zoe Felix) has been down in the dumps, and he thinks one way to lift her spirits would be to relocate to the more glamorous surroundings of the Cote d'Azur. However, Philippe's attempts to finagle a transfer (by pretending that he is handicapped) fail, and when the ruse is discovered, he ends up being punished with a forced relocation to Bergues, a village in Northern France that lies stuck between Belgium and the English Channel. In this area, the indigenes speak a language known as Picard - an amalgam of French, Flemish and Latin - and Philippe essentially perceives the region as the "Siberia of France." With misery in his heart, he dons extreme winter clothing and trudges off to his new post, saying goodbye to Julie and their son, who opt to stay behind. To make matters worse, not long after arriving in Bergues, Philippe nearly runs over a man while driving home drunk -- who turns out to be one of his new colleagues at the post office, But Philippe eventually finds to his surprise that he enjoys life in Bergues, and begins to love the community and its people, even growing infatuated with Annabelle (Anne Marivin), a beautiful letter carrier. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays himself in this meta-crime comedy that finds him garnering mores headlines than he's had in years after stumbling into an in-progress bank heist. Down and out, with only straight-to-DVD titles under his belt and a recent job lost out to fellow has-been Steven Seagal, the aging action star returns to Belgium a broken man fresh from losing a custody case for his daughter in Hollywood. Upon his arrival, the bad news continues with a disastrous ATM encounter that leads him into the bank and straight into a robbery situation, for which he's about to be blamed. Soon, crowds grow outside on the street, with the cops quick to point the finger at him and his fans cheering for his release. The film garnered a cult following during its festival run and awarded Van Damme his first theatrical release in the States in almost a decade. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

The astonishing true-life story of Jean-Dominic Bauby -- a man who held the world in his palm, lost everything to sudden paralysis at 43 years old, and somehow found the strength to rebound -- first touched the world in Bauby's best-selling autobiography The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (aka La Scaphandre et la Papillon), then in Jean-Jacques Beineix's half-hour 1997 documentary of Bauby at work, released under the same title, and, ten years after that, in this Cannes-selected docudrama, helmed by Julian Schnabel (Basquiat) and adapted from the memoir by Ronald Harwood (Cromwell). The Schnabel/Harwood picture follows Bauby's story to the letter -- his instantaneous descent from a wealthy and congenial playboy and the editor of French Elle, to a bed-bound, hospitalized stroke victim with an inactive brain stem that made it impossible for him to speak or move a muscle of his body. This prison, as it were, became a kind of "diving bell" for Bauby -- one with no means of escape. With the editor's mind unaffected, his only solace lay in the "butterfly" of his seemingly depthless fantasies and memories. Because of Bauby's physical restriction, he only possessed one channel for communication with the outside world: ocular activity. By moving his eyes and blinking, he not only began to interact again with the world around him, but -- astonishingly -- authored the said memoir via a code used to signify specific letters of the alphabet. In Schnabel's picture, Mathieu Amalric tackles the difficult role of Bauby; the film co-stars Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, and Patrick Chesnais. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Australian-born Whale Rider sensation and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes stars opposite Oscar Isaac in Lords of Dogtown director Catherine Hardwicke's dramatic account of the Annunciation, and the arduous journey of Mary and Joseph to give birth to baby Jesus. House of Sand and Fog's Shohreh Aghdashloo co-stars in a film with a screenplay by The Rookie and Finding Forrester scribe Mike Rich. Filmed in the village of Matera, Italy (a locale that has remained virtually untouched by modern progress and also served as the backdrop for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ), and Quarzazate, Morocco, former production designer Hardwicke's film strives for authenticity in telling the Bible's most treasured tale. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Based on the original '60s French comic books by René Goscinny, Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre is the big-budget sequel to the 1999 box-office hit Astérix and Obélix vs. Caesar. Empress Cleopatra (Monica Bellucci) makes a wager with Julius Caesar (played by writer/director Alain Chabat) that her people can build a beautiful palace in three months. She chooses architect Numerobis (Jamel Debbouze) for the project, which must be completed in time or he will be fed to the crocodiles. Numerobis travels to Gaul to get help from the superpowered Panoramix (Claude Rich) and the warriors Astérix (Christian Clavier) and Obélix (Gérard Depardieu), along with their faithful pet Dogmatix. They use their magic potion to make the Egyptian slave-labor population into superheroes, thereby building the palace in no time. Meanwhile, the angry architect Amonbofis (Gérard Darmon) and Julius Caesar don't want to see them succeed. At the time of its release, Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre was the most expensive French film ever made, with a budget of $50 million. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

French filmmakers Gérard Bitton and Michel Munz write and direct the comedy Ah! Si j'etais Riche (If I Were a Rich Man). Salesman Aldo (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is getting divorced from his wife Alice (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). When he unexpectedly wins ten million euros in the lottery, he has to maintain the secret until the divorce is final. Though entitled to take half of his earnings, she's momentarily distracted by an affair with his boss, Gérard (Richard Berry). Co-writer/director Michel Munz also provides the original music. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Two people with little in common enter into a brief, impulsive love affair in this comedy-drama. Pierre (Jacques Gamblin) is the leader of an improvisational comedy team known as The Unpredictables, who specialize in blending unnoticed into social functions and large gatherings, then making comic mayhem out of their surroundings. Pierre and his partners Karim (Zinedine Soualem) and Alice (Isabelle Candelier) have been hired to provide entertainment at a conference for employees of a large pharmaceutical firm, where they'll pose as waiters and create humor out of improbable dining suggestions. One guest who is quite taken with their performance is Claire (Sandrine Bonnaire), who finds herself attracted to Pierre, even though she's been happily married for eight years and has two children at home. The morning after the conference, Claire discovers she's missed her train, and bumps into The Unpredictables; Pierre helpfully offers her a ride in their van, and Claire accepts. On a whim, Claire tags along for the troupe's next gig, a performance at a wedding reception, and the more time she spends with Pierre, the more she finds herself thinking about leaving her old life behind, if only for a while. Mademoiselle was the third feature from writer and director Philippe Lioret, one of the few movie soundmen who has graduated to directing feature films. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Antoine Desrosieres directs this black comedy road flick about a coke-addled, misogynist stockbroker and an abandoned pregnant woman thrown together by fate. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi