Gerard Bitton Movies

During his adolescent years, Sami, a French teen, saved 15-year-old buddy Patrick from a potentially fatal skiing accident - causing Patrick to feel long indebted to his friend. Years later, Patrick (Clovis Cornillac) has evolved into a congenial husband, father and businessman with a handsome Parisian flat and a gorgeous wife named Justine (Alice Taglioni), but the poor Sami (Pascal Elbe) failed to make an equally smooth transition into adulthood. He developed a severe case of hypochondria - so severe that he's now a basket case and spends inordinate amounts of time in the hospital undergoing every medical test in the books, and presumably torturing his insurance company in the process. So begins Gerard Bitton and Michael Munz's outrageous comedy-of-errors The Cactus. When Sami endures a brain scan and overhears a conversation between a doctor and a nurse, indicating that the patient "is suffering from a severe case of white spots" and "won't last the winter" - his paranoia leads him to conclude that they are discussing the results of his procedure; unbeknownst to him, the discussion pertains to the office cactus. Terrified of impending death, Sami leans more heavily than ever on Patrick and Justine (for whom he carries a serious torch) - first moving into their house, and then carting the Patrick along with him on a trip to India to consult with a famous healer. Alas, the two men's problems are only beginning, and when Patrick's decides to skip work in order to help his friend, it marks the beginning of a journey full of outrageous errors and mishaps that collectively turn each man's life upside down and inside out. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

The Sephardic Jewish characters who headlined the riotous 1997 comedy Would I Lie To You? - all employees in the garment business - return for this laugh-filled 2001 sequel. At the center of the farce are Dov (Gad Elmaleh), Patrick (Gilbert Melki), Serge (Jose Garcia), Yvan (Bruno Solo) and Eddie (Richard Anconina), friends for life and colleagues in the said industry, who spend their days wheeling and dealing and establishing connections but run the socioeconomic gamut from filthy rich to lower working class. A series of misunderstandings commences when blue-collar Serge - employed as a motorcycle messenger and living with his parents - takes the wealthy Patrick's blue Rolls Royce convertible out on an errand and runs headfirst into Chochana (Elisa Tovati), a Jewish girl with whom he feels instantly smitten. She naturally assumes, given the car, that he's wealthy - and he of course does nothing to discourage this. In time, Serge manages to prolong the economic ruse to such a degree that he ends up engaged to the high-maintenance Chocana, and on a headfirst collision course with her furniture kingpin father (Enrico Macias). Meanwhile, the garment industry as a whole in Le Sentier (the chief Parisian neighborhood in which the men do business) suffers from a massive economic downturn, thanks in no small part to escalating labor costs and the flourishing of Internet start-ups; in desperation, Yvan and Eddie turn to EuroDiscount, a massive chain of European department stores, with a feeble attempt to sell their merchandise to that outfit. They fail to count, however, on the ugly reaction of the cunning manager, Vierhouten (Daniel Prevost), which threatens to send them spiraling toward bankruptcy. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi