Benoit Delepine Movies

A bored and dispirited man heads out for a new adventure in this French comedy-drama from filmmakers Benoit Delépine and Gustave de Kervern. Serge (Gerard Depardieu), nicknamed "Mammuth" by his friends for the old motorcycle he's owned for years, began working at a slaughterhouse when he was sixteen years old; a model worker, Serge never had a sick day or was laid off, and shortly after turning sixty he's given a retirement party by his fellow employees. After spending nearly his entire adult life at the same job, Serge isn't sure what to do with his free time, but he soon discovers a snag in his retirement plans -- several former employees at the slaughterhouse neglected to fill out the proper paperwork, and until they sign the appropriate forms he won't receive his pension. Hoping to make the best of a bad situation and give Serge something to do at the same time, his wife Catherine (Yolande Moreau) suggests he pull his old motorcycle out of the garage and take a road trip to round up the needed signatures. Serge takes her advice, but as he catches up with his old friends, he discovers how little they think of him, and he's haunted by the spirit of Yasmine (Isabelle Adjani), a beautiful girl he used to love. Serge later finds a traveling companion in Solange (Miss Ming), his free-spirited niece; Solange is an artist who along with her friends encourages Serge to open himself up to his creative side that he's ignored most of his life. Mammuth was an official selection at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this bizarre surrealist comedy from France, a handful of oddball characters live in world where people heap strange forms of abuse on animals -- dwarves stage bullfights with rhinos, zoos open restaurants where the privileged can dine on the animals on display, and the wealthy lock themselves into their mansion with the angry pit bulls trained to protect them. In the midst of such madness, a stocky animal handler (Gustave Kervern) who can neither hear nor speak falls in with a pair of dissolute zookeepers (Benoit Delepine and Eric Martin) who are hooked on ketamine and shoot one another with tranquilizer darts for fun. The zookeepers involve their new friend in a crazy scheme to kidnap the pet dog of a very wealthy and extremely large woman, Avida (Velvet), but the three men prove to be wildly inept criminals, and once they're found out, Avida forces them to help her in a plan to take her own life. Featuring a cameo appearance from acclaimed filmmaker Claude Lelouch, Avida was written and directed by Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, who also act in the film; it received its American premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Christophe Smith made his directorial debut with this media satire, set on December 14, 1999, about a TV news network in cahoots with Washington on Operation Crazy Guru -- a plan to get a U.S. president re-elected for a third term. Griffith (Mickey Rooney), head of the Miami-based international World News Company, decides inept Paris correspondent Michael Kael (Benoit Delapine) is gullible enough to report the staged events, so Kael is sent off to Africa to cover a two-day fest in Katango. International nets air nuke threats by a Japanese nutcase, made on tapes sent from Katango. Kael, of course, has been unwittingly set up as WNC's key reporter, but everything goes haywire once Kael deduces that it's all being faked. The screenplay, by Delapine, is an expansion of comedy sketches that originated on two popular French cable TV shows. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi