Manuela Gourary Movies
- 2001
This is a dark, sinister second feature from the director of the 1995 film The Rock of Acapulco, featuring Charles Berling and Karin Viard as a married couple in Paris enjoying the fruits of their careers. He works in an executive post and she works out of a spacious Paris apartment she has inherited from her parents. Their son Julien (Alexandre Bongibault) and daughter Aude (Camille Vatel) are mostly in the care of babysitter Daphnee (Ludvine Sagnier). One day, an unkempt older couple (Manuela Gourary and Pierre Julien) ring their doorbell and introduce themselves as "the Worms," a sibling pair that evidently lived in the building years before. Marianne welcomes them in to look around. Their behavior seems courteous at first, but upon their departure, the family is affected. The house begins to do things on its own, Marianne's depression comes back to haunt her, and Daphnee's sweet demeanor turns sour without warning. A moody thriller from France, this is the first production of Bee Movies, a genre-based company known for such fare.
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Karin Viard, Charles Berling, (more)
After a series of short films, writer/director Laurent Firode made his feature-length debut with this tale of coincidence, chance, and fate inspired by a variation of the chaos theory, which supposes that if a butterfly beats its wings in one part of the world, it could theoretically cause a full-fledged storm thousands of miles away. Firode applies this theory to a disparate group of Parisians, opening with a young retail worker, Irene (Audrey Tautou), reading her horoscope on the train to work one morning. At the store, Irene has to deal with an elderly woman (Francoise Bertin) who wants to return a broken coffeemaker; as if that weren't enough, the dissatisfied octogenarian consumer has to put up with her impudent grandson, Luc (Eric Feldman). Amidst all the seemingly unrelated human activities in the film, cockroaches, bird droppings, and changes in the weather all conspire to bring the characters together -- or drive them apart, as the case may be. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Audrey Tautou, Faudel, (more)
- 1998
Taxi driver Daniel (Samy Naceri) gets out of a traffic offense by making a deal with arresting-officer Emilien (Frederic Diefenthal). A friendship develops as Daniel chauffeurs Emilien about, and soon the two are in pursuit of German bank robbers. This film was scripted by Luc Besson during the 30 days he waited for Columbia's decision on his The Fifth Element, and it was completed on the day Columbia okayed The Fifth Element. After a fall from a horse put director Gerard Pires in the hospital, director Gerard Krawczyk subbed since permits issued by Marseilles cited a set time period, and the start date could not be changed. More than 100 cars took part in the crashes and chases through the Marseilles streets with stuntwork by famed racecar drivers. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Samy Naceri, Frédéric Diefenthal, (more)
- 1984
Not to be confused with another French film of the same title -- a 1936 adaptation of Noel Coward's Private Lives, this standard romantic drama focuses on three different couples who happen to come together in a small hotel in Rome and play out their differences in that setting. The couples are made up of a Parisian woman and her Slavic boyfriend out to spend some quality time together; a Frenchman (Jean-Noel Picq) searching for his sexually awakened teenage mistress; and a woman out to reunite with her Italian lover (Michele Placido). These people manifest different approaches to a romantic partnership that are tested in their brief encounters in Rome. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanko Molnar, Jean-Noel Picq, (more)
- 1984
Young Brian (Julien Gangnet) and Nourredine (Khalid Ayadi) live in a miserably poor Paris suburb and both dream of making it to San Francisco to live the good life -- but they go about realizing their goal in the wrong way. Brian's father once toured San Francisco in the 1960s when he played with a rock band. Now he is in jail, and Brian's mother works in a nightclub to support herself and her son. Brian and Nourredine start robbing a local supermarket and reselling their loot to raise money for their great escape and dream trip, but that activity ends when Brian is caught. After he is hauled in for questioning, the police threaten to make things worse for his father unless Brian identifies his shoplifting buddy. At least for the moment, life gets much worse for the young boy until unforeseen circumstances start to turn him around. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julien Gangnet, Khalid Ayadi, (more)
