Andréa Ferréol Movies

Director Francesco Rosi earned a Best Foreign Film Academy Award nomination for his drama Tre Fratelli (Three Brothers), an adaptation of a work by Andrei Platonov. When the matriarch of an Italian family dies, the husband brings his three boys, each of whom are facing difficult personal problems, back to their farmhouse. Raffaele (Philippe Noiret) is a judge who fears being executed over the politically unsettling case over which he is presiding. Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) is quite religious and dreams of helping troubled teenagers. Nicola (Michele Placido) is a worker involved in a labor dispute as well as a failed marriage. Each of the men grieves in his own way, while also wrestling with the other emotional issues that are pressing on them. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

The Last Metro is set virtually in its entirety in a crumbling French theatre. During the Nazi occupation, Jewish director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent) hides in the basement of the theatre, while his wife Marion (Catherine Deneuve) stars in its latest production. Marion is enamored of leading man Bernard Granger (Gerard Depardieu), and he with her, but they resist temptation out of respect to her husband. When she is given a choice between loyalty to her husband and to her countrymen, her dilemma offers two logical solutions--both of which are acted out on stage during the play. This Pirandellian ending aside, The Last Metro is one of the few films to accurately capture the feeling of what it was like to live in Paris under the thumb of the Nazis. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass. As Germany goes to hell during the 1930s and '40s, the never-aging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum, serving as the angry conscience of a world gone mad. The intense and visceral Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the 1979 Golden Palm (which it shared with Apocalypse Now). In the late '90s, the film became the center of a censorship controversy when some U.S. videotapes were confiscated because of the film's supposed violation of a child pornography statute. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Polish director Andrzej Wajda had a habit of switching gears between socially conscious films and pure box-office entertainments. The Conductor, released in Poland in 1979 as Dyrygent, falls into the latter category. John Gielgud stars as an old and venerated orchestra conductor, making his annual personal appearance in a small Polish town. Violinist Krystyna Janda, who like the guest conductor is a devotee of Beethoven, finds her entire life altered by Gielgud's brief stay. The film made a few allegorical points about making oneself accessible to change, but otherwise The Conductor is all that it seems to be on surface: A simple story, simply told. English-language prints of The Conductor are blighted by the poor dubbing of the principal characters--with of course the exception of John Gielgud. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Robert Enrico has attempted to adapt a novel, by Hortense Dufour, of larger-than-life figures to a larger-than-life screen. The drama in the novel has not translated well. It is a rather routine story of men at a highway construction site in 1965 who guide huge machinery around by day and in the end, have difficulties with their nomadic lifestyle. The work and its conditions are demanding, yet the men and their families do not extend beyond a set series of stereotypes that would be familiar territory to most audiences. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

At 25, Helena (Mimsy Farmer) is "middle-aged" for a prostitute. When 15-year-old Julien's callow friends try to pick her up (not knowing that she is a prostitute), she allows Julien (Pascal Sellier) to win her favors. Something about him appeals to her, and she sees him from time to time. Bespelled by his first sexual and romantic experiences with her, he is at first blind to the nature of her profession but gradually understands it. Meanwhile, she has come to care for the boy more than she planned to, and to keep from causing him further harm, she breaks off with him. Even though Julien is devastated, his father, an understanding man, is able to help. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this tragic drama, the neglected wife (Lisa Gastoni) of a purveyor of antique glass finds sexual fulfillment with a brutish shop clerk (Franco Nero), who swiftly establishes a master-slave relationship with her. The relationship is satisfying for both of them until he begins making demands that she bring her teenaged daughter in to him for similar treatment. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

When Maria (Jeanne Goupil), a woman who is too beautiful to seem quite real, marries a dollmaker, her new husband finds it hard to treat her like a real person instead of a strange, animated doll. She suffers greatly from this treatment, which is an exaggerated version of the sorts of things she has endured her whole life, and her efforts to break through to others ultimately fail. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The desire that many people have to live life with another more glamorous identity is the focus of this French satire. The head programmer at a computer data firm comes up with a scheme which enables subscribers, for a fee, to have an alternate identity. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Adolescence and sexuality hits Daniel (Louis Julien) particularly hard, and the romantic hypocrisy of the adult world nearly drives him to distraction. He drops out of school, sponges off his father (Michel Aumont), who has divorced his mother, and has a brief romance with an older woman, an actress (Nathalie Roussel). When she is revealed to him as the opportunistic hussy she is, he goes home to attempt suicide. His mother (Joelle Bernard), who has been having problems of her own, comes upon him just as the attempt fails, and the two of them find themselves laughing at their problems. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Jean-Pierre Marielle stars in this gentle comedy as a traveling salesman whose wife adamantly refuses to let him make paintings of her buttocks. At some point, fed up, he leaves his family and, after several tries, establishes himself as a painter. This is all thanks to the imperturbable kindness of his mistress and model (Dolores McDonough), who bakes cakes as diligently as her man paints pictures of her rump. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In Serieux Comme le Plaisir, two men and a woman live quite happily together in a romantic liaison. The woman is probably wealthy anyway, so the trio doesn't worry much about money. One day they decide to take a trip in their beat-up car, managing the whole affair in their own special, insouciant manner. They are followed by a suspicious policeman who thinks there's something fishy about this group. As part of their play they tie the girl up, apparently leaving her behind, but she adamantly refuses to be rescued and heaps abuse on anyone who tries, including the hapless policeman. At some point she goes off with an Eastern monarch, leaving her lovers behind. She returns, and soon the trio is once again sniping at puzzled interlopers, playfully going about their business of confusing everyone. Later on in the film they are seen depositing their son at school where he is awaited by two young girls. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi