Michel Gondouin Movies

Audrey Tautou, who rose to international stardom with the title role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's worldwide smash Amélie, reunites with the director for this drama, set during the darkest days of World War I and its immediate aftermath. Mathilde (Tautou) is a pretty but frail young women who was left with a bad leg after a childhood bout with polio. Mathilde lives in a small French village with her Aunt Bénédicte (Chantal Neuwirth) and Uncle Sylvain (Dominique Pinon), and is engaged to marry Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), the son of a lighthouse keeper who is fighting with the army near the German front. Manech is one of five soldiers who have been accused of injuring themselves in order to be sent home; in order to discourage similar behavior among their comrades, Manech and the other soldiers are sentenced to death, and the condemned men are marched into the no man's land between the French and German lines, where they are certain to be killed. Mathilde receives word of Manech's death, but in her heart she believes that if the man she loved had been killed, she would know it and feel it. Convinced he's still alive somewhere, Mathilde hires a private detective (Ticky Holgado) shortly after the end of the war, and together they set out to find the missing Manech. Jodie Foster appears in a supporting role as a Polish expatriate living in France. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This thoughtful French drama centers on a brother and sister, living on the furthest frontier of society's fringe in the title flophouse. Nathalie was once beautiful, but a life of drugs and prostitution has stolen her joie de vivre. Her oily, fast-talking pimp Denis, who has zero respect for women, does little to help her. Nathalie's brother Tof is a petty thief. One day he visits Pierre, a local shopkeeper who through Tof out of his store. Tof repays the favor by publicly humiliating Pierre at gunpoint, causing a far-reaching change in Pierre's life and circumstance. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide