Edwige Feuillère Movies

While visiting a vegetarian restaurant, a young writer finds a corpse in the restroom. When he returns with the police, the body is gone. The writer is left with the unlucky fellow's hat -- which leads a certain beautiful woman to believe that his identity is the same as the dead man's. Not only is his life now at risk, but things get increasingly bizarre as he meets up with a mysterious sect of cannibals and with a group of opium-smuggling gangsters. What's more, the woman herself seems to have a diabolical doppleganger. Aimez-Vous Les Femmes? was adapted by Roman Polanski and Gerard Brach from a book by Georges Bardawil. The distinguished Sacha Vierny contributed his cinematographic talent to this black comedy shortly after his successful collaboration (among many) with director Alain Resnais on Muriel, ou le Temps d'un Retour/Muriel, or the Time of Return (1963). ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Director Max Ophuls managed to get three productions before the cameras in 1940, the best of which was De Mayerling a Sarajevo. In his characteristic pageant-like fashion, Ophuls traces the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire by spiritually linking the tragic 19th century romance of Crown Duke Rudolph and Baroness Maria Veretsa to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the subsequent outbreak of WW1. According to the film, Ferninand (played by American actor John Lodge) was no slouch in the romantic department himself; but unlike his predecessor Rudolph, the Archduke is permitted to marry his mistress (Edwige Feuilliere), who thereby becomes the Duchess of Hohenberg. Mistrusted by his aristocratic peers because of his progressively democratic notions, Ferdinand seems destined to be martyred at the hands of his enemies, in much the same way that Rudolph's non-royal impulses brought about his demise. One of Ophuls' favorite cinematic devices, the "court dance", is cunningly utilized in De Mayerling a Sarajevo when the lovers are prevented from attending a palace ball, symbolizing the irreparable schism between the modernistic Ferdinand and the hidebound Hapsburgs-and also presaging the deaths of the Archduke and his Duchess. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The title of this French romantic comedy translates as Once is Enough, which was hardly conducive to the film's repeat business! Veteran movie heartthrob Fernand Gravey stars as a famed explorer, who falls in love with gorgeous sculptress Edwige Feuillere. Their romance is blighted by a series of lover's quarrels, which range from minor spats to all-out guerilla warfare. It is up to philosophical art critic Henri Guisol, friend to both Gravey and Feuillere, to bring the couple back together. A minor star vehicle, Il Suffit d'une Fois would have benefited from more comedy and less quarrelling. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Thanks to the popularity of the 1948 cinemazation of Gigi, the "fin de siecle" novels of Colette suddenly became hot properties in the French cinema. Julie de Carneilhan stars Edwige Feuillere in the title role. A divorcee, Julie de Carneilhan finds herself ardently pursued by a roue (Pierre Brasseur) and by her more reliable younger cousin (Jacques Dumesil). Like most of Colette's works, Julie de Carneilhan talks a great deal about sex and sexuality, but shows very little. The film's preponderance of dialogue, witty though it may have been, left American audiences dissatisfied. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is just a casual observation, but it's highly possible that more film adaptations of the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky were made in France than in Russia. In 1946 there appeared a faithful (if by necessity truncated) French version of the Russian novelist's The Idiot. Gerard Philipe plays the title character, Russian prince Myshkin, who returns to St. Petersburg after a stay in a Swiss mental hospital. The Prince is not literally a mental midget; he is considered an idiot because, as an honest and upright person, he cannot keep pace with the evil in the world. He busies himself with the petty problems of his aristocratic friends, which drive him back into the recesses of insanity. Edwige Feuillere costars as Nastasia, the woman of loose morals who turns out to be the only person who truly cares about Myshkin's welfare, while Lucien Coedel plays the nominal villain of the piece, an iconoclastic flour merchant named Rogozhin, whose passion for Nastasia culminates in tragedy. L'Idiot was remade in Japan by Akira Kurosawa in 1951, and in Russia in 1959. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The heiress Claire (Charlotte Rampling) in this movie is the daughter of the Miss Blandish of the film No Orchids for Miss Blandish. She has been raised under the unsympathetic eye of her aunt (Edwige Feuillere), who has no intention of seeing her receive her large inheritance. A somewhat violent girl (her father was a mentally retarded killer), she has been confined in a mental asylum. All the men who help her meet tragedy and death in the course of the film, but Claire gets help from other quarters, and her prospects look good. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Young jeweler's assistant Robert Arnoux is in love with Suzy Vernon, the daughter of his pompous employer Andre Berley. The boss hopes to bully the boy into giving up Vernon, but Arnoux gets even by pretending to swallow a valuable pearl. Hoping to recover the priceless gem, Berley is forced to accept Arnoux as his house guest. By the time Berley discovers that the pearl is safe, Arnoux has authored a successful play and become a millionaire -- and as such, a worthy son-in-law. Critics in 1932 likened Arnoux and Berley to Laurel and Hardy, though the resemblance is purely physical. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

French filmmaker Sacha Guitry had intended to direct as well as write 3DLa Vie a Deux3D (3DLife as a Couple3D), but death claimed him before he could bring his plan to fruition. Adapted from Guitry's original by Jean Martin and directed by Clement Duhor, the film offers an all-star cast in a series of seriocomic anecdotes. The narrative is tied together by a millionaire novelist (based on Guitry himself), who on his deathbed wants to bequeath his fortune to several married couples upon whom he'd based one of his books. The proviso is that the couples must have remained happily wed to claim their money. The millionaire's family anxiously hire private detectives to prove that the couples in question are not only unhappy, but shameless philanderers in the bargain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide