Brigitte Fossey Movies

Thomas (Alain Musy) is living with his mom and granddad in a huge country house. He makes a teltext phone call requesting that Santa Claus visit his house for Christmas. Instead, a crazed lunatic in a Santa outfit comes to visit, and for the rest of the film, Thomas is kept busy fending off the murderous Santa, in this French-style and relatively nonviolent thriller. Despite a superficial resemblance, this movie is not intended for child viewers the way Home Alone is - not least because by the end of the film, the kid no longer believes in (or cares about) Santa Claus. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Two middle-aged victims of the war of the sexes, Paul and Albert (Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort) run away from their families at the same time. They indulge themselves by eating what they want to, when and where it pleases them. Trouble finds them in the form of their abandoned wives, and the film moves very much into the realm of symbolic and sexual fantasy from this point onward. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day, Salvatore saves Alfredo's life after a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist. A few years later, Salvatore falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later, Salvatore has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can. In 2002, over a decade after the film's original release, Tornatore brought the original 170-minute director's cut to American screens for the first time. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Therese, Catherine, and Alain (Carole Laure, Brigitte Fossey, and Bernard Giraudeau) are three friends who undergo several personal trials and tribulations over an eight-year period in which all three try to hang on to their original visions of who they are and what they want out of life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Directed by TV-anthology veteran Jeannot Szwarc, Enigma has a certain small-screen "feel" to it. Adopting a musical-comedy foreign accent, Martin Sheen plays Alex Holbeck, an Iron Curtain defector who returns to East Germany at the behest of the CIA. His mission is to save five political "undesirables" from the communists. Holbeck runs up against some formidable opposition, namely ambitious KGB agent Dimitri Vasilkov (Sam Neill) and a quintet of highly trained Soviet assassins. Brigitte Fossey co-stars as Holbeck's former love, whom he involves in his escape plans by asking her to romance the susceptible Vasilkov. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this excellent drama centered around family relationships, especially that of parent and child, the problems of single motherhood are addressed from several perspectives. Isabelle (Brigitte Fossey) is a movie star in German cinema, and after she wraps a successful film in Berlin, she leaves to spend some time with her little daughter Emilie (Camille Raymond) and her parents in Normandy, France. Isabelle's mother Paula (Hildegarde Knef) was born in Germany and married her French husband after a romance that began in the war-ravaged city of Berlin. Isabelle's parents take care of Emilie while she is working because she insists on remaining a single mother -- although her lover follows her to Normandy and stays in a nearby hotel while she is with her parents. During a 24-hour period, the unresolved problems between Isabelle and her mother and father rise to the surface -- and cannot be ignored any longer. It is not an easy situation, especially since both parents are angry about some aspects of Isabelle's career and/or life that she may not be able to change. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Years after serving together in the French Foreign Legion, American soldier of fortune Franz Propp (Charles Bronson) and French doctor Dino Barron (Alain Delon) are unexpectedly reunited under the most extraordinary circumstances. Hoping to help a friend who has embezzled some bonds, Barron tries to break into a safe in the dead of night. Sneaking into an underground vault he is surprised to discover that his old pal Propp is also on the premises, likewise intending to crack the safe, albeit for his own benefit. After a few awkward moments, a friendship develops between the two as they try to get out from the locked vault. A Franco-Italian co-production, Adieu L'Ami was released in the U.S. as Farewell, Friend and Honor Among Thieves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this complex political thriller, a police inspector operating out of Geneva discovers that the death of a Swiss journalist in Italy has more to do with Swiss international banking and high finance than is entirely comfortable. Indeed, as his investigation proceeds, he encounters car bombs and murders galore and challenges the prevailing system, briefly. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This sequel to La Boum, a teenage romantic comedy that was a big box-office success in Europe, revisits Vic (Sophie Marceau), who is now 15 years old and living in a slightly more stable home, since her parents (Brigitte Fossey and Claude Brasseur) have resolved their differences and stopped bickering. Love has come to Vic's grandmother (Denise Grey), who is thinking of getting married again. And romance is knocking on Vic's door as well when she meets a boy in her class named Philippe (Pierre Cosso). But now Vic has to decide if this is real love -- and if it is, if she should go all the way with Philippe. Like the first film, Le Boum 2 was a solid moneymaker, and it earned Sophie Marceau a César Award (the French Oscar) as Most Promising Young Actress of 1983. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this French domestic comedy, a young boy lives in a Paris apartment surrounded by three generations of single women: his mother, her mother, and his great grandma, each with their own ideas on how a boy should be raised. Naturally this is quite confusing for the lad. Things get especially tense when he develops a crush on his teacher; and his mother is wooed by another man. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on Erskine Caldwell's novel, Le Batard could also refer to this French film born from an American novel, with the American South transformed into the south of France. An unemotive Gerard Klein is Patrice, the Paris automobile mechanic who travels to Marseille to identify the body of his loose-living and long-lost mother, who has been found murdered. After proceeding to kill off her barroom boss, he meanders around the south of France looking for sexual relationships. He comes across a teenage musician and is attracted enough to her obvious appeal to establish a more permanent liaison, taking her with him to Paris to set up housekeeping -- for she is pregnant. Soon she is driven to the limits of depression and boredom caring for their home and a new baby, and he has reached his limits of confinement and responsibility -- so he takes off again. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The members of a singles' dinner club meet once a week to talk about their difficulties and help one another out with their lives, with romance, and whatever seems appropriate. In this movie, their dinners are featured, and vignettes of the participants' lives put their encounters into a larger perspective. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this comic and perceptive story, Billy mistakes another apartment for his own on the eve of his wedding and wanders in to meet a woman who immediately mesmerizes him, causing all sorts of problems in what used to be an uncomplicated life. After Billy (Richard Berry) and his bride-to-be Nina (Zoe Chauveau) move into a housing project still in its finishing stages, Billy walks into the wrong apartment when he forgets which floor he is supposed to be on. When he sees Viviane (Brigitte Fossey) he is transfixed by her, and since her husband has just ended their marriage, she is particularly susceptible. Without explaining where he actually lives or that he is getting married, Billy seduces Viviane, but then does not have the courage to break off his wedding. When Viviane rejects their affair and takes off for Paris, Billy goes in search of her -- not knowing that Nina's father has caught on to Billy's extra-marital activities and would like to express a few viewpoints of his own in that regard. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide