Audrey Tautou

Acclaimed director Claude Berri (Jean de Florette) helms the whimsical romantic comedy Ensemble, c'est tout (Hunting and Gathering, 2007). A box office blockbuster in France, the picture follows the romantic couplings that form in the lives of several lonely Parisian singles. The lead characters include: an emotionally fragile, exhausted cleaning lady named Camille (Audrey Tatou) who is suffering from anorexia; a well-to-do young man named Phillibert struggling with his own sexual orientation (Laurent Stocker) but who begins to drift toward heterosexuality and a stable relationship with a woman; and Phillibert's rebellious pothead roommate Franck (Guillaume Canet), who can never quite breach the possibility of committing to one woman, or come face to face with his dream of opening a French restaurant - until he meets Camille and the pieces begin to fall into place. Writer-director Berri adapted the novel by Anna Gavaldi. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Dan Brown's controversial best-selling novel about a powerful secret that's been kept under wraps for thousands of years comes to the screen in this suspense thriller from director Ron Howard. The stately silence of Paris' Louvre museum is broken when one of the gallery's leading curators is found dead on the grounds, with strange symbols carved into his body and left around the spot where he died. Hoping to learn the significance of the symbols, police bring in Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), a gifted cryptographer who is also the victim's granddaughter. Needing help, Sophie calls on Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a leading symbologist from the United States. As Sophie and Robert dig deeper into the case, they discover the victim's involvement in the Priory of Sion, a secret society whose members have been privy to forbidden knowledge dating back to the birth of Christianity. In their search, Sophie and Robert happen upon evidence that could lead to the final resting place of the Holy Grail, while members of the priory and an underground Catholic society known as Opus Dei give chase, determined to prevent them from sharing their greatest secrets with the world. Also starring Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, and Alfred Molina, The Da Vinci Code was shot on location in France and the United Kingdom; the Louvre allowed the producers to film at the famous museum, but scenes taking place at Westminster Abbey had to filmed elsewhere when church officials declined permission. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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

Director Stephen Frears returns to the grittier themes of his earlier films for the urban thriller Dirty Pretty Things. Residing in London, the medically trained Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian immigrant working as a taxi driver and a hotel concierge, but he still lives on the edge of poverty. He shares a room with Senay (Amélie's Audrey Tautou making her English-language debut), a Turkish refugee who works as a maid at the hotel. As illegal immigrants, Okwe and Senay live in fear of being deported. One night, working at the front desk, Okwe receives a call from prostitute Juliette (Sophie Okonedo) to check a broken toilet, where he makes a horrifying discovery. He reports it to the manager Sneaky (Sergi Lopez), who blackmails Okwe into staying quiet about it. Okwe soon discovers the presence of a shady business operation that sends him into the seedy London underworld. Senay becomes lured in with hopes of being able to fund her escape to America. Dirty Pretty Things marks the screenwriting debut of Steve Knight, co-creator of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

One woman decides to change the world by changing the lives of the people she knows in this charming and romantic comic fantasy from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Amelie (Audrey Tautou) is a young woman who had a decidedly unusual childhood; misdiagnosed with an unusual heart condition, Amelie didn't attend school with other children, but spent most of her time in her room, where she developed a keen imagination and an active fantasy life. Her mother Amandine (Lorella Cravotta) died in a freak accident when Amelie was eight, and her father Raphael (Rufus) had limited contact with her, since his presence seemed to throw her heart into high gear. Despite all this, Amelie has grown into a healthy and beautiful young woman who works in a cafe and has a whimsical, romantic nature. When Princess Diana dies in a car wreck in the summer of 1997, Amelie is reminded that life can be fleeting and she decides it's time for her to intervene in the lives of those around her, hoping to bring a bit of happiness to her neighbors and the regulars at the cafe. Amelie starts by bringing together two lonely people -- Georgette (Isabelle Nanty), a tobacconist with a severe case of hypochondria, and Joseph (Dominique Pinon), an especially ill-tempered customer. When Amelie finds a box of old toys in her apartment, she returns them to their former owner, Mr. Bretodeau (Maurice Benichou), sending him on a reverie of childhood. Amelie befriends Dufayel (Serge Merlin), an elderly artist living nearby whose bones are so brittle, thanks to a rare disease, that everything in his flat must be padded for his protection. And Amelie decides someone has to step into the life of Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz), a lonely adult video store clerk and part-time carnival spook-show ghost who collects pictures left behind at photo booths around Paris. Le Fabuleux Destin D'Amelie Poulain received unusually enthusiastic advance reviews prior to its French premiere in the spring of 2001, and was well received at a special free screening at that year's Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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

In this free-spirited romantic comedy, Oriane (Michele Laroque) has grown tired of her relationship with Hadrien (Vincent Perez), an architect with a habit of climbing tall buildings, a relationship precipitated by her breakup with Hadrien's best friend, who responded by attempting suicide. Looking for more variety, Oriane becomes involved with handsome Xavier (Arnaud Giovaninetti), while Hadrien is tempted away by Marie (Audrey Tatou). Hoping for a simple solution to the mess she's in, Oriane hires a sorcerer, Bodel (Miki Manojlovic), who warns her it's going to take more than one of his spells to sort out the romantic confusion. Epouse-moi received its North American premiere at the 2000 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The bones of a young child are unearthed in the outskirts of a remote French town, prompting an extensive investigation by determined authorities in this made for television drama based on the book by Pascale Basset-Chercot and starring Amelie's Audrey Tautou. As a detective arrives in town in search of the clues that will help him solve this troubling mystery, his deductive skills are constantly subverted by the highly secretive and ominously eccentric behavior of the suspicious small-town denizens. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide