Nicolas Duvauchelle Movies

An outsider becomes a witness to the shocking and sometimes chaotic world of a special police force in this drama from writer and director Maiwenn. The Child Protection Unit is a team of police officers who deal in cases that involve minors, and an ordinary workday finds them dealing with child abuse, youthful thieves, molestation, teen prostitutes, and families on the run from the law. The work is emotionally taxing, and the members of the Child Protection Unit count on each other for support, though they often have issues with one another as well. Nadine (Karin Viard) has a close friendship with Iris (Marina Fois), but in the wake of her divorce, Nadine has becomes jealous of her work partner, which sometimes explodes into vicious arguments. Chrys (Karole Rocher) has just discovered she's having a baby, complicating her relationship with Mathieu (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who is secretly in love with her. And Fred (Joeystarr) is going through a messy divorce that has taken him away from his young daughter, making him volatile and high strung, and while the group leader Balloo (Frederic Pierrot) tries to cover for him, his behavior is hard to explain to those outside the unit. This becomes clear when Melissa (Maiwenn), a photojournalist, is assigned to follow the men and women of the CPU for an upcoming magazine piece and becomes part of their dysfunctional family. Poliss (the title comes from a child's misspelling of the French word for "police") received a Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for fourteen Cesar Awards (the French Oscar), winning two.
~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Two couples discover how hard it is to set boundaries in an open relationship in this drama from writer and director Antony Cordier. Vincent (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is a web designer who is hired to create a new Internet presence for Rachel (Marina Fois), who sells jewelry and wants to promote her business. While Vincent and Rachel talk business at first, they find they're immediately attracted to one another, and when they set up a dinner so they can meet their respective spouses -- Teri (Elodie Bouchez), who before marrying Vincent was a champion gymnast, and Franck (Roschdy Zem), an interior designer specializing in feng shui -- Teri and Franck discover they feel passion for one another as well. The two couples quickly begin swapping partners, and at first everyone is happy with the new arrangement, but before long the couples feel they need to establish ground rules for their marital and extramarital partnerships. Codifying their relationships, however, unexpectedly brings jealousy and possessive feelings into the picture for the first time. Four Lovers (aka Happy Few) was an official selection at the 2010 BFI London Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In 2004, a grotesque and unseemly incident took the European press by storm: a young French woman came forward and claimed to have been attacked by black and Arab thugs who mistook her for a Jew. But after her story broke, no witnesses came forward to support her, and security cameras at the train station revealed no such attack; the woman later admitted that she had ripped her own clothes, drawn swastikas on her own stomach, and fabricated the entire story. With the drama Fille du RER, acclaimed French writer-director André Téchiné presents a thinly veiled fictionalization of the same events. Émilie Dequenne stars as Jeanne, an unemployed girl who lives with her mother (Catherine Deneuve) in a Parisian suburb and spends the majority of her free time rollerblading. She has little knowledge of -- or interest in -- history or politics, and remains withdrawn, insular, and sullen, keeping the majority of her thoughts and observations to herself. Circumstances change just a bit when Jeanne enters a live-in relationship with a beefy, thuggish wrestler boyfriend, Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), living in a dingy warehouse, but violence soon erupts between the two. Jeanne also becomes acquainted with an attorney-cum-ex-boyfriend of her mother's (Michel Blanc), whose involvement in Judaic causes and his politically committed family prompt even greater feelings of alienation and isolation in Jeanne. When Franck's involvement in criminal activities comes to light and the police intervene, Jeanne perversely reasons that she can only become tied to history by inventing a role for herself, and decides to fabricate said story about the train -- little realizing the calamitous consequences that it will engender. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Alain Resnais, one of the towering figures of the French New Wave, demonstrates he still has plenty to say in this drama based on a novel by Christian Gailly. Marguerite (Sabine Azéma) is a successful dentist with a busy practice and an offbeat hobby, flying small airplanes. One day, while running errands, Marguerite loses her wallet, and it's found by Georges (André Dussollier), a seemingly happy man with a wife, Suzanne (Anne Consigny), and two children (Vladimir Consigny and Sara Forestier). As Georges looks through the wallet and examines the photos of Marguerite, he finds he's fascinated with her and her life, and soon his curiosity about her becomes an obsession. Georges' attempts to integrate himself into Marguerite's life begin to alarm her, and she hires a private security team (Mathieu Amalric and Michel Vuillermoz) to keep him away, but Georges is determined that his new love for her will not be denied. Les Herbes Folles (aka Wild Grass) received its world premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Adapted from the same José Giovanni story that spawned Jean-Pierre Melville's classic 1966 film of the same name, director/screenwriter Alain Corneau's nail-biting thriller stars Daniel Auteuil as iconic French gangster Gustav "Gu" Minda and Monica Bellucci as the smoldering Manouche -- whose love for the notorious criminal knows no bounds. As the 1950s draw to a close, vicious convict Gu stages a daring escape from the prison where he had been serving a life sentence. Though Gu longs to flee from the country with his longtime lover Manouche, he must first complete one last job that will secure him the finances to do so; but with every policeman in the country currently searching for Gu, it isn't going to be easy. Gu has the fortitude and know-how of the most experienced criminal, and despite the fact that his staged hold-up goes down like clockwork, the police looking to capture him prove craftier than he ever anticipated. Inspector Blot (Michel Blanc) knows that Gu isn't likely to make any mistakes while procuring his funds for flight, so instead of trying to catch him in the act, he hatches an ingenious scheme to create dissent within the criminal ranks of his target. Blot's plan is to make Gu's gang think that their leader is now a police informer, and everyone buys the ruse except for Manouche. The steely-nerved Manouche knows Gu well enough to realize that he would never agree to work with the cops. Later, as things start to fall apart, Manouche prepares to pay the ultimate price to defend her beloved Gu and clear his name once and for all. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A woman pursues new worlds of pleasure in a bid to eliminate her ennui in this erotic drama from writer and director Jean-Claude Brisseau. Sandrine (Carole Brana) feels as if she's fallen into a rut and is dissatisfied with nearly every aspect of her life -- she's quit her job, she's bored with her fiancé, and wants to move away to another country. Sandrine has an affair with Greg (Arnaud Binard), a handsome psychiatrist who is a student of the therapeutic uses of hypnosis. Sandrine, who is looking for greater insights into herself, is intrigued with Greg's theories about hypnosis, and is even more fascinated when he introduces her to Sophie (Lise Bellynck), an attractive young woman with a powerful and eclectic sexual appetite. As Sandrine submits to hypnosis, she experiences a number of unusual erotic encounters with Sophie and others, and moves towards a new degree of personal and sexual freedom. A L'aventure received its North American premiere at the 2008 Montreal World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Olias Barco's drama Snowboarder is set in the Alps. Gaspard (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is a young, gifted snowboarder. He is lured away from his ski shop job by the snowboarder he admires most in the world, Josh (Grégoire Colin), who, it turns out, does not have Gaspard's best interests at heart. Juliette Goudot rounds out the cast as Josh's girlfriend, Ethel. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Two strangers share a strange and terrible bond in this stylish horror tale that juggles sex and graphic bloodshed. Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo) is a strange man with a forbidding nature who has just married lovely but nervous June (Tricia Vessey), and they've decided to go to Paris for their honeymoon. In the City of Lights, a beautiful but dangerous woman named Core (Beatrice Dalle) has been leaving a trail of dead bodies in her wake when she's captured by Leo Semeneau (Alex Descas), a mysterious scientist who spirits her away to his estate. As Core is placed under guard, Semeneau leaves to return to the city for an unnamed assignment; we soon learn that one of Shane's reasons for coming to Paris was to find him and retrieve some important information. In time, we also discover that Shane and Core have something rather unusual in common -- both are murderous cannibals who regularly feast on the flesh of their victims, and Semeneau's information may hold the key to the secret behind their deadly appetite. Trouble Every Day generated a certain amount of controversy in its screenings at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where a number of patrons walked out in disgust at the film's intense blend of sensuality and cannibalism. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi