Edith Le Merdy Movies
Writer/director Olivier Dahan (Crimson Rivers II) helmed La Vie en Rose, the screen biopic of tragic French songstress Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard portrays Piaf, the superstar once raised as a young girl by her grandmother in a Normandy bordello, then discovered on a French street corner -- as a complete unknown -- by cabaret proprietor Louis Leplée (Gérard Depardieu). The film segues breezily between various episodes from Piaf's life -- such as her lover, French boxer Marcel Cerdan's (Jean-Pierre Martins) championship bout in mid-'40s New York; her period in Hollywood during the '50s; Piaf's abandonment as a young girl by her contortionist father (and earlier by her mother, a street singer); her brushes with the law as an adult; and her 1951 car accident and subsequent morphine addiction that caused her to age well beyond her years and left her barely mobile; and, through it all, her ability (like Billie Holiday) to funnel personal tragedy and emotional struggles into her vocalizations -- dazzling audiences in the process. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, (more)
Celebrity obsession leads a French teen to track down her favorite singer following a disastrous staged television encounter between the pair in the feature debut from director Emmanuelle Bercot. The music of pop superstar Lauren (Emmanuelle Seigner) has a profound effect on the quiet life of teen admirer Lucie (Isild Le Besco), but when Lauren suddenly appears on Lucie's doorstep as part of a promotional campaign, the starstruck teen is left reeling when her idol serenades her with a love song in front of millions of viewers. Determined to have a genuine encounter with her idol sans the media circus, Lucie subsequently sets out to locate Lauren and hoodwinks the singer's tough-as-nails production assistant (Noemie Lvovsky) into allowing her into the mixed-up megastar's luxury suite. After the pair bonds over Lauren's latest breakup, the singer agrees to take her fan in as a low-level errand girl. Now, as the disillusioned teen begins to see past the glamorous facade to discover that fame has little bearing over emotional instability, she gradually begins to realize that the celebrity world is much different than she ever imagined. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Isild Le Besco, Emmanuelle Seigner, (more)
- 2004
Two warring caveman tribes find their 800 year feud coming to a head in this French comedy featuring Gerard Depardieu and Jean Rochefort. The filthy primitives in the Dirty Hairs have yet to discover the secret of shampoo, while their counterparts the Clean Hairs keep their manes clean and tangle free. When the chief of the Dirty Hairs sends his daughter undercover to steal some shampoo from the Clean Hairs, her mission is complicated by an unforeseen crime. The Clean Hairs' healer has snapped, killing two of his own tribesmen. Of course no one suspects the healer to be a murderer, so in order to root out the culprit the chief of the Clean Hairs dispatches two of his best men - curly-haired Pierre and blond-haired Pierre. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Maurice Barthelemy, Jean-Paul Rouve, (more)
- 1999
- NR
In Les Convoyeurs Attendent/The Carriers Are Waiting, Roger Closset (Benoit Poelvoorde) is a man who obviously loves his family, though that doesn't always make them feel better. Dad is an obsessive type with a short fuse and a long list of curious ideas, and his wife and children must often bear the brunt of his eccentricities. Roger works as a reporter, a job he doesn't like which doesn't pay especially well, either. One day, Roger learns an area business association is sponsoring a contest for a family that can break a world record, with the grand prize being a new car. Suddenly, Roger gets a brainstorm -- if his son can open and shut a door 40,000 times in 24 hours, the car will be theirs. 15-year-old Michel (Jean-Francois Devigne), however, is not at all happy to have been drafted into this new responsibility, especially when dad builds a practice door in the backyard and finds a trainer to teach Michel how to open and close it with greatest efficiency. Les Convoyeurs Attendent/The Carriers Are Waiting was screened as part of the Director's Fortnight at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Benoît Poelvoorde, Morgane Simon, (more)
Man Bites Dog is a Belgian faux-documentary and high-concept satire of media violence which follows the lethal exploits of Benoit Benoit Poelvoorde, an affable, and very talkative, serial killer. He kills for money, and he kills for pleasure, and he talks all the while about philosophy and the proper technique for weighing a corpse down underwater. He is followed through his slaughter-fest by the filmmakers, Rémy and André (the actual filmmakers, Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel), and the line between reporter and subject becomes blurred pretty quickly. The filmmakers become more and more involved in Benoit's actions, starting with the relatively innocent act of holding a flashlight for him. Eventually, when their funding runs out, Benoit hires them to continue making the film, and soon they are accomplices in a gang rape. While this film has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, its message rings true: the media tend to become part of the stories they report upon as surely as a physicist changes a wave by looking at it. ~ John Voorhees, Rovi
- Starring:
- Benoît Poelvoorde, Remy Belvaux, (more)
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