Pascale Audret Movies

A working mother deals with the people involved in her life in this French comedy. Anne is a TV series editor. She is mother to a teenage boy by her ex-husband Daniel, and to twin 8-year old daughters by a mysterious other man. The girls' father, Arthur an irresponsible musician, shows up suddenly and must face the wrath of Anne, especially since he insists on resuming the relationship. She is confused because she is already involved with Regis, a selfish and married man. She is also interested in Jacques who is almost divorced. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Intended as a kind of satire on a certain type of social-climbing mania, this routine comedy misses like a faulty engine. The drunken father (Philippe Noiret) of a typical, undistinguished middle-class family in Nantes is certain that he could have been -- should have been -- a great novelist. That conviction is paired with another, that his untalented son -- obvious to everyone but the family -- should be given the praise and emoluments that he deserves. When the aspiring pianist's teachers fail to bring out the genius hidden away somewhere inside his mediocrity, they meet a quick and watery end in the nearest river. The good but dull-witted commissioner of police is trying to figure out the identity of the serial killer fixated on piano teachers. Given that his talents match those of father and son, the dull-witted duo seem to be in no imminent danger of arrest. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Olivier (Renaud Verley) is a student rebel who scams a trip to Nepal to look up his big-game-hunting father. Sampling the decadent nightlife of Paris, he attends a party where his fashion-model mother is stripped naked. Olivier then joins a world-hunger relief program to secure transportation to Nepal and falls in with a bunch of drug-addled hippies who pay lip service to the pursuit of spiritual guidance. The group gets a ride with Laureen (Arlene Dahl), a sex-starved American woman who takes advantage of the free-love ethic. Eventually they arrive in Katmandou where Olivier falls for a drugged-out hippie girl he tries to reform. He meets his father but is sorely disappointed when he gets no money from him. Worse yet, his father's sidekick makes a move on the hippie girl when she is in a drug-induced coma. Finding the girl dead, Olivier seeks revenge for the girl's demise. He tracks down the sidekick, but the man's wife is the first to reach the malevolent hunter and kill him. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

A doctor joins a group opposed to Napoleon in this drama. The physician believes the Emperor is a tyrant and must be eliminated. When he learns that the terrorists would sacrifice innocent victims in order to carry out the bloody mission, the doctor balks at helping the cause. A twist of fate has the Emperor scheduled to stop at the doctor's house on his march to Russia, but the doctor has second thoughts about his involvement in the assassination attempt. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Jean-Luc Godard directed this brutal and purposefully harsh satire (adapted from a play by Benjamino Joppolo) which explores the grim folly of war. Ulysses (Marino Masé) and Michel Ange (Albert Juross) are a pair of thickheaded peasants living in a nameless country who receive a visit from a pair of military recruiters informing them the king wants a favor of them. Impressed that the king regards them as friends, Ulysses and Michel Ange join the army and set out to see the world's battlefields, having been told they can claim any spoils as their own and live a lawless life on the nation's behalf. Ulysses and Michel Ange often write their equally dim girlfriends, Venus (Geneviève Galéa) and Cleopatre (Catherine Riberio), with tales of the places they've seen and the people they've killed, but when the soldiers return home, their women discover the riches they were promised are not quite what they imagined. Filmed and recorded in a deliberately harsh and murky style, Les Carabiniers (aka The Riflemen and The Soldiers) features a brief appearance from Barbet Schroeder, years before he would become an acclaimed director, as a car salesman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This is a story that is less a developed tale than a thumbnail sketch about imaginary events on a kibbutz in Palestine. Set in the period just before Israel gained its status as an independent nation, the drama shows the occupants of the kibbutz engaged in typical hard work. They have to find a source of water, construct their buildings, and do all the chores needed to stay alive, and these pressures as well as the times in which they live cause tensions to rise. The mix of kibbutzim covers a wide range of personality types, from the deeply religious to the ingrained soldier. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Pleins Feux sur l'Assassin is a passable murder mystery by Georges Franju set in the atmospheric interior of an old chateau and involving the heirs to a fortune. The dying man whose fortune it is has played an unusual trick on those who would have his riches. He has hidden himself in a secret room inside the chateau, knowing that his body has to be found before the castle can be passed on as an inheritance. The would-be heirs are caught in a dilemma but decide to turn the venerable structure into a light-and-sound show extravaganza in order to attract tourist money. That is just fine, except a series of accidents among them soon begins to look like murder. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The heroine in L'Eau Vive is the unwilling heir to a fortune. Young Hortense (Pascale Audret) has always known that her family was greedy, but until she inherits her father's hidden millions she has no idea how loathsome her relatives could be. Surrounded on all sides by grubby, outstretched hands, Hortense takes some comfort in the fact that her legacy is still missing. When the money is finally recovered, our heroine does the "right thing" with her windfall, leaving her mercenary family empty-handed. Throughout the film, Hortense's dilemma is likened to a government dam project not far from her home; as the bridge grows in size, so too does Hortense's resolve to rise above the nastiness all around her. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide