Louis Garrel Movies
Primarily known in the U.S. for his memorable performance in director Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial 2003 drama The Dreamers, Paris-born actor Louis Garrel made his first onscreen appearance in the 1989 film Les Baisers de Secours (Emergency Kisses). While it was over a decade until Garrel would appear onscreen again, his comeback role in Rodolphe Marconi's 2001 Ceci Est Mon Corps (This Is My Body) marked the beginning of a spectacular run that would find him working with some of the biggest directors on the international film scene and winning his very first César Award (for the 2005 film Les Amants Réguilers [Regular Lovers]). Shortly after portraying the male half of a cinema-obsessed pair of siblings in Bertolucci's The Dreamers, Garrel stunned viewers with his performance as a young man who loses his father and subsequently follows his amoral mother on a hedonistic journey of depravity in Christophe Honoré's adaptation of the notorious Georges Bataille novel Ma Mère. On the heels of his critically acclaimed performance in Les Amants Réguilers, Garrel again teamed with Honoré for Dans Paris in 2006 and Les Chansons d'Amour in 2007. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide- 2008
Neglected by her husband and longing for companionship, lonely Hollywood actress Carole enters into a passionate affair with a photographer who has been assigned to capture her portrait. Filmmaker Philippe Garrel directs a drama starring Louis Garrel, Clémentine Poidatz, and Laura Smet. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louis Garrel, Laura Smet, (more)
- 2008
In the wake of screen adaptations by such acclaimed filmmakers as Andrzej Zulawski and Manoel de Oliveira, director Christophe Honoré updates Madame de Lafayette's novel La Princesse de Clèves while placing the story in a contemporary setting. Junie (Léa Seydoux) is new in Paris, and there isn't a man in the city that hasn't noticed. Chief among her admirers are teacher Nemours (Louis Garrel) and gauche fellow student Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). As passions flare, it becomes readily apparent that Nemours maintains a rather liberal approach to student-teacher relationships. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Léa Seydoux, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, (more)
- 2007
Actress-cum-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's sophomore feature, the comedy-drama Les Actrices (Le reve de la nuit d'avant), follows the trials and travails of Marcelline (Tedeschi), a tense and jittery stage thesp whose personal and professional life threaten to fall into pieces simultaneously. On a personal level, Marcelline hits the midpoint of her life, hears her biological clock ticking, and longs desperately for a child. At work, Marcelline's inability to find the core of her character, Natalia Petrovna, in a production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country only causes her emotional tension to double. In time, she regresses into such a basket case that she can barely respond to the stage director's query about whether she is right or left-handed. Marcelline's natty and overanxious mother (Marisa Borini, Tedeschi's mother in real life) weighs heavily on her as well, pressuring her constantly about the need to find an appropriate suitor before time runs out; instead, Marcelline finds herself drawn helplessly to Eric (Louis Garrel) a sexy young actor in the production - who, without her knowledge, nurtures reciprocal affections. This parallels the events that befall Petrovna in Turgenev's play, and indeed, at one point the spirit of Petrovna (Valeria Golino) appears to Marcelline for much-needed counsel. Meanwhile, as Marcelline weathers her own personal crises, one of her friends, Nathalie (Noemie Lvovsky) - the assistant to the play's director - struggles with her offstage lack of fulfillment as a wife and mother. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Noemie Lvovsky, (more)
- 2007
- NR
Though Love Songs (aka Les Chansons d'Amour) is not a film operetta per se, director Christophe Honoré and composer/lyricist/vocalist Alex Beaupain use that film to pay homage to the French movie musical as conceived by Jacques Demy in his classic Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1967). The Honoré film concerns a series of hopelessly romantic Parisian characters who are unable to convey their feelings to one another in everyday situations, and who thus use musical numbers as outlets -- as vehicles of emotional expression. Beaupain composed the score; a number of the songs that are included appeared on one of his solo albums. The individual stories covered in the film tell age-worn tales as old as time: the loss of love, the discovery of new love, the impossibility of mutual love. The film stars Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Brigitte Roüan, Jean-Marie Winling, and Yannick Renier. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, (more)
French sex symbols Romain Duris and Louis Garrel join screen icons Guy Marchand and Marie-France Pisier in writer-director Christophe Honoré's four-character chamber drama Dans Paris (Inside Paris). Duris plays Paul, a young man in his early thirties who splits with his girlfriend. Feeling depressed, he opts to move into a flat with his brother Jonathan (Garrel, who also narrates) and their father (Marchand). The ladykiller Jonathan slyly attempts to talk Paul into a shopping trip to lift his spirits, but ends up venturing out alone and engages in rendezvous with several women. Meanwhile, the boys' stylishly-dressed and gorgeous mother (Pisier) turns up and adds one more complexity to the network of relationships in the house. Honoré laces his drama with comedic touches and crafts the film in the gentle mode of early sixties French pictures by Truffaut, Godard and others. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Romain Duris, Louis Garrel, (more)
Touted in many circles as a response to The Dreamers (2003) -- Bernardo Bertolucci's ode to Paris in May 1968 -- Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers (aka Les Amants Réguliers) explores the same events cinematically but undertakes a wholly unique aesthetic and temporal approach. The director follows his central characters, a young man named François and his clique of friends, as they experience the aftermath of the events and grapple with their attempts to understand what has just occurred. Garrel's familiarity with The Dreamers came by default; his son, Louis, starred in that earlier work, and plays François in this film. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, (more)
An attractive widow finds her attentions turning to her teenage son in a troubling manner in this drama from France. Pierre (Louis Garrel) is a moody 17-year-old who is spending the summer with his parents at their summer home in the Canary Islands. While Pierre isn't especially close to his father (Philippe Duclos), he enjoys a warm relationship with his mother, Hélène (Isabelle Huppert) -- almost too warm, as her affection for him subtly strains the boundaries of typical familial behavior. When Pierre's father dies unexpectedly in an auto accident, his emotional dependence on Hélène grows, while her desire for her son does the same. Though Pierre finds himself attracted to several girls his own age summering on the island, he finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile his curiosity with the growing sexual tension between mother and son. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel, (more)
Veteran Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci directs the erotic drama The Dreamers, adapted from the novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance by Gilbert Adair. American student Matthew (Michael Pitt) is studying in Paris during the politically turbulent late '60s. The story begins in 1968 with the firing of Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Cinémathèque. At a protest demonstration, Matthew meets cinema-obsessed Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother, Theo (Louis Garrel). When their Bohemian parents (Robin Renucci and Anna Chancellor) leave for the summer, the twins invite Matthew to live with them. While the revolution rages on outside, the three young people stay in the comfortable flat playing decadent sexual games. Bertolucci incorporates clips from classic films like Queen Christina, Band of Outsiders, and Breathless. After showing at several European film festivals, The Dreamers made its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Pitt, Eva Green, (more)
