Louis Garrel Movies

A mother and daughter follow similar paths with different results in this drama with music from writer and director Christophe Honoré. In 1964, Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier) is a restless young woman working at a shoe store who, after helping herself to a new pair of high heels, is mistaken for a streetwalker by a man passing by. Madeleine impulsively decides to go along with the stranger's assumptions, and soon discovers prostitution can be a profitable part-time job. One of her regular customers is a handsome doctor named Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic), and when he asks for her hand in marriage, she accepts. They settle in his native Czechoslovakia and have a daughter, Vera, though political upheaval leads Madeleine back to Paris and a new husband. Years later, a grown-up Vera (Chiara Mastroianni) looks back on the story of her mother and father (played in their later years by Catherine Deneuve and Milos Forman) with a viewpoint colored by both romanticism and regret. While Madeleine's life as a streetwalker brought her love and adventure and she now divides her attentions between two men, Vera has grown up in an era where AIDS has made such sexual openness something like Russian Roulette, and she's unable to commit to a relationship, tossing aside her on-and-off boyfriend Clement (Louis Garrel) in favor of obsessing over Henderson (Paul Schneider), a musician who prefers the company of men. Les Bien-aimés (aka Beloved) was an official selection at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi