Daniel Auteuil Movies
One of France's most respected actors, Daniel Auteuil has established himself as a performer at ease in any number of genres, ranging from period dramas to romantic comedies to crime thrillers. The son of opera singers, he was born in Algeria on January 24, 1950. He started his career in musical comedy and made his film debut in 1972. After starring in a number of forgettable comedies, Auteuil had his breakthrough playing the scheming farmer Ugolin in Jean de Florette (1986). He won a Best Actor César and a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA for his portrayal, and that same year he earned further acclaim for his work in the film's equally popular sequel, Manon des Sources. Auteuil's involvement in Manon had the added benefit of introducing him to costar Emmanuelle Béart, with whom he would have a ten-year relationship that produced a daughter, born in 1992.The awards he earned for his portrayal of Ugolin established him as one of his country's most promising actors, and Auteuil subsequently became known for his work as one of the screen's most accomplished purveyors of emotional turmoil. His searching, conflicted portrayals found particularly effective expression in such films as Un Coeur en Hiver (1992), for which he won the European Film Academy's Best Actor award; Ma Saison Préférée (1993), in which he and Catherine Deneuve starred as siblings with an unnatural bond; La Séparation (1994), for which earned a César nomination for his portrayal of a husband undergoing a nervous breakdown; La Reine Margot (1994), in which he played the cuckolded Henri of Navarre; Le Huitième Jour, in which he played an emotionally stunted workaholic; and Les Voleurs (1996), a crime drama in which he and Deneuve were again cast as a brother and sister. In 1999, Auteuil made one of his few English language outings in Chris Menges' Lost Son, playing a detective living in self-exile in London who gets caught up in a pedophilia ring. That same year, he collaborated with celebrated director Patrice Leconte on La fille sur le pont, playing a knife-thrower who embarks on a journey across Europe with a suicidal young woman (Vanessa Paradis). ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
A woman's long history of bad luck starts to change when she puts her life on the line in this romantic drama. Adèle (Vanessa Paradis) is a 22-year-old woman whose life seems to have been a long series of miscalculations; she's never had much luck with love, life, or career, and is standing on a bridge overlooking the Seine one night, contemplating suicide, when she's approached by a man named Gabor (Daniel Auteuil). Gabor announces he's a knife-thrower who needs a new human target for his act. Would Adèle be interested? Adèle's immediate answer is to jump into the water, but after Gabor fishes her out and gets her to a hospital, she has a change of heart and the pair are soon on their way to Monaco, where Gabor gets a spot at a circus. Adèle and Gabor make a great team; he's good with knives, she's young and beautiful, and suddenly Adèle's luck starts to change. She visits a casino one night and comes home with a fortune, and even when Gabor throws blindfolded, she walks away without so much as a scratch. However, an obvious chemistry is brewing between the two, which leads to a dilemma: Gabor has a strict policy of never getting romantically involved with his partners. Will he make an exception, or is Adèle's new run of luck coming to an end? ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Vanessa Paradis, (more)
This period swashbuckler, set during the years 1699 to 1716, is the seventh screen adaptation of Paul Feval's 1857 serialized novel. Trained in circus stunts and fencing, Lagardere (Daniel Auteuil) becomes the bodyguard of the Duke of Nevers (Vincent Perez), whose cousin is the greedy Gonzague (Luchini). Nevers learns he is a father and plans to marry Blanche de Caylus (Claire Nebout) in order to raise an heir. Gonzague dispatches assassins to kill Nevers, Blanche, and their baby. Dying, Nevers turns the child over to Lagardere, asking him to gain revenge on his killers. The infant is a girl, and Lagardere and the child hide amidst an Italian troupe of actors. Years pass, and the young Aurore (Marie Gillain) grows up believing Lagardere is her father. When the actors arrive in Paris 16 years after Nevers death, Lagardere at last sets the stage for revenge. Swordfight choreography by Michel Carliez, son of the fight expert who trained Jean Marais for the 1959 film of Le Bossu. Shown at the 1997 Acapulco French Film Festival and the 1997 Bastia Festival of Mediterranean Cinema. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Fabrice Luchini, (more)
- 1997
- R
During the French Resistance, Lucie, a courageous wife, struggles to save her husband, Raymond Samuel, from a firing squad. He was arrested after blowing up a train during the war. Lucie is also a freedom fighter who goes by the moniker of Aubrac. She helps free Raymond by directly threatening a prosecutor. After his release, Raymond is given a new identity and sent to continue the fight in the North. Unfortunately, he is again arrested. This time he is given the death penalty. While he awaits his sentence in jail, Lucie tries to trick the Gestapo into giving other Resistance members the chance to save Raymond. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carole Bouquet, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
- 1996
A paranoiac's delight, this contemporary mystery thriller warns that psychotherapy can be dangerous for both doctor and patient. The twisted tale begins with a funeral and then moves to the office of Dr. Antoine Riviere, a noted psychiatrist and author who deep down is more interested in his own needs than those of his patients. The only two clients who interest him are the filthy rich temptress Isabelle d'Archambault and the natty Edouard Berg, who brags of killing his wife and may actually be guilty of the crime. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Patrick Timsit, (more)
- 1996
- R
André Téchiné's complex and ambitious crime drama starts with a prologue in which a little boy is awakened in the middle of the night by two strangers bringing home his father's body. The story of the deceased, Ivan (Didier Bezace), and his involvement with car thieves unfolds in flashbacks as told by different people: Ivan's policeman brother Alex (Daniel Auteuil); Juliette (Laurence Côte), a young woman involved with the both brothers; and Marie (Catherine Deneuve), an unhappy philosophy professor in love with Juliette. Auteuil and Deneuve played siblings three years earlier in Téchiné's similarly rueful family drama Ma Saison Préferée. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Catherine Deneuve, (more)
- 1996
- NR
Two men with seemingly nothing in common become unlikely friends in this drama from France. Harry (Daniel Auteuil) is a salesman working for a large but faceless corporation, where he's become a success at the expense of his personal life. His wife Julie (Miou-Miou), frustrated by his lack of concern for his family, has divorced him, and while he still has visitation rights to his children, he manages to forget when it's his weekend with his daughters, and he neglects to pick them up at the train station. Harry is depressed and nearly suicidal; while driving late one rainy night, he accidentally hits a dog who is walking with Georges (Pascal Duquenne), a personable young man with Down's Syndrome. Georges lives in a mental institution, where he's happy and well cared for, but when several of the other patients leave for a weekend visit, Georges decides that he should leave too, and he sets out to visit his mother. Harry can't bring himself to leave Georges behind, so after burying the dog, he offers to drive him to his mother's home, which becomes the start of a complicated odyssey for the two of them, especially after Harry finds out that Georges' mother is no longer alive. Actor Pascal Duquenne actually does have Down's Syndrome; he and co-star Daniel Auteuil shared the Best Actor award at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Pascal Duquenne, (more)
- 1996
This drama, set in 1938, chronicles a month in the life of the Portuguese journalist Pereira. He is first seen as a lonely, widowed, and overweight editor of the culture page of a second-rate Lisbon newspaper. Earlier in his career, he had been a news reporter. Pereira is fascinated with old literature; he is also obsessed with death. He hires himself an assistant, Monteiro Rossi, to prepare obituaries for old writers before they die. The young man and his girlfriend are both passionate fighters against the dictatorship in Portugal. They, along with a German Jewish woman, help to draw Pereira out of his dusty old books and spark his interest in the current political turmoil of Europe. Eventually they strongly encourage him to use his position to post notice of the impending dangers to the public. At their urging, Pereira is emboldened to publish his translation of an anti-German French short story. Although he sneaks it past the censors, his editor catches it and Pereira is in deep trouble. Meanwhile Rossi leaves his job to join the underground revolutionaries. Pereira keeps sending money to Rossi's girl, but he doesn't become totally committed to the cause until he meets up with the philosophical cardiologist who narrates the tale. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni
- 1995
One woman's conflicting emotions and the whims of fate prevent her from being faithful to the man she loves in this drama. In 1939, Jeanne (Emmanuelle Beart) marries Louis (Daniel Auteuil) shortly before he is called to duty during World War II. Jeanne does not deal well with loneliness, and she takes many lovers after Louis is declared Missing In Action. In 1944, Jeanne receives word that Louis is alive, incarcerated in a P.O.W. camp. When Louis is released and returns home, he learns of her scandalous behavior; he forgives her for her infidelities and offers to give her freedom, but Jeanne chooses to remain in the marriage. Several months later, Jeanne gives birth to twins; while Louis is not convinced that he's the father, he loyally accepts them as his own. Louis takes his wife and children to Berlin, where to his disappointment, Jeanne becomes smitten with Mathias (Gabriel Barylli), a successful businessman. Before long, Louis is once again sent into battle, this time in Indochina. Jeanne returns to France, and Mathias opts to go with her; both Louis and Mathias remain faithful to Jeanne, and when Louis is made a military attaché to Damascus, Mathias once again follows her. Une Femme Francaise) reunited Emmanuelle Beart and Daniel Auteuil, who previously co-starred in the acclaimed French drama Un Coeur en Hiver. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
French director Christian Vincent charts the dissolution of a long-term relationship with his third film, based on the novel by Dan Franck. Daniel Auteuil and Isabelle Huppert star as Pierre and Anne, a couple who have been living together as husband and wife for several years. Although they never married, they do have a fifteen-month-old son, Loulou. One night at the cinema, Anne refuses to take Pierre's hand and the strained moment leads to her confession that she has fallen in love with another man. Although Pierre seems at first to take the news calmly, he becomes increasingly desperate and enraged as the days pass, while the distant Anne walks a fine line between embarking on a new romance and trying not to hurt Pierre too greatly. When a pair of friends, Victor (Jerome Deschamps) and Claire (Karin Viard), announce that they are finally marrying after their own years-long relationship, it sparks a final confrontation between Pierre and Anne. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabelle Huppert, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
The historical novel by Alexandre Dumas was adapted for the screen with this lavish French epic, winner of 5 Césars and a pair of awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Isabelle Adjani stars as Marguerite de Valois, better known as Margot, daughter of scheming Catholic power player Catherine de Medici (Virna Lisi). Margot is an heiress to the throne during the late 16th century reign of the neurotic, hypochondriac King Charles IX (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a time when Protestants and Catholics are vying for political control of France. Catherine decides to make an overture of good will by offering up Margot in marriage to prominent Protestant Huguenot Henri of Navarre (Daniel Auteuil), although she also schemes to bring about the notorious St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, when tens of thousands of Protestants are slaughtered. The marriage goes forward but Margot doesn't love Henri and takes a lover, the soldier La Mole (Vincent Perez), also a Protestant from a well-to-do family. Murders by poisoning follow, as court intrigues multiply and Catherine's villainous plotting to place her son Anjou (Pascal Greggory) on the throne threatens the lives of La Mole, Margot and Henri. The American release version was cut to 145 minutes. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
- 1993
French critic and filmmaker André Téchiné directs the intense family drama Ma Saison Préférée (My Favorite Season), which he co-wrote with screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer. Family matriarch Berthe (Marthe Villalonga) is advancing in years and developing health problems, so she goes to live with her daughter Emilie (Catherine Deneuve). Emilie is a cold, fiftysomething professional who lives in a large upper-class home in Toulouse. She also lives with her husband Bruno (Jean-Pierre Bouvier), her daughter Anne (Deneuve's real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni), and her adopted son Lucien (Anthony Prada). When Christmas arrives, Emilie's troubled brother Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) arrives at the house for a visit. He and Emilie have not spoken since their father's funeral three years ago. Despite his attempts to maintain control, Antoine quickly comes into conflict with Bruno. Painful emotional realities from the past return and cause violent conclusions. My Favorite Season was shown in competition at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart from Manon of the Spring (1986) co-star once again in Un Coeur en Hiver, playing characters whose distance from each others' lives belies the enormous emotional impact they have on one another. Directed by Claude Sautet, whose 40-year career included the Oscar-winning César et Rosalie (1972), Un Coeur en Hiver is a remarkably restrained film with torrents of feeling just under the surface. Auteuil plays Stephane, partner in an exclusive violin brokerage. His older business partner Maxime (Andre Dussolier) has a lovely new violinist girlfriend, Camille (Béart), who stirs Stephane but is ultimately rejected by him, sending all three characters into a spin that destroys their delicate, symbiotic balance. Hovering over this story is an unusual musical motif that is key to the characters' inner motivations. Violins play, and play on camera, all through the film, but the nature of Stephane's craft, Camille's career, and Maxime's profits is that the music can always be refined, tinkered with, changed with a twist of this or a bit of that. That's precisely how they conduct their relationships and lives -- with a fragile sense of security and no idea when to stop manipulating life for effect. ~ Tom Keogh, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart, (more)
- 1991
Léah (Josiane Balasko) has been longing to be beautiful for years, but the best she's been able to accomplish on her own is dowdy but neat. When she inadvertently conjures up Abar (Daniel Auteuil), one of the devil's own representatives, she's more than willing to sell her soul for a great-looking, sexy body (Jessica Forde), especially if she can woo Abar with it. Alas, it seems that these contracts are frequently renewed by the Angel Gabriel (Michael Lonsdale), and just as she's getting ready to get things hopping, the angelic trumpeter says the deal's off. Now she's got her soul and body back, but she's still in bad, bad trouble because the guy she loves happens to be a devil. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Josiane Balasko, (more)
- 1990
Pierre Lacenaire is among the most notorious killers in French history. This well-wrought drama, tells his story. It begins in 1836 as the icy but somehow charming and intellectual Lacenaire awaits his execution and through a series of flashbacks chronicles the events and reasons why he has ended up on Death Row. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Jean Poiret, (more)
- 1989
- PG
This easygoing French comedy -- originally and more wittily titled Romuald et Juliette -- is about conservative Parisian yogurt-company CEO named Romuald Blindet (Daniel Auteuil) who by circumstance finds himself drawing closer to his black cleaning woman Juliette Bonaventure (Firmine Richard). A romance soon develops between them. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Firmine Richard, (more)
- 1988
- PG13
Claude Sautet's A Few Days With Me (Quelque Jours avec Moi) stars Daniel Auteuil as the emotionally disturbed heir to a supermarket empire. Auteuil's mother Danielle Darrieux tries to give her son some purpose in life by assigning him the task of reinvigorating one of the supermarket chain's least profitable links. Every effort Auteuil makes to reach out and communicate with his employees is doomed to failure due to his conscious and unconscious insensitivities. He is humanized by a brief affair with maid Sandrine Bonnaire. The romance doesn't last, and Auteuil ends up back in a mental institution, but still there is a ray of hope for him in the final scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Sandrine Bonnaire, (more)
- 1986
With ingenious camera work, witty dialogue, and a setting that almost never wanders from the cavernous interior of a mod cafe-bar, this drama by Michel Deville has a lot of pluses. A woman (Jeanne Moreau) and a man (Michel Piccoli, the "nonentity" of the title) jointly run the vast cafe and every night play host to the same four men as they sit around a card table -- a doctor, a journalist, a merchant, and a professor. A seductive woman (Fanny Ardant) lounges around in a hammock nearby. When the police commissioner starts investigating a murder, the four card players become suspects. Charming bits show an irritable "paltoquet" shoving the opening credits off the screen so the story can get going. He also sits around reading the novel from which the screenplay was adapted and provides music with a portable record player. These inventive touches allow the movie to work on several levels at once. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Jeanne Moreau, (more)
- 1986
- PG
Co-adapted by director Claude Berri from a novel by Marcel Pagnol, this hugely successful French historical drama concerns a bizarre battle royale over a valuable natural spring in a remote French farming community. City dweller Jean Cadoret (Gérard Depardieu) assumes ownership of the spring when the original owner is accidentally killed by covetous farmer Cesar Soubeyran (Yves Montand). Soubeyran and his equally disreputable nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) pull every dirty trick in the book to force Cadoret off his land, but the novice farmer stands firm. Although the Soubeyrans appear to gain the upper hand, the audience is assured that they will eventually be foiled by the vengeful daughter of the spring's deceased owner -- thus setting the stage for the film's equally successful sequel, Manon of the Spring. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand, (more)
Manon of the Spring (Manon des Sources) has also been released as Jean de Florette II in the US, as it is a sequel to Claude Berri's Jean de Florette. Both films are drawn from the same source: Filmmaker/novelist Marcel Pagnol's 1952 rural romance, also titled Jean de Florette. Manon (Emmanuelle Beart), now fully grown, is a shepherdess who prefers to keep her distance from the local villagers. She is determined to uncover the truth behind the death of her father (played by Gerard Depardieu in Jean de Florette) and to wreak vengeance on the men she holds responsible. The more sympathetic of the two men, Ugolin (Daniel Auteil), is in love with Manon, but this does not weaken her resolve. She causes the village's water supply to diminish, blaming this action upon Ugolin and his duplicitous co-conspirator Cesar (Yves Montand). The upshot of this vengeful behavior ends in tragedy for all concerned. The joint winners of eight French Cesar awards, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring were released to the U.S. in tandem in 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
- 1985
In this standard romantic drama, a tangled web of relationships may not be that easy to straighten out for the people involved. Marc (Daniel Auteuil) is a lawyer married to Jeanne (Sophie Barjac), but his roving eye leads him into sexual encounters with other women on a regular basis -- and although his wife loves him deeply, she throws him out one day when she can no longer stand his philandering. After their split, she begins a romantic fling with Antoine (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who moves in with her after awhile. At the same time, Marc meets and falls in love with Samantha (Emmanuelle Beart), a prostitute who reciprocates his feelings. Circumstances place all four -- Marc, Samantha, Jeanne, and Antoine under the same roof -- a combination of cross-references that soon threatens to disintegrate, at least in part. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Pierre Marielle, (more)
- 1985
In a standard story of brotherly conflict during the severity of detention in a German prison camp at the end of World War II, Robert (Claude Brasseur) has privileges that make him want to keep his status quo intact, while his brother Lucien (Daniel Auteuil) is anxious to escape and get back to the resistance movement. Robert is a pianist with enough talent that the Germans requisition him to entertain at a nearby hotel. His life is so close to normal that he even starts an affair with Hanna (Gudrun Landgrebe), the manager of the hotel. But when Lucien becomes hunted by the Germans as a POW who escaped his captors, Robert is forced to hide him in the prison camp. From that point onward, the brothers disagree on what to do next. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claude Brasseur, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
- 1984
Meant to be an action-packed thriller about city gangs fighting for a piece of a lucrative drug shipment, this mindless, violent, stereotyped series of killings ruins credibility by its own excesses. A crooked, neo-Nazi police inspector supplies his gangland cohorts with weapons to slaughter the Vietnamese, black, and Arab gangs fighting for the upper hand in the drug trade. Before the final showdown, an undercover cop (Daniel Auteuil) tries to prevent the bloodshed and faces one defeat after another as his connections and informants are killed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Marisa Berenson, (more)
- 1984
In this embarrassment of an action thriller, the poor storyline and direction are only matched by the underpar acting, all to tell the tale of Berg (Daniel Auteuil), a young stunt car driver who leaves his profession and starts working at a private security service when his lover is killed in an accident at one of their meets. The young man's future is threatened by his dead lover's brother, who had an incestuous love for his sister, and is now out to wreak vengence on Berg for her death. Loud and shrill, the dialogue alone would grate on a viewer's nerves, even if its content were better. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philippe Léotard, Daniel Auteuil, (more)
- 1984
Director Gérard Lauzier shoots diatribes at "liberals" from his own conservative perspective in this movie about a rebellious teenager leaving his bourgeois parents. Humor lightens the theme more than once, as when the besieged father -- after listening to a garbled harangue on Marx from his inspired son during a drive together, -- immediately seeks out motorists on the street to find out if he oppresses them. The son first rebels by moving upstairs to a maid's room and then moves out to stay with a supposedly "emancipated" family -- only to have everyone in the family try to seduce him -- brother, sister, mother, and father but not necessarily in that order or combination. Disillusioned, the son has to reconfigure his belief system and retrench. The salty French title of this film is typical of Lauzier's comic-strip humor, and his cartoon "Memoirs of a Young Man" provided the basis for P'tit Con. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernard Brieux, Guy Marchand, (more)
- 1983
In this conventional detective-thriller, Dominique (Thierry Lhermitte) is the sidekick of the gangster Malaggione (Bernard Pierre Donnadieu), and when he falls in love with Sylvie (Pascale Rocard) -- a good-hearted, relatively naïve woman -- he promises he will do only "one last job" and then quit. In the meantime, detective Bertrand (Daniel Auteuil) is hot on the gangster's trail and coerces information out of Sylvie that is supposed to lead to Malaggione's arrest -- but Malaggione escapes and hunts down Dominique, who confesses to "talking" in order to save Sylvie from blame. The ending is fairly predictable, as Dominique, Sylvie, the detective, and the gangster must come to some final accounting when their paths begin to cross. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Auteuil, Thierry Lhermitte, (more)
