Benoit Jaubert Movies
Hong Kong action icon Michelle Yeoh stars alongside American muscle Vin Diesel in this science fiction thriller concerning a nun who is charged with the task of caring for a young girl who may be the carrier of a deadly virus. Based on author Maurice Dantec's Babylon Babies, this tale of genetic manipulation comes to the screen courtesy of director Mathieu Kassovitz. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vin Diesel, Mélanie Thierry, (more)
- 2008
A vicious child soldier armed with weapons of death and willing to use them at the slightest provocation serves as the focal point for this drama highlighting the need for greater humanity in a country ravaged by absurd wars. Johnny is a fifteen year old soldier with a small commando unit, and together this team robs, pillages, and kills everyone and everything in their path. Laokolé is a sixteen year old girl who spirits her disabled father around on a ramshackle wheelbarrow and looks after her eight year old brother Fofo while dreaming of ways to leave the city and build a better future. As Johnny advances and Laokolé falls back, miniature warlords leading diminutive armies kill each other over such trivialities as misplaced words or television sets. What will it take to ensure that no more childhoods are cut tragically short? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christopher Minie, Daisy Victoria Vandy, (more)
- 2007
Absurdist duo Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern follow-up 2004's Aaltra with this sparse black comedy in which the recently-fired female employees at a children's clothing factory pool their funds to put a hit on their callous boss. Out of work and down on her luck, ex-con Louise (Yolande Moreau) proposes to her jobless sisters that they do something useful by ridding the world of the man who put them all in their current situation. But while security specialist Michel (Bouli Lanners) seems like the perfect candidate to carry out the hit, his ineptitude is so great that he attempts to sub-contract the job to a series of inexperienced - and highly inappropriate - assassins. Notorious Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde cameos as a nut-job 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz turns up as an organic hotelier. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yolande Moreau, Bouli Lanners, (more)
In this bizarre surrealist comedy from France, a handful of oddball characters live in world where people heap strange forms of abuse on animals -- dwarves stage bullfights with rhinos, zoos open restaurants where the privileged can dine on the animals on display, and the wealthy lock themselves into their mansion with the angry pit bulls trained to protect them. In the midst of such madness, a stocky animal handler (Gustave Kervern) who can neither hear nor speak falls in with a pair of dissolute zookeepers (Benoit Delepine and Eric Martin) who are hooked on ketamine and shoot one another with tranquilizer darts for fun. The zookeepers involve their new friend in a crazy scheme to kidnap the pet dog of a very wealthy and extremely large woman, Avida (Velvet), but the three men prove to be wildly inept criminals, and once they're found out, Avida forces them to help her in a plan to take her own life. Featuring a cameo appearance from acclaimed filmmaker Claude Lelouch, Avida was written and directed by Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, who also act in the film; it received its American premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gustave Kervern, Benoit Delepine, (more)
Arnaud Viard's 2003 French-language feature Clara et Moi chronicles the eccentric romance between the 33-year-old struggling actor Antoine (Julien Boisselier of Le Convoyeur) and Clara (Julie Gayet Les Menteurs), a girl he happens to meet on the subway. Clara happens along at exactly the right time for Antoine, who - worn out from celibacy - has just avowed to his analyst that he'll find a wife within a set period. All is heaven at first, almost farcically so (and Viard, well aware of this, even defies the audience's formic expectations by playfully interjecting a musical number into the middle of the movie, in which the lovers "sing" their feelings to one another, ala Demy). But suddenly, a dark and unexpected twist emerges in the relationship, that strips bare Antoine's emotional immaturity and thus threatens to bring everything crashing down. Michel Aumont co-stars. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 2003
Olias Barco's drama Snowboarder is set in the Alps. Gaspard (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is a young, gifted snowboarder. He is lured away from his ski shop job by the snowboarder he admires most in the world, Josh (Grégoire Colin), who, it turns out, does not have Gaspard's best interests at heart. Juliette Goudot rounds out the cast as Josh's girlfriend, Ethel. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicolas Duvauchelle, Grégoire Colin, (more)
