Valérie Kaprisky

Three middle-aged men take a second stab at getting their high school degree in this comedy-drama from France. When they were teenagers, Michel (Jacques Gamblin), Gerard (Kad Merad) and Edmond (Rufus) all failed their Baccalaureat exams, the challenging comprehensive essay test that evaluates a French student's knowledge before they are given their high school diploma. While they planned to focus on their studies and take the exam again, all three ended up getting jobs in the same factory, with Michel and Gerard working on the line and Edmond eventually advancing to foreman. Twenty years after leaving school, Michel and his wife Claire (Anne Brochet), who works in a beauty salon, have a teenage son, Philippe (Edouard Collin) who has just flunked the Baccalaureat exam. As Michel and Claire encourage Philippe to buck up and give the test another try, Michel gets the word that the factory where he works is shutting down, and he, Gerard and Edmond are all out of a job. Michel discovers getting a new job without a degree is tough even with plenty of work experience, so he and Gerard pledge to crack open their textbooks and give the Baccalaureat another try, which Edmond becoming their unwelcome study partner. Michel also finds himself bonding with Philippe in a new way as both men work towards bettering their futures. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

French filmmaker Raúl Ruiz directs the philosophical film noir spoof A Place Among the Living, inspired by gangster films and detective stories from the '50s. Frequent Ruiz leading man Christian Vadim plays Ernest Ripper, a Paris writer who makes a living translating cheap dime-store novels. He is approached by shady criminal Joseph Arcimboldo (Thierry Gibault), who suggests that Ernest write his biography. He claims to be implicated in several unresolved murder cases of young blonde models. Seizing the opportunity for something marketable, Ernest agrees to write the book. Valérie Kaprisky plays the tough cookie publisher Maryse and Cecile Bois plays Ernest's model girlfriend Sandrine. A Place Among the Living was shown at the 2003 Venice Film Festival as part of the Upstream competition. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

On his way home from work one evening, Bernardo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a lawyer, witnesses a young man falling to his death out of a window high above him. He is disturbed by this more than one might usually be, because the window was in his own apartment, and he soon finds out that his wife was there when the young man leapt to his death. It is only natural, then, that he is driven to investigate the circumstances that lead to this situation. In this detective thriller, he and the policeman Carlo Plane (Massimo Wertmuller) independently struggle to make sense out of this bizarre event, which appears to be connected in some fashion to one of Bernardo's current cases. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A made for cable TV docudrama, former Carter administration aides Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon were responsible for the production of this miniseries which recounts the 1979 humiliation of America by a handful of Iranian radicals. Told through the eyes of a U.S. Embassy official married to a Tehran woman, this story did not spare neither the aides nor President Carter in the depiction of the shortsightedness and bungled rescue attempt which led to fifty-two Americans being held hostage for over a year and eventually led to President Carter's defeat in the next election despite an otherwise powerful administrative record. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Anthony Quinn stars in this historical biography about the life and times of Antonio Stradivari, the man who raised the construction of violins to an art form. The supporting cast includes Valerie Kaprisky, Fanny Bastien, and Francesco Quinn (Anthony's son). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The clash in this Philippe De Broca comedy between a bored middle-class stiff and a much more exciting, lawless female offers no new insights into the genre. Hubert Durieux (Claude Brassuer) works in a staid bank job and has to put up with demands from his ex-wife and a daughter who may not have made the right choice in a husband. Other females plague him, but the one who turns him around is a gypsy (Valerie Kaprisky) who first gets his attention by stealing his car. Once she has captured his manly interest, she tricks and cons him into a daring adventure that shatters the moralistic four walls he has built around himself. Some of the Romany (gypsy) population may not be too happy with this stereotypical portrayal, no matter how charming the thief. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

An aspiring young actress (Valerie Kaprisky) accepts a leading role in a film version of Dostoyevsky's The Possessed. Dissatisfied by her performance, the eccentric filmmaker (Francis Huster) begins a rigorous course of indoctrination, sexual domination, and acting lessons, leaving the mentally exhausted girl unable to distinguish between the real world and that of the film. Arty, challenging, and some say over the top, the film was honored with the Special Jury Award at the Montreal World Film Festival in 1984. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide

A man is left grieving for his dead family after they were shot down in a train station, innocent bystanders to a robbery gone wrong. They were never vindicated since the police seem unable (if not reluctant) to solve the case. Driven in part because he survived and they did not, and frustrated with the inept police, the man starts his own investigation with the aid of a right-wing organization that advocates citizens' militias. He discovers that a woman who also survived the train-station massacre has a brother with blood on his hands -- he is clearly the mastermind behind the "robbery" killings -- staged to effect the politically-motivated assassination of one particular man. He and the woman join ranks to bring the brother to justice, but soon they themselves are being hunted down because they know too much. The right-wing group comes on the scene again, catalyzing a final showdown that seems inevitable from the beginning. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide