Bruno Vatin Movies

A man tries to hold on to his bachelor lifestyle by getting engaged in this romantic comedy. Luis (Alain Chabat) is a man in his mid-fourties who has been happily unmarried all his life. Luis nearly wed his sweetheart when he was 21, but the meddling of his mother (Bernadette Lafont) and five sisters drove the young lady away, and since then he's devoted his romantic attentions to short-term relationships while earning a good living working in the perfume industry. However, his family remains determined to fix him up with eligible women, and Luis has grown tired of it. With the help of a colleague, Luis concocts a plan -- his friend's daughter Emma (Charlotte Gainsbourg) agrees to pose as his fiancée and then abandon him at the altar, which should silence his mother and sisters on the subject of matrimony once and for all. While Luis and Emma's relationship is all business, she does a flawless job of convincing his family that she loves him and is determined to be his wife -- so much so that Luis wonders if she might be serious about him after all. Directed by Eric Lartigau, Prête-Moi Ta Main (aka I Do) was a major box-office success in France, attracting nearly three million viewers in its first month of release. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Filmed in France, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Morocco, and Canada, this ambitious biographical TV miniseries chronicles the life and times of the "Little Corporal" from Corsica who managed to conquer nearly all of Europe within a period of a dozen years. The narrative begins in the mid-1790s, as Napoleon Bonaparte (played, curiously enough, by comic actor Christian Clavier) makes his mark on posterity with spectacular victories in Austria and Egypt. On the home front, Napoleon woos and wins the lovely (and considerably older) Josephine (Isabella Rossellini), but finds time for extracurricular romances with other women, notably Countess Marie Walewska (Alexandra Maria Lara). Ultimately, Bonaparte's ambitions destroy him, first in Russia, then at Waterloo, consigning the general-cum-emperor to live out his life in humiliation and exile. When originally broadcast in France in October 2002, Napoleon ran six hours (plus commercials), with four episodes. For its American presentation on the A&E cable network beginning April 8, 2003, the production was literally sliced in half, shown in two installments with a running time of three hours. What remained was all highlights and few insights, though a few brilliant moments remained, many of these supplied by the supporting cast, which included Gérard Depardieu (who also produced) as Fouche, and John Malkovich as Talleyrand. Thankfully, the full six-hour version was made available in the U.S. on DVD and VHS in 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi