Marie Kremer Movies
- 2009
Music aficionados in the U.S. might remember Jeannine Deckers by her stage name, The Singing Nun -- performer of the one-hit-wonder "Dominique," which topped the U.S. pop charts for ten weeks in 1963, displaced the Kingsmen's seminal "Louie, Louie," and inspired the Debbie Reynolds musical The Singing Nun as a fictionalized version of Deckers' life. Behind the gloss, however, Deckers led one of the most unusual lives of any late 20th century European celebrity. With Soeur Sourire, director Stijn Coninx tells the performer's strange story. The tale opens in 1959, when young Belgian girl Jeannine (Cecile de France) flees her parents' strictly conservative home, and moves into a Dominican convent. While there, she chafes beneath the restrictions thrust onto her -- such as the inability to sing and play her guitar -- but begins quietly authoring songs. She impulsively books time in the Phillips studio to record one of the tunes, planning to donate to charity the monies earned from the song, but Phillips executives overhear it and grow so enthusiastic that they offer Deckers a recording contract under the stage name "Soeur Sourire" (or "Sister Smile,") and turn her into an international sensation. Then, at the pinnacle of her success, not long after The Ed Sullivan Show travels to Belgium to film her, she struggles with an attempted reconciliation between her religious faith and beckoning pop stardom. Deckers ultimately shocks everyone by shucking Catholicism, pursuing a full-time career as a recording star, recording radically left-wing protest songs, and taking up with a lesbian partner, Annie (Sandrine Blancke). The two fall deeply in love and open a school together for autistic children, but Jeannine's world falls apart when the Belgian government comes calling and informs her that she owes a fortune in back taxes for "Dominique" profits that she originally donated to charity. This actually marked the second of two major features within a ten-year period to cover Deckers' life -- the first, 2001's Suor Sorriso, utilized an experimental, non-linear approach and received mostly scathing reviews. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cécile De France, Sandrine Blancke, (more)
- 2007
Acclaimed Kurdish director Hiner Saleem (Vodka Lemon, Dol) takes the reins once again for his seventh feature outing, the offbeat drama Beneath the Rooftops of Paris (AKA Sous les toits de Paris, 2007 - not to be confused with the famous 1930 René Clair film of the same title). French screen legend Michel Piccoli (I'm Going Home) stars as Marcel, an octogenarian Parisian man who inhabits a decrepit and filthy top-tiered flat in the City of Lights, initially with his younger friend Amar (Maurice Benichou). The men experience their final months together as roommates one sticky, sweltering summer. Their days are littered with resolutely small, almost fleeting pleasures, such as consortions with a waitress, Therese (Mylene Demongeot) in a nearby café and temporary respites from the suffocating heat wave that is closing in on Paris via brief dips in the community swimming pool. As time roles on, however, Marcel's life grows unbearably difficult; Amar hearkens off to greener pastures, and as autumn spells an end to the summer, the elderly man's health deteriorates to the point of rendering his life utterly unbearable. Most problematic is the fact that no one seems to stay in his life for any length of time - friends come and go with alarming rapidity, leaving Marcel to fend for himself. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Mylène Demongeot, (more)
- 2006
A good-natured adolescent struggles to find himself as his controlling mother attempts to bind him with her love in director Martial Fougeron's emotionally claustrophobic family drama. Julien (Victor Sévaux) is a handsome and smart young man who would make any mother proud. Though he may be fairly bright, nothing Julien does can quite meet up to the expectations and lofty demands of his overbearing mother (Nathalie Baye), who seems to take strange pleasure in humiliating her son and placing him in severely awkward situations. It is because of her that Julien is forced to arrange clandestine meetings with his secret girlfriend while taking piano lessons from his kindly grandmother (Emmanuelle Riva). Though his sympathetic sister, Suzanne (Marie Kremer), and academic father (Olivier Gourmet) are quick to recognize the psychological damage that the bullying mother is inflicting upon her son, both are loathe to intercede lest they too become the target of the quick-to-anger suburban tyrant. His situation growing increasingly dire as his mother's demands take on a particularly dark bent, Julien is soon forced to resort to extreme measures as a means of dealing with the overbearing matriarch. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nathalie Baye, Victor Sévaux, (more)
When her wealthy parents are suddenly motivated to take an overtly political stance as massive political and economical change sweeps through France, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish lawyer and a successful French journalist attempts to make sense of her once-stable world as everything she thought she ever knew is turned upside down.
Anna (Nina Kervel) is a nine-year-old Catholic schoolgirl who excels in catechism class and knows how to hold a knife and fork while cutting her fruit. Her father, Fernando (Stefano Accorsi), comes from a prominent Spanish family and her mother, Marie (Julie Depardieu), is a well-known writer for a popular French women's magazine. Also sharing the family's sprawling home is Anna's younger brother, François (Benjamin Feuillet). When the increasing militancy of Fernando's communist sister begins to pose a threat to the family, the concerned brother stealthily travels to Spain and successfully smuggles his sister back into France. Fully indoctrinated in the belief that all communists are bad, Anna struggles to understand why, after returning from a trip to Latin America, her parents seem to have developed a strong social conscience. Meanwhile, as the thunderous footsteps of eager revolutionaries begin to echo through the hallways and mom begins to prepare a book protesting the illegality of abortion, Anna does her best to adapt to the strange new environment. The fiction feature debut of filmmaker Julie Gavras (daughter of celebrated filmmaker Costa), Blame It on Fidel! playfully covers the year in which the death of Charles De Gaulle, the election of Salvador Allende, and a landmark petition signed by 300 French women admitting to undergoing illegal abortions altered the way many Europeans viewed the world. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Anna (Nina Kervel) is a nine-year-old Catholic schoolgirl who excels in catechism class and knows how to hold a knife and fork while cutting her fruit. Her father, Fernando (Stefano Accorsi), comes from a prominent Spanish family and her mother, Marie (Julie Depardieu), is a well-known writer for a popular French women's magazine. Also sharing the family's sprawling home is Anna's younger brother, François (Benjamin Feuillet). When the increasing militancy of Fernando's communist sister begins to pose a threat to the family, the concerned brother stealthily travels to Spain and successfully smuggles his sister back into France. Fully indoctrinated in the belief that all communists are bad, Anna struggles to understand why, after returning from a trip to Latin America, her parents seem to have developed a strong social conscience. Meanwhile, as the thunderous footsteps of eager revolutionaries begin to echo through the hallways and mom begins to prepare a book protesting the illegality of abortion, Anna does her best to adapt to the strange new environment. The fiction feature debut of filmmaker Julie Gavras (daughter of celebrated filmmaker Costa), Blame It on Fidel! playfully covers the year in which the death of Charles De Gaulle, the election of Salvador Allende, and a landmark petition signed by 300 French women admitting to undergoing illegal abortions altered the way many Europeans viewed the world. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nina Kervel, Julie Depardieu, (more)
- 2005
Director Coline Serreau's warmhearted comedy Saint Jacques. . .La Mecque concerns a trio of estranged siblings who must complete a road trip together in order to collect an inheritance after their mother dies. The ever-at-the-end-of his-tether businessman Pierre (Artus de Penguern), mousy teacher Clara (Muriel Robin), and drunken reprobate Caludr (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), must travel together in order to each warn the millions their mother left them or else it all goes to charity. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Muriel Robin, Artus de Penguern, (more)
