Carole Laure Movies

The 20th century not only produced the modern woes of super-highway crashes and interminable traffic jams, but also movies that center around the same theme. In this drama about life and death in the fast, middle, and slow lanes, Juliette (Carole Laure) finds herself stranded on a busy highway leading from Paris south to cities like Lyon. She was supposed to meet her lover, and is driving his car when she stops at their appointed roadside rendezvous. Instead, their deception has been discovered by her lover's wife, who is waiting for her, and drives the car away in a huff. Juliette is left to thumb it back to Paris. She soon hooks up with Arthur Colonna (Jean Yanne), who gives her a ride, and the two begin to wend their way northward along the highway. Interspersed with their journey is a series of cinematic "asides" that delve into tragic mishaps, such as the aftermath of a crash in which a woman was killed, her husband stumbling along the highway, still in shock -- and the brief story of a surgeon named Kalendarian (Georges Wilson) who struggles to find the needed transfusions for the crash victims on this busy weekend. The relationship between Juliette and Arthur begins to turn from casual to interested when they suffer a bad accident from which they both manage to come out unscathed -- leaving an indelible effect on their growing relationship. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this violent actioner, a misanthropic Ottawa police captain searches for the person who poisoned his little sister, who was attending the university in Montreal. So desperate is he for vengeance that he casts protocol to the winds and begins using his own brutal methods to find the killer. Soon he discovers that his "innocent" kid sister was involved in the theft of a valuable string of pearls and that she had been hanging around an appalling assortment of creeps and weirdos. The story was originally titled Blazing Magnum. The new title has nothing to do with the film. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this drama, an actress in a traveling musical revue is involved with the show's director until she meets and falls for an aging ecological activist. He too is drawn to her, and together they try to stop a factory from being built over an old-growth forest. The ecologist suddenly runs away, frightened by his emotions for the woman. Broken-hearted but undaunted, the woman continues their fight. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The lightly mocking title Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs) sets the tone for this Bertrand Blier-directed amalgam of the sentimental and sardonic. Gérard Depardieu plays an at-wit's-end husband, Raoul, who'll go to any lengths to sexually satisfy his wife, Solange (Carole Laure). Raoul decides that the best thing to cure Solange's boredom would be if she took a lover; thus, he chooses Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere) for the "job." But Stéphane isn't any more successful in arousing Solange than her husband had been. Eventually, it is a 13-year-old boy who quenches Solange's erotic yearnings. Get Out Your Handkerchiefs won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar as well as a French César award for Best Score (by Georges Delerue). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dirty Dishes is a Bunuel study in alienation, but look again: that's Joyce Bunuel, not Luis, so Dirty Dishes is more user-friendly. French housewife Carol Laure isn't satisfied with her lot, but what else is there? One day the monotony is too much; she snaps, and goes on a one-woman rebellion against the world. At first it's a hilarious orgy of self-discovery--and then Laure goes off the deep end. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This meditative French-Canadian film tells the story of a young woman's search for the father she has never known. Marie Chapelaine (Carole Laure) grew up in a remote area of Quebec without ever knowing her father, a lumberjack. She moves to Montreal, settles in there with a job as a topless dancer and begins her search for him. Eventually, with the help of his former mistress, they find the lumber camp he was working in, only to discover that he was killed in a labor dispute. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Normande (Carole Laure) is a young woman who supports her family by working in a drugstore. Her mother is in an asylum, and her younger sister is a drug-addict. When she picks up a deranged youth and brings him home, he somehow manages to get her mother out of the asylum. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

French Canadian actress and singer Carole Laure makes her directorial debut with the comedy drama Les Fils de Marie (Marie's Sons). Assisting cinematographer Pascal Arnold with writing, directing, and producing, Laure also assumes the lead role as Marie, a woman dealing with the death of her husband and teenage son in a car accident. In order to cope with her grief, she places an ad in the paper in search of a surrogate son who is in need of a mother. She offers care to the four motherless men who respond to her ad: performance artist Alex (Danny Gilmore), abused teenager Martin (Felix Lajeunesse-Guy), overweight recluse Victor (Daniel Desjardins), and married father Paul (Jean-Marc Barr). A co-production of France and Canada, Les Fils de Marie was shot on digital video and premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

In this fantasy-drama-romance, forbidden love between an angel (Carole Laure) and a singer (Nick Mancuso) is set against the singer's attempts to resuscitate a fading theater. During the period of one night, the singer is visited by three different guardian angels out to help him succeed in putting together a stunning show (a show that will include some of Canada's best dancers). One of the angels (Laure) takes a liking to the singer, and that gives rise to musical numbers on the nature of the creative genius and the conflicts that can arise between art, artifice, and real life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi