Bernard Le Coq

The comedy Times Have Been Better concerns a married couple whose preconceptions about their own open-mindedness are shattered when their oldest son announces he is homosexual. The family dynamic is complicated because the son's younger brother has always known the truth, but resents his older brother's status as the family favorite. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

A pair of reporters uncover a secret war that threatens the peace of two nations in this thriller based on actual events. In the 1980s, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion (or GAL) was an anti-terrorist organization sponsored by the Spanish government that was launched in response to attacks by a Basque revolutionary force, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA). However, the GAL developed a reputation for reckless violence and targeting the wrong people, and Spanish progressives regarded them as little more than a gang of hit men. When an innocent Frenchman is killed by GAL forces, the story attracts the attention of Pablo (Abel Folk), a newspaper editor, who assigns two of his best writers, Manuel (Jose Garcia) and Marta (Natalia Verbeke) to look into the GAL and its leadership. As Manuel and Marta learn more about GAL chief Ariza (Jordi Mollà), they unravel a web of violence and corruption that leads to the highest offices in the land. GAL was produced in part by Melchor Miralles, one of the real-life journalists who uncovered the GAL scandal, while the newspaper that carried his stories, El Mundo, provided financing for the picture. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Paranoia grips a bourgeois European family when a series of menacing videotapes begin turning up on their doorstep in Piano Teacher director Michael Haneke's dark drama. From the outside, Georges (Daniel Auteuil), Anne (Juliette Binoche), and son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) are the typical middle-class European family, but when a series of mysterious videotapes accompanied by morbid drawings reveal that someone has been monitoring their house, Georges begins to suspect that his past has come back to haunt him. It was during France's occupation of Algeria that Georges wronged a young Algerian boy named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), and as the enraged father and husband begins tracking down his former friend, the line between victim and predator becomes increasingly blurred. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The master of French suspense joins forces with the queen of English suspense fiction for this tense tale of the treacherous love affair between a disturbed bridesmaid and an unsuspecting young man. Philippe (Benoit Magimel) lives in a quiet French town with his hairdresser mother Christine (Aurore Clément) and two younger sisters. Soon after the news breaks about a local girl who has mysteriously vanished, Philippe's mother introduces her children to Gerard (Bernard Le Coq) -- a local businessman who may have matrimonial intentions toward the attractive beautician. Soon after receiving permission from her children to present Gerard with a sculpture of a woman's head that had previously adorned the family garden, however, the elusive beau seems to disappear without a trace. Philippe is intent on recovering the captivating piece of art, and after stealthily recovering it in a clandestine mission he places it in his closet without telling the rest of the family. Later, at his sister's wedding, Philippe meets attractive bridesmaid Senta (Laura Smet) and passion between the pair quickly ignites during a stormy seduction. A model and aspiring actress who lives alone in a massive villa inherited from her father, sultry Senta may be physically irresistible, yet she also seems to have a few morbid preconceptions about life, love, and death. As the affair between the pair grows increasingly heated, Philippe at first takes her request to murder a stranger as a means of proving his love as a joke. The more he gets to know her the more that it appears that Senta is in fact deadly serious about her dark request. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Gilles de Maistre's political thriller Féroce (Ferocious) is about a man seeking revenge. Arab Alain (Samy Naceri) decides to join a fascistic French political party in order to assassinate the leader, Legle (Jean-Marc Thibault). Alain comes to this decision when his girlfriend's brother is murdered after he had defaced some of the party's paraphernalia. To improve the party's public stance on immigrants, Alain is hired as a security guard. Legle's daughter is attracted to Alain, who is tempted enough by the girl to abandon some of his religious convictions. Ferocious was screened at the Paris Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Two people looking for an answer to their problems with memory loss find love along the way in this comedy-drama from France. Claire (Isabelle Carre) is a woman in her early '30s whose mother recently passed on due to Alzheimer's Syndrome; in a bitterly ironic twist of fate, Claire was struck by lightning, and ever since her memory has begun to fade away. Needing help for her condition, Claire enters a special clinic for people with memory-loss problems. Located in a large house in the country, the clinic is supervised by Dr. Christian (Bernard Le Coq), a quirky physician who thinks none of his patients can tell he's having an affair with one of his assistants, Marie (Zabou Breitman). While at the clinic, Claire meets Philippe (Bernard Campan), a noted wine expert whose memory has begun to fail him. Claire and Philippe become infatuated with one another while at the clinic, and when the two are released, they decide to move in together. As they try to set up housekeeping, it becomes obvious that while Claire and Philippe have refused to give in to their condition, it is still having an unavoidable impact on their lives. Se Souvenir Des Belles Choses was the first feature film directed by noted actress Zabou Breitman, who also appears as Marie. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This French prison drama focuses on a penitentiary inmate known as the Mute (Olivier Martinez), who either cannot or will not speak, even though he can apparently hear well enough. When the Mute's cellmate escapes, both the Warden (Bernard Le Coq) and the Chief Guard (Claude Brasseur) try to get him to tell what he knows about the disappearance -- the Guard through violence, the Warden by transferring him to a new cell with four other prisoners and cutting off TV privileges to the inmates until the Mute spills the beans. One of the Mute's new roommates is a white collar criminal (Said Taghmaoui) who has just landed in prison and is not dealing well with the pressures of life behind bars, but his skills with computers make him a very usefully ally among the prisoners. Meanwhile, Flic (Gilbert Melki), a self-important police detective, is investigating the escape of the Mute's cellmate and is not happy with the low level of cooperation among the prison's population. La Taule received its North American premiere at Montreal's World Film Festival in 1999. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Benoit Jacquot directed this French drama about an older woman and a younger man, adapted from the novel by Yukio Mishima. When career woman Dominique (Isabelle Huppert) goes out to a nightclub one evening, her attraction to bartender Quentin (Vincent Martinez) is observed by cross-dressing Chris (Vincent Lindon), who approaches her and supplies inside dope on Quentin, leaving her intrigued. Although Dominique and Quentin travel in radically different spheres of income, class, politics, and education, these barriers recede into the background as sexual passion overcomes the couple. Shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Bertrand Tavernier directed this hard-hitting anti-war drama. In November of 1918, just as World War I had come to a close, Capt. Conan (Phillippe Torreton) and his men await new assignments in Bucharest. Conan regards himself as a warrior, not a soldier: while a soldier will fight in a war, it takes a warrior -- unafraid to take risks, confront death, and spill blood -- to win one. Conan is convinced that it was the bloodthirsty valor of himself and those under his command that won the war against Germany. However, while Conan's dark nature was a boon to the Army during the war, it's a distinct disadvantage in peacetime, as Conan and his friends Norbert (Samuel LeBihan) and De Sceve (Bernard LeCoq) are instructed to patrol the now peaceful border. Conan and his compatriots have become too acclimated to battle to leave it behind and begin staging raids in the mountains of the Balkans. The situation comes to a head when two women are killed in a combination robbery and attack on a nightclub; Conan and his men are to be court martialed for their actions, driving a wedge between him and his close friend Norbert, who respects Conan but lacks his reckless enthusiasm for battle. Capitaine Conan earned Cesar awards for Torreton's performance and Tavernier's direction. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Espionage, personal integrity, and political commitment are the main themes running through this French thriller that chronicles a young man's journey from idealism to disillusionment and maturity. The story is set in the 1980's in Tel Aviv and follows the exploits and moral conflicts of Attal, a Jew who left his family in France on his eighteenth birthday to pursue a career as an agent in Israels' Institute for Intelligence, the Mossad. At first, his missions do not bother his conscience; he performs them for the good of Israel. But, as time passes, Attal must face more moral dilemmas as the work becomes more subversive and dishonest. He must ultimately decide whether to follow the his personal ideals, or be part of a system which promote immoral acts in the name of idealism. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Running nearly three hours, Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh is a leisurely paced look at the famous painter's final year. Pialat's portrait differs from many other films in that he shows Van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc) as being reasonably sane and he focuses on the everyday events of the painter's life and art. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide